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The question

Excluding property, what is the most expensive thing you have ever bought?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this standing prompt, with minor contractions and word-order variation.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Warren Buffett

Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.

His own pledge letter, written on joining the Giving Pledge in 2010, The Giving Pledge, 2010 source ↗

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Question What has life taught you about being human? Values & belief
Well, I won't say what I thought about them, particularly related to Bill Gates, but I would say it's astounding to me how human people are. I mean, it, here you had a guy that was a convicted guy, a sensational con man, and the percentage of people that he knocked off. I mean, whether it was, he found their weakness, it might have been sex. It might be power, it might be, whatever it might be.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗
Question What does everyone in your world seem to agree on that you think is wrong? Values & belief
The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.
Recorded His letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in the 1993 annual report, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 1994 source ↗
Question What made you stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time? Time & hindsight
Well, I ran out of gas. You know, I got to be what, 93 at that time, or something like that. And it just – same reason I gave up teaching. I teach – I was – I taught every year from when I was 21 till 88 or 89, and there just came a period when your body said different things to you, and you should turn it over to somebody, just like I did at Berkshire.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗
Question In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? Daily life
Yeah and we get calls all the time, and there's so many calls, but the like I said, it takes me five seconds to say no. It takes, Greg's a little more polite than I am, but I just as soon get the calls just to see what people are doing. But they aren't offering anything that's at an attractive price, and what they want is a trade.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗

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