6 Personal Finance Tips from Billionaires

1. Keep Your Home Simple
   Frugal billionaires like Warren Buffet choose to keep it simple. Buffet still lives in the five-bedroom house in Omaha that he purchased in 1957 for $31,500.
2. Use Self-Powered or Public Transportation
   Thrifty billionaires including John Caudwell, David Cheriton, and Chuck Feeney prefer to walk, bike or use public transportation when getting around town. Certainly, these wealthy individuals could afford to take a helicopter to their lunch meetings or ride in chauffeur-driven Bentleys, but they choose to get a little exercise and take advantage of public transportation instead. Good for the bank account and great for the environment.
3. Buy Your Clothes off the Rack
   While some people, regardless of their net value, place a huge emphasis on wearing designer clothes and shoes, some frugal billionaires decide it's simply not worth the effort, or expense. You can find David Cheriton, the Stanford professor who matched Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to the venture capitalists at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (resulting in a large reward of Google stock), wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the furniture company Ikea, avoids wearing suits, and John Caudwell, a mobile phone mogul, buys his clothes off the rack instead of spending his wealth on designer clothes.
4. Keep your Scissors Sharp
   The average haircut costs about $45, but people can and do spend up to $800 per cut and style. Multiply that by 8.6 (to account for a cut every six weeks) and it adds up to $7,200 per year, not including tips. These billionaires can certainly afford the most stylish haircuts, but many cannot be bothered by the time it takes or the high price tag for the posh salons. Billionaires like John Caudwell and David Cheriton opt for cutting their own hair at home.
5. Drive a Regular Car
   While billionaires like Larry Ellison (co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation) enjoy spending millions on cars, boats, and planes, others remain low key with their vehicles of choice. Jim Walton (of the Wal-Mart clan) drives a 15-year-old pickup truck. Azim Premji, an Indian business tycoon, reportedly drives a Toyota Corolla. And Ingvar Kamprad of Ikea drives a 10-year-old Volvo. The idea is to buy a dependable car, and drive it into the ground. No need for a different car each day of the week for these frugal billionaires.
6. Skip Luxury Items
   It may surprise some of us, but the world's wealthiest person, Carlos Slim (the one who could spend more than a thousand dollars a minute and not run out of money for one hundred years) does not own a yacht or a plane. (Reducing the amount you spend is the easiest way to make your money grow.  Many other billionaires have chosen to skip these luxury items. Warren Buffet also avoids these lavish material items, stating "Most toys are just a pain in the neck."

As you can see, some of the world's billionaires have frugal tendencies. No matter what your income bracket is you can usually find a way to cut back on frivolous spending, just like these frugal billionaires.