With an estimated net worth of $400 million, Kevin O’Leary could afford to never set foot in a grocery store again. Yet the Canadian billioanire and Shark Tank investor says he still heads straight to Walmart whenever he needs household essentials, insisting that a bargain is a bargain no matter how rich you get.“I’m always looking for a great deal, that’s why I’m in Walmart,” O’Leary said in a recent Instagram video. “You know those fantastic black jeans I’m always wearing? That’s right—Walmart special, 29 smackaroos. That’s how you save dough.”The 72-year-old explained that his wife had sent him to the store for essentials, including batteries, butter, paper towels, and OxiClean laundry spray. Even on a routine errand, O’Leary said he couldn’t resist scouting for the better value.“I want to save dough when it comes to paper towels. Check it out. Bounty—12+ rolls is like 18 small rolls—I’m going plus,” he said with a smirk.
Why O’Leary keeps shopping at Walmart
O’Leary owns multimillion-dollar homes in Florida, Massachusetts, and Toronto, yet he has made a habit of shopping at Walmart, arguing repeatedly that there’s no reason to overpay for everyday items when a cheaper version works just as well.His reasoning also extends beyond simple savings. O’Leary has said he doesn’t take for granted that money earned today will still be available tomorrow.“I hate wasting money,” O’Leary told CNBC in 2021, after a previous Walmart trip of his went viral. “I just don’t get why you would do that. It’s so hard to make it in the first place.”
From Warren Buffett to Scale AI’s Lucy Guo, even billionaires still look for ways to save
O’Leary isn’t the only member of the ultrawealthy who has held onto frugal habits even as his fortune expanded. Several of the world’s richest people have kept hunting for bargains long after they stopped needing to.Warren Buffett, whose net worth currently stands at about $144 billion, has long been known for his frugal lifestyle. The 95-year-old still lives in the same five-bed, two-and-a-half-bath home in Omaha, Nebraska, that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. The property is now worth more than $1.3 million.Buffett also famously stopped at McDonald’s on his way to the Berkshire Hathaway office, letting the stock market decide what he ordered. According to a 2017 HBO documentary, he would spend $2.61 on two sausage patties when the market was down, and splurge on a $3.17 bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit when it was up.Ikea’s late founder, billionaire Ingvar Kamprad, shared a similar devotion to saving. Despite building an estimated $58.7 billion fortune at one point, Kamprad bought secondhand clothes and drove an old Volvo.“I don’t think I’m wearing anything that wasn’t bought at a flea market,” Kamprad said in a 2016 documentary on Sweden’s TV4. “I want to set a good example.”Kamprad kept working at Ikea until he was 87, more than three decades after becoming a billionaire. He died in 2018 at the age of 91.A newer face in the billionaire class, Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo, has shown similarly modest spending habits even as her wealth has grown quickly. The 31-year-old has embraced the FIRE (financially independent, retire early) movement, going as far as buying discounted clothing, skateboarding to work, and booking flights she later canceled just to eat for free in American Express airport lounges.“Everything I wear is free or from Shein…Some of them aren’t going to be that great quality, but there’s always like two pieces or so that really work out, and I just wear them every day,” Guo previously told Fortune. “I still literally buy buy-one, get-one-free on Uber Eats.”Taken together, these habits point to a pattern among some of the world’s wealthiest people: financial success doesn’t necessarily erase the instinct to hunt for a deal. For O’Leary, Buffett, Kamprad, and Guo, staying budget-conscious appears less about needing to save and more about a mindset that helped build their fortunes in the first place.
