Including two beloved movie stars, a pair of British royals, a couple of oil barons, and one very rich U.S. president.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, is known for his frugality, living in the same unostentatious Omaha home he bought in the 1950s and driving himself around in an ordinary American car (albeit a Cadillac).Sam Walton, the late billionaire co-founder of Wal-Mart, also lived comfortably, but without all the showy toys he could easily have afforded. “Why do I drive a pickup truck?” he asked in his autobiography. “What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?”
But there’s frugal, and then there’s cheap.
Here are 10 famous figures who seem to have crossed the line between admirably frugal and abominably stingy. Some hoarded their money and denied themselves and their families even the most common of comforts. Others lived lavishly, sparing nothing on their own pleasures—while sticking other people with the bill whenever possible.
Charlie Chaplin
The great silent movie comic was never quieter than when the time came to buy another round or the waiter appeared with the check. This despite the fact that he was reportedly earning $10,000 a week by 1916, the equivalent of $219,000 a week today. “Even after he had millions in the bank,” biographer Kenneth S. Lynn observed, “Chaplin never seemed to have any money on him, and when dining out with friends he always allowed someone else to pick up the tab.“
Actor Marlon Brando called him “an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher,” while Orson Welles upped the ante to “cheapest man who ever lived.” According to Hollywood lore, Chaplin borrowed movie-set carpenters to build his home in Beverly Hills in order to save money, resulting in a structure so flimsy and prone to falling apart that it was soon nicknamed Breakaway House.
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