Warren Buffett trolled Bill Gates by proposing he spend almost $400 million on an engagement ring

• Warren Buffett helped Bill Gates pick out an engagement ring at Berkshire-owned Borsheims in 1993.
• Buffett spent 6% of his net worth on a ring in 1951, and told Gates he should do the same.

Warren Buffett trolled Bill Gates by urging him to spend close to $400 million on an engagement ring, according to "The Deals of Warren Buffett Volume 2: The Making of a Billionaire."

The Berkshire Hathaway CEO made the pitch to the Microsoft founder when he and his future wife, Melinda, visited Omaha to go ring shopping in 1993. Buffett met them at the airport and escorted them to Borsheims, a jewelry business he bought four years earlier.

The famed investor told Gates — the richest man in the world and a Berkshire board member at the time, as well as a close friend — that he spent 6% of his net wealth on an engagement ring in 1951, and Gates should do the same.

Gates was worth around $6.2 billion in 1993, according to Forbes. Despite Buffett's coaxing, he declined to shell out $370 million.

"We didn't have quite as big a day that Sunday as I had hoped," Buffett joked afterward.

Skimping on the ring didn't end in disaster. Bill and Melinda married in Hawaii in 1994, and stayed together for 27 years. They divorced in August 2021.