'Inflation Hits Us All': $400M Businessman Reveals His Favourite Walmart Deals You Probably Buy Too

Kevin O'Leary has an estimated fortune of about $400M (£295M), three homes, and a regular seat on the Shark Tank panel. Recently, he spent part of a shopping trip standing in a Walmart aisle, weighing up paper towel packs to get the better deal.

The Canadian investor, 72, filmed the run for Instagram after his wife handed him a shopping list of everyday essentials: batteries, butter, paper towels, and OxiClean laundry spray. The video then ran through the bargains he returns to.

'Inflation affects all of us. Saving dough is the name of the game. That means focusing on value and always looking for great deals. I know I am!' O'Leary wrote in the accompanying post.

One item he singled out was denim. Holding up the black jeans he wears on television and at events, O'Leary revealed the price. 'You know those fantastic black jeans I'm always wearing? That's right. Walmart special, 29 smackaroos. That's how you save dough,' he said. At $29 (£21) a pair, they are the sort of purchase he has defended for years.

Then came the paper towels. '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, reaching for the larger multipack. The butter, batteries, and laundry spray on his wife's list completed the trip.

Why the $400M Shark Tank Star Still Hunts Walmart Deals

O'Leary has made this argument before, and the pandemic-era version went viral. In 2021, he told CNBC he had no shame in his Walmart habit. 'I hate wasting money. I just don't get why you would do that. It's so hard to make it in the first place,' he said at the time.

He made the same point about groceries. 'I can go to a high-end butcher and pay 40% more for roast chicken. It's still a chicken. Why am I paying 40% more? I'd rather drive to Walmart and buy it there,' he said. Basics such as t-shirts and jeans, in his view, were another place shoppers overpaid. Back then his Walmart denim cost $20 (£15). The price on the latest pair has crept up to $29.

The savings, he argues, are only worth chasing if the money goes somewhere. In the same interview, O'Leary said savings could be invested to 'make 6, 7, 8% a year' and used later in life, a lesson he has tried to pass on to his children.

His thrift has a couple of exceptions. The items he refuses to buy cheap are underwear and watches. O'Leary told CNBC in 2018 that his boxers, made by Zimmerli of Switzerland, cost $120 (£89) each.

On the other hand, O'Leary has collected timepieces for close to 50 years, since his teens in the 1970s. A recent Brew Markets interview showed him rotating six a day from a travel box worth close to $1M (£740,000).

He frames them as investments rather than indulgences, telling followers in a November 2025 video that a Rolex bought for $17,000 (£12,600) could be worth $58,000 (£43,000) a decade later.

Inflation Gives O'Leary's Walmart Advice New Bite

Household budgets remain under pressure. Figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show consumer prices rose 3.4 per cent over the year to July, with food up 3.0 per cent.

Everyday staples rose faster still. A ConsumerAffairs analysis using the Datasembly Shopping Cart Index found that a basket of 24 common grocery and household items, including paper products, cost 5.9 per cent more in January 2026 than a year earlier.

O'Leary is not the only wealthy figure with a frugal streak. Warren Buffett, worth about $150B (£111B), still lives in the Omaha home he bought in 1958 and was long known for a McDonald's breakfast order dictated by the stock market.

The items O'Leary singled out, from $29 jeans to a larger pack of Bounty, are everyday goods stocked in Walmart stores across the US.