Not surprisingly, Buffett has a similar opinion: “It’s pretty easy to get well-to-do slowly. But it’s not easy to get rich quick.”
When it comes to investing, don’t rush. Buy-and-hold for the long term, the business partners advise.
The wealthiest, most successful people tend to push themselves out of their comfort zones and continually look for ways to educate themselves.
Munger is no exception.
“In Charlie’s own life, when he was practicing law, he implemented a self-education regime for one hour a day to learn such things as real estate development and stock investing,” writes Clark. “He has often said that he is a much better investor at 90 than he was at 50, a fact he attributes to the compounding effect of knowledge.”
Now that you’ve heard Munger’s career advice, check out the three psychological habits he warns can hurt your career.
If you know what you don’t know, you can steer clear of companies you don’t understand.
Buffett and Munger only invest in companies that are within their “circle of competence,” a concept Buffett first described in his 1996 shareholder letter: “You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”
He’s not the only billionaire to embrace failure: Both Richard Branson and Sara Blakely credit much of their success to learning quickly from mistakes.
The same way he surrounds himself with those willing to admit and move on from mistakes, Munger avoids know-it-alls.
And who you hang out with matters: Some experts even claim that it can affect your net worth.
“If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart,” Munger says.
Buffett agrees that passion pays off. “Being successful at almost anything means having a passion for it,” he said during a recent conversation with Bill Gates.
This lifestyle works for Munger, who, at 93, is still in good physical and mental shape. Buffett also seems to be going strong despite not paying much attention to what he eats: The 86-year-old drinks five Cokes a day and is a regular at McDonald’s.
Despite their success, Munger and Buffett are notably frugal.
“Both Charlie and Warren have lived in upper-middle-class homes and driven older-model cars most of their lives,” writes Clark. “Why? To keep their expenses low, so that they could accumulate lots of cash to invest.”
Take the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, who reads 50 books a year, or Buffett, who spends as much as 80 percent of his day reading.
As for Munger, he’s been an avid reader since he was a kid, says Clark: “By age eight both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had permanent places on the bookshelf above his bed.”
Munger hasn’t slowed down since. “My children laugh at me,” he says. “They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
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