Charlie Munger on Staying Sane While Getting Rich | Final Interview with CNBC 2023

[Transcript]

BECKY QUICK: Part of your advice in life I think is to understand that change comes with life and adapt to it. It’s something I think about a lot in my own struggles with life.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Everybody knows that. I could have done a lot better if I had been a little smarter, a little quicker.

BECKY QUICK: What are you talking about? You’ve had success in everything you’ve done in life. What would you like to do differently?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I might have had multiple trillions instead of multiple billions. (Laughs)

BECKY QUICK: Do you sit around thinking about this? What would you have done differently?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes, I do think about it. Yes, I think a lot about what I nearly missed by being just not quite smart enough or hard-working enough.

BECKY QUICK: What would you have changed if you could go back and look at the last 100 years?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I’d go back and make some, of course. It’d be a cinch to go back and do it knowing what was going to happen now. I know I would be the richest man on Earth.

BECKY QUICK: What did you miss? Was there something where you zigged where you should have zagged?

CHARLIE MUNGER: I would’ve started earlier, for one thing, and I would’ve compounded longer. And I would’ve compounded better.

BECKY QUICK: So saved even more?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Of course, I would have ended up richer if I was going to live to be 100 years old. I constantly am aware of the facts that I basically screwed up. Given the hand I dealt, I could’ve done a lot better. Quite easily, done a lot better.

BECKY QUICK: But you are not somebody who spends a lot of money on yourself. We are sitting here in a beautiful house, but this is a house that you’ve lived in for 70 years.

CHARLIE MUNGER: I know —

BECKY QUICK: You could’ve moved and spent more.

CHARLIE MUNGER: — and Warren’s lived in his house for about 60 years. We’re similar. But, you see, we’re both smart enough to have watched our friends who got rich build these really fancy houses. And I would say, in practically every case, they make the person less happy — not happier.

BECKY QUICK: How so?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Having a basic house really helps you. Having a really fancy house, it’s good for entertaining 100 people at once — it’s a very expensive thing to do — and it doesn’t do you that much good.

BECKY QUICK: I think one of the things you’ve said along the years — at least this is what I’ve been told — is that it’s not staying rich that’s difficult, it’s staying sane.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah, of course.

BECKY QUICK: What happens?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, most people go a little crazy in some way or another.

BECKY QUICK: I mean that's a lot of your life — a lot of your life and advice is —

CHARLIE MUNGER: Avoiding traps.

BECKY QUICK: — Invert, invert, and try to figure out where you don’t want to be.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes, and avoid it. Yes, of course. That’s what everybody’s life is with any sense. All the people I know and my friends now, they never would’ve become alcoholics. It was too dangerous. They would — They don’t get near it if it takes that many fine people into deep trouble.

BECKY QUICK: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: I knew quite [a lot] of people who lived so long — and have scattered around through different activities — and I bump into a lot of different people and I noticed, as I got older and older, that all the people that had very early heart trouble, the males that had very early heart trouble, had one thing in common.

BECKY QUICK: What?

CHARLIE MUNGER: They all smoked a lot of cigarettes. So I could see that coming fairly early. And it’s rather interesting, I tried to learn to smoke so I could be a cool kid like the other kids in high school. I tried to ruin my life, but it nauseated me. (Laughs) And so I said, “The hell with this.” People that lured me into the goddamn thing, you’re going to get nauseated by learning to do it. And I said, “I’m not interested enough in going through a lot of nausea that I want to smoke.” So I just didn’t smoke.

BECKY QUICK: And you did drink from time to time, right?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Sure. But I didn't — again I was — I even drank to excess a few times, but I was always — there were enough alcoholics and near-alcoholics in my own family that made me worry about liquor.

BECKY QUICK: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: And I was always very cautious about drinking any liquor. Now, I did occasionally get drunk and throw up. That gave me the nausea which enabled me to give up liquor. (Laughs)

Source: https://youtu.be/H5Oom5Rjp_Y?si=ZEkkZkAN6WyOWcl9

 

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