Charlie Munger’s #1 Rule for Living to 99.9 Years | Final Interview with CNBC 2023

[Transcript]

BECKY QUICK: Living to 100, everybody wants to know what’s the secret. What is the secret for you?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I don't know the secret. I avoided the standard ways of failing. Because my game in life was always to avoid all standard ways of failing. You teach me the wrong way to play poker and I will avoid it. You teach me the wrong way to do something else, I will avoid it. And of course, I’ve avoided a lot because I’m so cautious.

BECKY QUICK: But you do things you like. Like you’ll eat peanut brittle.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes, but it doesn’t matter that much.

BECKY QUICK: Okay.

CHARLIE MUNGER: I drink Diet Coke.

BECKY QUICK: Yeah.

CHARLIE MUNGER: I’m sure Diet Coke shortens my life a little, but I don’t give a damn if the last week of lying there unconscious goes away. It’s only the good part of life I want, anyway. (Laughs)

BECKY QUICK: You know, there are all of these billionaires now, Silicon Valley types, who are trying to do anything they can to extend their lives. Like crazy things.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. They find they’ve got a family full of Parkinson’s. And I watched my mother and my sister die of Parkinson’s Disease, and so I'm familiar with that one. That’s a very unpleasant thing. I do not like the last month of Parkinson’s Disease. I’ve seen it up close. It's no fun for the people in it, it’s no fun for the people around them. It’s no fun at all. And Diet Coke may be helping me to skip it. Who knows? It’s helping me skip the last month, not the first month.

BECKY QUICK: There are some new ways that people think that they can extend life, though. And one of the crazier things I’ve heard is this idea of doing a blood transfusion with younger people, so you get younger blood. I mean, there are some Silicon Valley types who are doing this.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, but that was crazy. You’ve got to remember that the practice of medicine in my father’s boyhood was a charlatan’s profession. People learned to make a living at it and they gradually learned a few things they could do that would help the patients. But, basically, they did a lot of nonsensical things.

BECKY QUICK: If other people want to know what the best way to live is, you would just tell them to avoid the crazy things? Avoid the things that take you down?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yes. Avoid crazy at all costs. Crazy is way more common than you think. It’s easy to slip into crazy. Just avoid it, avoid it, avoid it. Of course, of course, of course.

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

 

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