Quotes from Charlie Munger

From the 2007 Wesco Financial Annual Meeting

• "Don't wrestle with a pig, you'll both get dirty but the pig will like it."
• "Charlie's favorite business analogy: the mouse who says 'let me out of the trap, I've decided I don't want the cheese."
• "You've earned your retirement."
• "To learn from a person, make then your friend - tie into their lives and personalities."
• "The first rule is don't fool yourself, and you're the easiest one to fool."
• "Always live below your financial means so you'll have money to invest."
• "Invest in such a way so that you'll never be in a negative position -avoid the use of debt."
• "Always seek the simplest most direct answer. Look at the problem backwards."
• "You guarantee failure when you learn everything from you own experience rather than learning from others."
• "To be a successful investor you need to understand your own psychology, if losing money makes you miserable, you should use a very conservative pattern of saving and investment."
• "To understand a business figure out what results it is achieving, why it is getting those results and what could happen to change what is causing those results. If everyone can understand this, then you'll have to pay a lot of money, so you'll have to determine if the price is worth it."
• "Americans are oversold on the benefit they receive from money managers and mutual funds. Save yourself a lot of time, money and worry and put your money into index funds."
• "Why should investors care if someone else is doing better or worse, when he rationally knows that in the long term his results will be superior by reason of lower costs and the long term effects of compounding."
• "In the process of not disappointing anyone, people must have the proper expectations and know what they are and are not getting."
• "Stick to basic principles and be alert for opportunity. There are not an unlimited number of opportunities."

Note: If you haven't attended a Wesco Financial Annual Meeting, I recommend you do so. They are held in the middle of May (a few days after the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting) in Pasadena, CA.

The retirement plan Uncle Sam has right

Hard to believe but true:

The government offers employees a great plan, and you'd do well to emulate it

Money Magazine, By Walter Updegrave, Money Magazine Senior Writer, November 23 2006

Considering the mess that Social Security and Medicare are in, the federal government is probably the last place you'd look for insights about retirement planning.


But I've got to hand it to the feds: When it comes to investing their own money for retirement, they really know what they're doing. In fact, the Thrift Savings Plan - the equivalent of a 401(k) plan for members of Congress and other government employees - is one of the best retirement plans around.

Read the article