Marrying the Best Person Who Wants You Is the Most Important Decision You Can Make

Marrying the Best Person Who Wants You Is the Most Important Decision You Can Make

Charlie: “Most of you aren’t going to have five or six opportunities to marry a wonderful person. Most of you aren’t going to get one. Most of you get an ordinary chance, which leads to an ordinary result clxxix.”

But if you see Charlie—patient, kind, and silent from the first—you will realize later that his humor is full of small stories of human behavior, of mistakes and humorous anecdotes. He has an ability to be silent and is reluctant to argue directly.

One example from Warren Buffett: “It reminds me that whenever I get a little worried about Charlie, maybe I shouldn’t talk about it. There is a joke about not hearing well that goes like this. I have this wonderful partner, but I think his hearing is going. What should I do? The doctor told me to stand across room. So I stood across room and said, ‘I think we ought to buy GM at thirty-five.’ No response. I go halfway across the room, say it again, and no response. So I walk right over to him and say, ‘Charlie I think we ought to buy GM at thirty-five.’ AND he says, for the third time, YES! So speak up.clxxx"

Charlie has talent for influencing Buffett in almost all decisions of capital allocations at Berkshire. United by the same values, Buffett and Munger have made Berkshire a very unusually rational place. They are not in a hurry and have no shareholders outside pushing them in different directions. It is a great way to operate, ignoring the stupidity and opinions of Wall Street. So once again, no external factors are influencing these great minds.

A born contrarian, Charlie insisted upon buying in declining markets and selling in rising ones. He never provided any direct market advice, what to buy and what to sell. Buffett, as one may notice, very rarely makes decisions on any subject without previous consultations with his “silent partner.” He just needs that cooperation. By creating a new form of partnership, which has grown into a corporation, Buffett has been able to fuse together different industries and firms to a seamless whole. Warren Buffett must be accepted as the greatest business mind that America ever produced.

Charlie has a different character from Warren Buffett; if you watch BRK’s annual meetings, Charlie is usually carefully listening to each question and Buffett answers. Charlie does not say a single word. He never misses a point. He has an ability to concentrate on specific issues and matters and thinks it through before answering. This is a unique characteristic of Charlie Munger. He would go away from a person he is speaking with without saying a word, not even goodbye. By concentrating on a problem or question for the next day, Charlie will announce his position, working out the answer after careful consideration.

Charlie handled his money very well. His courage combined with patience applied in the most difficult of times. Sticking to his purpose and unshakable confidence make him simply an amazing human being. We do not often see Charlie react emotionally. He seems to possess a strong power of confidence. He usually sees a little further than everybody else. It is very hard to surprise him with any question. He has mastered a method of solving matters, giving himself time to think and then time to act. At the same time, if he has made up his mind on a certain issue, he is still able to change. Any decision at any time could be stopped, recalled, and changed.

Charlie Munger, ninety-one years old in 2015, is ranked on Forbes’ revered list of the world’s billionaires at number 465 in the United States and number 1,415 globally. Journalists, investors, money managers, as envious critics, assail him and Warren Buffett. Wherever Charlie goes, be it Berkshire’s annual meeting or a DJCO (Daily Journal Corporation) meeting, he is surrounded by an army of groupies, the people who like him so much, and his fans. Charlie sometimes jokes about it.

Charlie: “Many of you people are here because you’re investment groupies, not Daily Journal shareholders clxxxi.”

At the same time, being famous may create pressure to give back to society. As opposed to Warren Buffett, Charlie does not like too much attention from the public. For someone of Munger’s private nature, it is not that pleasant to be surrounded by press and fans all the time. Charlie wants privacy for his studies, his private life.

Charlie said after being listed on the Forbes billionaire’s list, “I’m somewhat ashamed…That I’ve profited from being shrewd with money is not itself satisfying to me. To atone, I teach and try to set an example. I would hate it if the example of my life caused people to pursue the passive ownership of pieces of paper. I think lives so spent are disastrous lives. I think it’s a better career if you help build something. I wish I’d built more, but I was cursed at being so good at stock picking. ‘The man is the prisoner of his talents.’ You can laugh, but I’ll bet this room is full of people who are prisoners of their talents. It tends to be the human condition clxxxii.”

Personal charity is not an area that Charlie ever wants to delegate to someone else; he gets a certain pleasure from doing this work himself. Charlie: “I try to make up for it with philanthropy and meetings like this one today. This meeting is not out of kindness. This is atonement clxxxiii.”