Warren Buffett has some advice for young people on how to be happy, and it has nothing to do with having billions of dollars.
During today's Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, 82-year-old Buffett and his 89-year-old business partner Charlie Munger were asked by a 30-year-old what advice they would give if they could communicate with themselves when they were 50 years younger.
Here's their response:
MUNGER: We're basically so old-fashioned that we're boringly trite. We think you ought to keep plugging along, and stay rational, and stay energetic. Just all the old virtues still work.
BUFFETT: But find what turns you on.
MUNGER: Yeah, you have to work where you're turned on. I don't know about Warren, but I've never succeeded to any great extent in something I didn't like doing.
BUFFETT: Charlie and I both started in the same grocery store and neither one of us are in the grocery business.
MUNGER: We were not going to be promoted either, even though you had the family name. (Laughter.)
BUFFETT: My grandfather was right, too. If you're lucky, and Charlie and I were lucky in this respect. Well, we were lucky to be in this country to start with. But we found things we like to do very early in life and then we pushed very hard in doing those thing. But we were enjoying it while we did it. We had had so much fun running Berkshire it's almost sinful. But we were lucky. My dad happened to be in a business (he was a stockbroker) that he didn't find very interesting but I found very interesting. So when I would go down on Saturday there were a lot of books to read. You know, it just flowed from a very early age. And Charlie found ...
MUNGER: You've found a way to atone for your sins for having so much fun, you're giving all the money back .
BUFFETT: Yeah, but you give it all back whether you want to or not in the end. (Laughter.)
