Charlie Munger died at the age of 99 almost 18 months ago, in November 2023. He was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the fund made famous by Warren Buffett. He was Warren Buffett's right-hand man.
He lived a life of moderation and believed that moderation and safety in investment and consideration were the secrets of success.
As I said, he lived to 99 and managed to model that stuff, and although some people will throw daggers at his reputation or his legacy or his history, it's pretty clear that he succeeded on many fronts.
I have not read or consumed so much of Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger, but one thing that I have seen is both of their thoughts on 'time to think'.
Maybe it's easy to find time to think when you're worth billions, but they were not always worth billions; in fact, Warren Buffett gained most of his wealth after the age of 70, and in fact, a considerable amount of it after the age of 80 because they lived in a situation where they believed that longevity was the key and they just had to stay in the game and continue in the game in a conservative way in order to win (in the end). They both won in the end.
But the time to think is one of the most insightful lessons you can learn from people who have dedicated their lives to whatever it is that they do because if you're not racing to a finish line at 50 or 55 or 60, it's ok to take a minute or even more than a minute to consider where you're going and what you're doing, the information that you have and give yourself the ability to make solid choices for the path forward.
As I said in this blog recently, and I'll probably say many times coming up (because it's such a big thing in our lives), we moved house about 2 weeks ago, but actually, we won't be finished for at least 6 weeks so it's kind of like a fluid process between two houses as we move into the next house.
It's not the easiest task. I think I would have found it easier if I had just bitten the bullet and gone in one day because the gradual drip drip drip is unsettling as you go back to the place you used to be and come forward to the place you're supposed to be.
However, one of the reasons that we moved was to give us the opportunity to live our lives in a different way. Alison and I were very clear about that when we made the decision to do this, and one of the things I wanted to do was to achieve some space, both literally and metaphorically, just to set me up for the next 30 or 35 years.
And so with that in mind, I took my dogs out this morning; the property that we bought is a farm, (Apparently, a farm is informally over 5 acres of land), and so I was able to walk the dogs up to the top of our field and then onto a bridleway and then to do a circuit that I've been meaning to explore for a while since I knew we were getting this place.
The weather was astonishingly beautiful, the sky was absolutely clear, with not a cloud to see and a beautiful colour of light blue, birds were singing in the hedgerows, all of that stuff that is idyllic in the English countryside.
I could walk through a field and a path by the hedge and then to a bridleway and round in a circular track, back up a small hill and back down a diagonal field at the top of a hill. All the time, I'm looking down to where I'm going to live, hopefully for the next 40 years.
I only met one other person, very briefly, and so what I had in the whole of that 40 minutes (which will now be my new dog walking circuit) is just the time to reorganise what's inside my head, to file things away and to put them into an orderly fashion and then to be ready to attack what's coming in.
It doesn't matter where you find it, but more and more, it's essential that we, you and I find it.
Blog Post Number - 4142