Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy 1/13/26

30:14You and your sisters as a family all went all in. Yeah, my surviving sister, Bertie, I was 91 now, but we talk about that every week. Well, I mean, you want to win, sure. I mean, we'd campaign. We'd be going around to these county fairs. And, of course, we had this one recording where Doris Bertie and I sang America the Beautiful while my mother played it on this little organ we had at the house. And it was a 15-minute program. my dad introduced each one of us kids and he said there's Doris age 14 and she said something and they said then and there's Warren age 11 or 12 depending on what the date of it was and my line was just the second pop I'm reading the sports section and and that was my only line which I delivered flawlessly of course and and then at the end my sister and I sang America the Beautiful and that ran on on WOW and there was just an outpouring for my dad from that so they may have run it much more times and I'd give a lot to have a copy of that.

31:17Unfortunately I don't. Well one of the first things I did when my dad got elected I said I want to take out every book they have on horse handicapping from the Library of Congress because that's the only thing I knew about Congress was that they had this Library of Congress that was famous for everything. My dad said don't you think it's a little, you might think it's a little peculiar for a freshman congressman to make that his first request at the Library of Congress and I said pop. I said you're going to be running for election in two years. I mean, I will look for you if you're a kid. So I ended up with hundreds of books on horse handicapping.

31:52Really? That's what you took out of that? Well, that was first. More books on stocks came later, but I was particularly interested in horse handicapping at that time. And what I would do is I got all these books, and I was either a speed handicapper or a class handicapper. A speed handicapper looks at the horses' times that they've achieved and the class handicapper looks to their breeding. And I was making a major decision at age 11 or 12 to be either a class handicapper or a speed handicapper. Let me guess speed. You chose speed handicapper? I was a speed handicapper, yeah. And then there was a place on North Clark Street in Chicago that would sell you a month of old racing forms, which were daily, and they had every, they covered all the major tracks.

32:37And so I would buy these month old things for practically nothing. And then I would test my handicapping each day doing 40 races, maybe eight races at five tracks. And test out whether I could, my knowledge was superior enough to beat, unfortunately, which were very large expenses. Like maybe 18 % or something of the sort. And that's a big, big handle to beat. And, of course, in stocks, you've got a positive sub game. They're earning money. But all you're doing at racetrack is trying to beat everybody else that's making judgments about what horse is going to finish first. And so there is nothing being created.

33:24There's just a take. So I went from the, I graduated finally from the operation that had an 18 % handle against it to something that's had a very dramatic positive expectancy in stocks. The Dow Jones average was 100. It crossed 100 on the day I bought my first stock, and now it's at 42 ,000 or whatever, and it's paid dividends the whole time. You can't find a horse that does that. But what pushed you out of horses into stocks? Was there a moment that turned you, soured you a little bit? I liked both of them for a while, but there was one time when I went to Charleston, West Virginia, and I had a couple of horses in mind, but I lost some money on the first race, and then I did the dumbest thing you can imagine, which I just kept betting every race, and when I went home, I was$50 poor, which was all I'd taken with me, and that was equivalent for delivering 5 ,000 papers.

34:26I was delivering papers during money. I made about a penny each. And so I had to deliver 5 ,000 papers for doing something very stupid. And I went to the Howard Johnson's and I had a couple of dollars left. I bought myself a fancy meal and just sat there and thought about it and thought about it on the train. And that was the end of horse racing. Up next. Did you used to tell people to go to hell a lot before that? Well, I certainly did it more before I heard that advice than afterwards. It's not something you can shake immediately.

35:07I would say in the beginning you probably were a little more hard pressed to drive for the best deal possible. My behavior in business has changed over time. How so? But that is a product enormously of being around the right kind of people. I mean, when you get to be, and I would pick out number one, a student, in effect, or a partner of Thomas Murphy, if you don't learn something from them, you don't want to learn anything by being a partner of Bernie Madoff. And I've been so, so lucky, starting with working for, well, working for my dad, but working for Graham and all these people. I've never had a bad boss.

35:59And that's pretty lucky when you're 94. I mean, and I've had the best of them. And I just wish I'd met some of them a lot earlier, you know, but one way or another. Fortunately, most of them lived a long time. So even though I met him at age 40 or something, I still had long experiences with people like Charlie Munger, number one, but Tom Murphy in a different way, but similar ways. What did you learn from Tom Murphy? Oh, I learned how to behave. And he was probably the best business manager I've ever run into. but he didn't do it by, you know, whipping people to death for eight hours or turning it into 12-hour days.

36:51You know, he brought out the best in everybody. But he wasn't a Pollyanna. And if you'd done nothing but study him, you wouldn't have had to study anybody else. What's just a lesson you took away? Maybe the first time you sat down and had lunch with him or something. How did things go? When did you realize that he was somebody special? The first time I did have lunch with him when I was about 40. And I remember a couple things from that. But it was just a stream. It was watching him, too. I mean, he wasn't behaving inconsistently with what he said. But, you know, he told me, he says, you can always tell somebody to go to hell tomorrow.

37:37I mean, just think of how much trouble that keeps you out of. Because you haven't lost the option. So don't feel that you've only got 15 seconds to say it or 30 seconds. Did you used to tell people to go to hell a lot before that? Well, I certainly did it more before I heard that advice than afterwards. It's not something you could shake immediately, but I watched it work with Tom Murphy. I don't know anybody that had more good interactions, whether it was with buying businesses, whether it was operating businesses, whether it was dealing with any person's problems that came to him. I mean, it was just built into his behavior in every way.

38:24And there's a few letters or things I haven't written because I remember that advice. And, you know, it's very human to want to tell somebody to go to hell. I mean, yeah, well, everybody. I mean, and when have you ever gained, I mean, the only thing is you may have felt a little bit better. It can be really satisfying. Yeah, it is satisfying. But do it with a mirror or something. But you can have a lot of satisfaction the next day if you just keep saying to yourself, you know, you haven't given up. And just watching him, he taught me more about human behavior, but it was business-oriented to a great degree.

39:11But it was beyond that. It was way beyond that. And you find me anybody that dealt with him, worked for him, you know, girlfriends he broke up with, you know, 60 years ago or 70 years ago. I mean, anybody that has a bad word to say about him, but he wasn't a Pollyanna. He made all kinds of big decisions. Every lesson I learned from him was a good lesson. Doesn't mean I apply them a lot. But, you know, and you're just lucky when you meet somebody like that in life. And then it's like Charlie, who I met, you know, when I was 29. Charlie and I had more fun on things that failed than succeeded. I mean, we just, it just struggles.

39:56It was humorous that a couple of guys like ourselves should make a big mistake. There's just a connection. And my friends have all been quite intelligent. But they didn't have to have, if they get up to 180 or 200 IQs, or the curve starts bending the other way sometimes. But they were all intelligent. But they also didn't all think they had to outsmart the other person. Murph never made a deal where he tried to extract the last penny. He always made good deals. And there's a number that he didn't make that he wished he'd make. But he did all kinds of things for other people, especially me. You said that you and Charlie learned more from or had more fun from the things that maybe you made mistakes on.

40:54What's a project the two of you did together, a deal the two of you did together where things went wrong and then you had a good time as you were trying to figure out how to extract yourselves from it or pay back the people? All kinds of things. Well, we bought a department store in 1965 or 1966 in Baltimore. and uh with sandy goddessman yeah with sandy goddessman and it was his his wife's uncle that owned the business i mean in baltimore and sandy went in it and his firm took 10 percent charlie's firm took 10 percent and my firm took 80 percent because we were larger in those days than those guys although we weren't very large and sandy and charlie did not know each other ahead of time But they both knew me.

41:44And anyway, after we bought it, we knew we'd made a terrible mistake. It was just, it couldn't have been more dumb. There's nothing like owning something to start, you spent your money to see what's wrong with it. It's like buying a house and finding out that there's a whole bunch of things you don't like about it. Except it's not so easy. And there we were owning Hochschild Goan in Baltimore. And we made a mistake and we all three agreed on that. And nobody blamed the other one ever, ever. And actually, we had a lot of fun discussing our mistakes. I mean, I don't mean that we sat around laughing about it or anything, but just the very action.

42:28It's like being in a war, I mean, or something. It just pulls you together when you've got a common problem. And you've got wonderful people in a foxhole with you. And that brings people closer together. You have had an extraordinary number of just spectacular friends. That can't be coincidence. Well, no, you should be selective about your friends. And hope they aren't too selective about theirs. You should be training up all the time, but you shouldn't be doing it in a deceptive manner. it better. SHERYL MCCARTHY, How, I mean do you do that consciously? RONNIE ELDRIDGE, I don't think so. I think you're just attracted to people that, I was attracted to people who were interested in the same thing I was to an extent.

43:15Maybe not as intense as I was about some things or you know they had different backgrounds and all kinds of things. But you know I wouldn't have traded any of my friends for anybody else. And we ended up liking to do things together. I formed that so-called Graham group. Yeah, the Graham group. Yeah, it became a whole bunch of different people. From Kay Graham, who it wasn't named after. It was named after Ben Graham. And we met for close to 50 years, about every year and a half or so on average. And all of these people liked each other. They were regarded in their own industry as, you know, unapproachable.

43:57And they just melded together so well. We started out, well, we only thought it was going to be held once. Ben Graham was back in the country, and I called 11 people and said, do you want to go to San Diego? And it wasn't as easy to get to San Diego quite as it is now, and none of us had that much money, although we all had more money than we'd started with. But I called them and said, Ben Graham's in town, and he probably won't be in this hemisphere, you know, in our future. and it's a rare opportunity to see him. So he agreed that if we come out he'll spend a few days with us. Charlie was there and I didn't know Tom Murphy then, but the person that introduced me to Tom Murphy was there.

44:43And then a bunch of classmates, all kinds of things. And we had such a good time that we decided to do it again. Well, Ben wasn't going to stay in the country anymore. He was going back to France. But the next time we did Florida and And again, we just had a lot of fun. And so it became something. And then I would assign different topics. Initially, they'd be more financially oriented than they were. You could actually watch the sort of development of the group into new activities as I added people over the years. And they all knew me, but most of them knew each other to some degree beforehand.

45:22And we just had a good time for 50 years. And people entered into it in a really unusual spirit of no baloney. You know, I mean, there was nobody that was more important than somebody else in the group. But with the point of learning, lectures to a certain extent, learning on things starting with financials. Learning is always interesting. I mean, there's nothing more interesting than, well, there's probably a few things. That's not what we're going to do, but long term. Learning is more interesting. You know, I mean, the idea of a library, just think of just a few hundred years ago. I mean, you know, there wouldn't even read with by at night.

46:09When you think of what life was like compared to what it is now, it's wonderful now. It's still for a limited number of people. There's all kinds of people, particularly outside the United States, but I'd rather be born into almost the poorest family if I were to be born today in the United States than to be born in any place else. So you think the American dream is alive and well? I'd love it. If it didn't come with the power to destroy the planet, I would say that there's never been anything remotely as interesting as being born in the United States today. Do you worry about artificial intelligence?

46:55Yeah. After a few times when people pretending to be me of going out and scamming people, we just thought out about one of them. Even the people that are smartest about it say they don't know where it's going. And it's one thing to, I guess, say you don't know where you're going if you're Columbus. But you can always turn around and go back. But the genie's out of the bottle. I mean, if someone wants to impersonate me in a way to scam people 10 ,000 miles away or in Omaha. They can do it. And they can imitate my voice and they can imitate my parents and they can talk. They can fool by my kids.

47:41What do you do to stop that? How do you combat it? How do you put the genie back in the bottle? That's the same problem we have with the nuclear weapons. We know how to build them. And we know how to build bigger ones all the time. The problem is so do other people and they've got no use except to kill people or deter the other guy from using. Yes, I mean, that is something to have created in the world, but it was absolutely necessary to do it in World War II. I mean, there wasn't any doubt the Germans were working on it. You can go to search and read the letter that was sent to President Roosevelt just a month before the Germans invaded Poland.

48:28It doesn't mean I know anything about it. I don't know about uranium or 235 or anything. But I do understand human behavior. I mean, it's hardly complicated. I guess when you think about your evolution in thought, we'll go back to this thread of how your views in business have changed. You talked a little bit about how your assessment of people, what you learned from Tom Murphy along the way, but just your evolution of thought in business. How would you sum that up? How would you say you're different today? Well, there's been a lot of things that I thought I was learning about business that weren't true.

49:11Like what? If you talk about boards of American companies, that's pretty important. You're talking about the whole country almost with public companies. And the people who are the independent directors are not independent usually. The money is useful to them. The money they get for being on the board of directors. Being a director. I mean, it's the best job in the world to get$250 ,000,$300 ,000, maybe even up to$500 ,000 a year for doing something that's quite pleasant. Usually they give you the transportation and they have cars waiting to take you around everything. And everybody's polite. And everybody would love that job.

49:57I mean, who wouldn't? I mean, if I didn't have any money and somebody said, Warren, how would you like to be a director at the XYZ company? And you'll make$300 ,000 a year. And all you have to do is show up and meet some other nice people. And just don't burp. Don't say anything. Don't screw it up. And I mean, if I go to that meeting and somebody else has had 10 % of the stock of the company and everything else, but they're not independent in theory. And what's going to be in the back of my mind? I know how to get a raise from $300 ,000 to$600 ,000 a year. And all I've got to do is when somebody's called to come up with a quote good end quote director that they say, well, I know this guy in Omaha, he'd be a good director.

50:56And now you've got two people that are out there that will recommend you to somebody else because you didn't really cause them any troubles. and if you're the CEO and you wanted to get paid more money and and so on you may put them on your compensation committee director I mean yeah and the whole idea getting independent directors is that they are independent that they don't have an interest and you couldn't have a more obvious interest and doubling your you know if you aren't making any money you know yours you're head of a school someplace or something, but they don't pay you very much and everything, you make$300 ,000 a year and you quit that damn school.

51:37It's a pain in the neck. And they'll keep you around probably until you're 75. If you're a bircher, you might get to be 90 and be on the board, but we don't pay that well. What it incentivizes. Charlie was always a huge preacher on incentives. What do you incentivize by this? that while I'm on the subject, I mean, I'm looking at our proxy statement, which is 20 pages long, which we sent out the other day. And when I started in the business, you know, I actually got notice of annual meetings. Sometimes it was two pages long or three pages. Now, almost everybody has 100 pages or more. And quite properly, courts or ruling bodies or whatever thought, you know, the shareholders are entitled to know how much the CEO earns and there ought to be an explanation.

52:33So they stick in there one item that is, how does your salary compare to the average person's salary? It's like 200 to 1. And they think that's going to embarrass CEOs. And, of course, what it does is, and I've been on 20 corporate boards, aside from Berkshire's, And the CEO of ABC looks at this thing and he looks at the XYZ company and he thinks, I'm smarter than these guys and I'm working harder. Whatever they get, I ought to get that plus some more. And then you get this ratcheting effect and the compensation committee gets some expert that the corporate secretary picked out who's got the same interests.

53:14And you couldn't think of a way to incentivize people more to kick up their own salaries than have them read what somebody next door is making. It's just exactly the opposite of what's intended. And the independent directors are the last thing in the world they want to do is get kicked off a board. They'll never get another assignment again. And they aim to please. and you shouldn't expect anything else. So Berkshire does things very differently than other companies. We do it differently because we actually thought through what, we've thought through all our policies. That doesn't mean we've come with the right answer, but at least we've thought about them.

53:59And we say, what does it incentivize? And what is an incentive at Berkshire? An incentive is obviously is to have a bunch of people who are thinking about all the other shareholders and who do not really have anything to gain. So you don't want Berkshire to conform to what everybody else is doing? I want Berkshire to attract people that are smart about business. You want them preferably with an investment that's significant to them, which they bought on the same basis as the other shareholders. and you want to make the job interesting but not remunerative. What else do you think is stupid in business these days?

54:44A lot. Well, I would say, I'll give you one example. It's not quite current, but I think it's very stupid for the CEOs or somebody who represents the CEO every couple of months to do the investor relations calls they do if they conduct them in a certain way. I mean, I'm not saying all of them, but so many emphasize, here's what we're going to do. I'll give you an example I'm familiar with, and I don't even know who started it, but at Wells Fargo many years ago, somebody thought it was important to emphasize how many different services people signed up for at the company. Once a CEO has done that for many months, A, they really can't reverse themselves and say, this really wasn't important or we find out that it backfired.

55:50That just doesn't happen in this world. And then they hand the company off to the next CEO. And the next CEO, if they get on the first call and they say, well gee John Smith that ran this place was doing it all wrong you don't say that and so you continue the process and you keep emphasizing and nobody's looking at the fact that that's perverting the behavior of millions of people down the world hundreds of thousands that work down below and when you do it on you know on calls that go out to people that write stories about your about your call every time that takes place you don't want to steer people down the wrong behavior I mean it's like with your kids I mean you're gonna watch how you behave not how which is what you say and at first they may give you a little leeway at first while they're learning the ropes but after a while they know they know what you're doing and just think of that if they can put some more business in the last quarter or store up a little piggy bank to they're going to do it.

56:56I mean it's and they're serving their master you know in effect and you don't have to issue any instructions to that and believe me having been at 20 companies I've seen a lot of that by people they wouldn't think of stealing your newspaper phone on your on your door but they they don't realize the impact of they like to play with numbers And once you start playing with numbers, you don't quit. And once you have somebody that handed you the reins to a company and they've been playing with the numbers, and you say, well, we're going to give up playing with the numbers, I mean, you just don't do this in the world a lot.

57:37Outside of the MAG-7, Berkshire Hathaway is now the most valuable company. Took a long time. In the S &P 500. But it's something you've built. How did things change along the way as you got bigger and bigger? It got more difficult. And I mean, because it's harder to do, it's harder to compound extremely large numbers than small numbers. And I've always known that. I mean, when I had$112 to buy three shares of city service per first, doubling my net worth was not a remote possibility. I mean, I just had to go out and, you know, sell more bottles of Coca-Cola or do something door to door. So there's just no question that we can't do what we did before.

58:25That doesn't mean we can't do anything, but we just can't do it. JUDY WOODRUFF You've gotten perhaps more conservative with time. I mean, you've always wanted a buffer of cash around. And that number's gone up over time. I remember when it was$20 billion, maybe$50 billion. Well, that's external circumstances. I mean, believe me, after we get finished talking, you say I've got a great$100 billion in your idea. I would say let's talk. I don't. Well, but there's always the chance that tomorrow somebody will say that to me or I've got something. Because now you have, I don't know what the latest cash amount is.

59:11It's over 300. It's over 300 billion. Well over 300 billion. Yeah, it's well over 300. It's more cash than the value of all of the stocks in the FTSE 100. Yeah, and it means that when I look at the stock market, when I look at companies of a size that would make any difference to our total, I don't see anything. Well, we're buying one or two things, but it's peanuts.

59:38But I'm willing to spend$100 billion this afternoon. RONNIE ELDRIDGE I'm glad I'm here today. RONNIE ELDRIDGE I'd rather have the$100 billion in the really good business part at a sensible price than have$100 billion in cash. I know the cash, I mean there's certain levels necessary but cash is not a good asset. You need oxygen, you know. You don't need to be surrounded, you don't have to pay a lot for it or anything like But you do need oxygen. And if you're ever without it for four or five minutes, you know, it will learn. And cash is that way. So you always need to have it available because you do not know what will happen.

1:00:23I do not know what the stock market will do, and I do not know what business will do. I started out with that assumption, you know, however many years ago it was, and I haven't learned anything about what the stock market is going to do. I didn't find it. I may have read every book in the public library, but I didn't find the answer then to the question of what the stock market is going to do next week or next month or next year. I tried it all. I did charts and all kinds of things. I was looking for something, but it turned out I was looking for something that, in my opinion, doesn't exist. But I still found the game interesting.

1:00:59So then I looked at it through a different set of glasses that Ben Graham handed me, and I saw this was a game you couldn't lose really if you followed the rules. Coming up. You know, if you're super rich, you should leave your kids enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.

1:01:29You have said that you're going to have 99 % plus of your money that is given away to try and solve some of those problems. It won't solve them, but it can help solve certain specific problems. If somebody's going, you know, can't, doesn't have the money to go to school and, you know, a scholarship does, it does some good, you know, and how well you administer something like that and, you know, how you do the right thing, but there are certain problems that money doesn't or can't solve. And when I first thought about philanthropy, I thought that essentially was the threat that the atom bomb presented.

1:02:11I mean, Einstein in August of 1945, when I was 15, said that this changes everything in the world except how people think. But people have thought about it ever since and they still haven't. The only progress they've made is they've gone from what they thought was one country would have it. And then when the Russians or the Soviets got it, you know, we were terrified with the idea of the Soviets and the United States with two pretty sound leaders, I mean, between the enemy and Kruzoff. Now we have eight going on nine and we know we've got some people that scares the hell out of you if they got a pop gun, a nuclear weapon.

1:02:55And And the game hasn't stopped, but it was a lot better when only one country had it than one more. I mean, the difference between two countries having a weapon that can destroy each other in one was huge. But now since then, you know, now the two were the good old days. Your philosophy on philanthropy, again, has changed. You mentioned that was at the beginning. And you've gotten criticism your whole life for not giving away more money sooner. You know, if you looked at the people with their future and with funds, you should use the people who are going to use their money unintelligently. You should have them fund the current expenditures and you should have the people who are going to build the funds for the future actually accumulating your paper.

1:03:48Now that's accumulating their money because you're going to compound it into larger sums and you're going to have it more intelligently invested. And that sounds very self-serving, which it is. And so we did it much more slowly. And I think I would still do the same thing, but I would have hoped for a better result. And I gave up on the, in effect, on the nuclear money. Solving that problem. I don't know how money solves it. I don't think I can drop dollar bills from the sky and get somebody to get rid of their nuclear weapons. You now have... If I could lay out whatever I've got and I could pick out three countries that would permanently get out of the nuclear game, I'd do it in five seconds.

1:04:38I wouldn't wait around them. I'd die or do anything else. Just do it. I mean, that would really be something. Well, now you have north of$150 billion and growing and... Well, when it's growing, it will depend. but the odds are it grows. What do you want done with this? You're not going to sell a single share of Berkshire while you're alive. But I'm not going to live that long. My kids are willing to do it. I trust them 100%. I've sat down with your three kids recently and talked to them about how they see all of this, just the responsibility. The enormity of it. The three of you, your father has told the world, are going to be responsible for figuring out what to do with all the money that he has built up in Berkshire over the last 60 years.

1:05:35What did you think when he started telling you that, when he started getting to you guys? When did he come to you? What did he tell you? What were your thoughts? I thought, well, we better get along. yeah it was two years ago a little over two years ago yeah yeah what how did what i yeah i i don't know exactly started talking about it yeah i don't even remember it was probably march-ish two years ago so whatever yeah um yeah and you know just the idea of wow you tap dance to work every day for 60 years and then boom you're gonna... Here you go. Yeah, exactly. And I don't really remember that it was like some big announcement to us.

1:06:19He just sort of started talking about it. Yeah. But he kind of, there were hints kind of as we went through the wills at certain times. Yeah. Some of it evolved and then he just kind of decided. But I think there was a little bit of, you know, telegraphing of some of it. Not exactly in what form or how it would happen, but because we went through, you know, when he would do New Will, we would sit down and he would say, you know, you have any questions or ideas or, you know, whatever. He became really pretty open about discussing that like at least 10 or 12 years ago. Yeah, he's been very open about it because he's, you know, the will's gone through a few iterations over the years.

1:07:04And he's always been really open about talking about it. And, you know, if we have any questions. I mean, I always have little notes written all around the images. I mean, he's been open about telling the world that, too, that he thinks it's the right way. Yeah, that that's the right way to do it, especially when your kids are older. You don't want to leave questions afterwards, and you don't want them wondering why you did things. As soon as you did that, all my kids called me and said, when do we have our meeting? Not kidding. But again, the big thing is he amassed this wealth, and so to not be left with a sense of this is what I'd like to see happen with it.

1:07:44I mean, he thinks things through so thoroughly from the time he was in his 20s writing a friend saying, I know I'm going to be wealthy, and I don't want my kids to be. He's known for forecasting what's coming, I mean, duh, in terms of the work he does every day, and really thinking it through. And so to put this out there without giving us any explicit instructions, he's given us some sense of what he would like to see happen in an abstract sense, but there's never been. And that, you know, again, frankly, that's a little bit, gee, I wish we could have a little more guidance because it's your money.

1:08:23You know, it's not ours. Yeah, but that's consistent even in some of the things over the years with Berkshire because he knows things are going to change. Right. And he can't predict everything. Yeah, he can. And so, you know, he provides what he feels confident will make sense at the time or at least thinks will make sense at the time, but not, you know, not try to predict it. Not try to. That's, yeah. He said years ago when he's talked about just about STB foundation work, he has said, you know, this is way before there was as much money as there is now. And he has said, you know, this is what I think matters now.

1:09:02My mother obviously was also clear about that. But he's also always said, I don't know if that'll be true in 20 years after I'm dead or 10 years after I'm dead or whatever. And so he's always, I think, not wanting to constrain us with, you know, here's what you have to spend it on. Because he would say that may not matter. And then something else will matter more. So what guidance has he given you? The only thing I've heard is what he's also said publicly, really, which is he hopes that the money can go to people, you know, what word do you use? less fortunate, below the poverty level, whatever it is that it would in some way affect a population that normally doesn't have the same kinds of opportunities that certainly we have and a lot of people don't have.

1:09:55That's all I've heard. The biggest challenge will be balancing the fact, but he has provided, when I say this, he's provided some cushion on this, but, you know, balancing the fact that he wants to see this money spent in 10 years, more or less, and then balancing that with how you lose control over Berkshire voting shares. I mean, that's the big balancing act. Yeah, that's, you know, And you can't figure that out until you're in that moment and as some time starts to go by. Because there's going to be a dynamics change. There's going to be things that happen that no one on that board, none of us can try to anticipate.

1:10:50We can anticipate some things. Some things will be obvious and others won't be so obvious. And you don't know who they are, what they're after. So, you know, that could affect how fast you want to lose or give up, you know, voting power. It feels like you have a little flexibility on that count, too. He has gotten more flexible. Yeah. What did you think when he said that you three were going to be doing this, doing it together? It had to be unanimous. And you're in charge of all of it. Did you want the job? Nope. Peter really didn't want it. I did not want it. And I made that clear. And honestly, when I called him up and said, you know, I want to opt out, he said, I don't blame you.

1:11:37We didn't say that to all of us. He actually thinks it's kind of funny that we have to do this. And understands that it'll put us, obviously, enormous pressure on us. And so the idea, again, like we've been saying around what are we going to do, it's like there's too many variables. We have no idea what we're going to do in this moment. And that's great that we all know and agree that we can't start saying this, that this. Yeah. As a parent and an outsider watching this, the vote of confidence in the three of you, how much he trusts you, is the thing that kind of jumped out the most. Does that hit you too?

1:12:17Yes, and it's very nice. I mean, you know, really, it is. It's a huge, giant compliment. I think that none of us, you know, so we have a very different view of it growing up in the environment that we grew up with and how we see, you know, my dad and how we see my mom. So I think, you know, for us, in a way it's a surprise and in a way it's not a surprise. He knows 100 % that we are going to try to execute exactly what he asks us to do. And then he knows that we've had a lot of experience now understanding how to figure out the things that we don't know today and how to do those efficiently and effectively in the future.

1:13:09So, you know, to me, in one way, because of how we grew up and the things that we listened to forever from him, it was a surprise. And then in another way, it's like, I don't know, he gave us this opportunity for several decades now to figure out how you give money away, how you do it effectively, how you do it efficiently, and how to make those decisions. So in that regard, I would say it's not a surprise because he kind of began preparing us for it. And I would just add the other part of this, I think, is that he knows nobody can do it certainly perfectly, and nobody is. The only reason why he lets me do it.

1:13:59I mean, there is the element of, okay, nobody's going to do this. This is unprecedented. It's just too much money. It's unfathomable what we will be charged with. And why not us, who's closer to the source and has grown up and all the things. There's an element of it's a beautiful gesture and it's a convenient gesture to some extent. That's true. He would say that. And okay. But when you start trying to write$200 million and$300 million checks, only institutions can absorb those or governments. and I'm not a big fan of writing checks to institutions or governments. So, you know, in some ways we're going to have to make some decisions that we typically wouldn't make, but we have to make sure that the money is used and used as well as it can be used.

1:14:54So we'll be making decisions that we typically wouldn't have made today, sitting here. And we'll make some mistakes. Oh, sure. Yeah. I'm good at that. And that's okay. I do that all the time. Well, I mean, it's just, it's interesting. The way your dad set this up, that it has to be a unanimous vote, that everybody has to agree. I mean, it's kind of brilliant, but it's also kind of like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. How do we do this? I don't think that'll be a problem, though. No, and it's funny. I really don't. We'll figure it out. You know, social media, when that first came out, I'll tell you, oh, my God, that's going to be a problem.

1:15:30I'm thinking, you're telling us more about your childhood than you are about ours. So there's that. Yeah. You know, and we'll make some trade-offs with each other. Yeah. I mean, there's so much money. I mean, getting in a fight about it seems crazy. Ridiculous. Crazy. Right. You know, pop culture has succession. You know, these various shows that show all this stuff, and that's what people love to feed on. It's like, where's the problem going to be? And we have had no trappings of any of that growing up, So we're just not, we're not that. We grew up expecting nothing, to be honest. I mean, to put it simply.

1:16:11Yeah, totally. But I mean, you know, we were told that we had to figure our own stuff out, and we were allowed to fail and make mistakes, and then we understood the consequences. And so I think Peter's really right on this, that, you know, you watch the show. Wait, can you say that again? Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, you won't hear it again. But, you know, it's like watching the show Dallas or something. I mean, that's been out there for a long time. But, you know, all this stuff. And it's like, we don't have any of that drama. We don't have any of that. I mean, it's just, it's not like, it just doesn't happen.

1:16:43And so I think people have this false, well, not everyone, but, you know, some people have this false impression of what our family's like. I think most people probably have a false impression of what our family's like. And so that would then, you know, it would extrapolate that into this whole idea that we're going to give away all this money. How the hell are we going to get along and do that? And I just don't think it's going to be hard. You know, my dad wasn't rich and famous when we were kids. We did not grow up like people probably think we grew up. For sure. And we didn't. So how did you grow up?

1:17:16Describe it. Around the stable. Normal. I mean, we grew up, you know, we were certainly very fortunate. We didn't need anything. But, you know, we went to public school. We lived in a regular neighborhood. We hung out with our friends. We didn't, with the exception of a deal Howie made with my dad, but we didn't get cars when we turned 16. I rode the bus to school, you know, until I got out of high school. We grew up in what I would call sort of a normal middle class on the upper side of middle class. But, you know, we weren't living in the rich neighborhood. We weren't, it was pretty normal. You didn't even know what your dad did at one point.

1:17:56None of us did. No, we didn't. None of us really knew. You have the story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was in first grade when we had to fill out those census cards, or second grade, and I wrote, my mother told me to write security analyst, and I thought he checked burglar alarms. So there's that. And then in my career, most people thought it was related to Jimmy Buffett. But, you know, we used to, I mean, not that this is any big deal, but, you know, we'd We earned this allowance for cleaning out gutters and cutting a lawn and raking leaves and stuff. But Warren got pretty clever, and he started giving it to us in quarters.

1:18:30And then he bought a slot machine. Yeah. Dimes. It was a dime slot machine. Yeah, and then he bought the slot machine. So he would get most of his allowance back. At least with me, he got a lot of it back. We were all up there. The neighbor kids would bring their dimes over. Yeah. Three watermelons when you pulled the lever. Yeah. So teaching you about gambling along the way too, right? But we never did. I mean, I'm about the most anti-gambling person there is. Because you lost all your dimes. Right. We all had jobs too when we were kids. It was pretty normal, which I'm grateful for now. I think Susie made this point that my dad wasn't rich growing up.

1:19:15You know, I mean, when we grew up, he was driving a Volkswagen for a while. Then he had to start picking. Yeah, he started having to pick business associates up at the airport. So, you know, he upgraded to, you know, a Cadillac. But, you know, I mean, it was only because he had to. It wasn't because he wanted a Cadillac. He didn't care what car he drove. Yeah. And my mom used to drive. God, she would take me to my after-school stuff in Uncle Freddy's old beat-up station wagon. And I was so embarrassed because it was like going to break down any time. But, you know, I think she did it to prove a point to me.

1:19:48Like, it just doesn't matter what you show up in. What do you think that did to all of you? I would imagine at the time you may not have been super appreciative of it, but what do you think, what impact did that have on who you are today? Well, one thing I think that had really a huge impact was just living in the house with my mother in general. You know, she was so active, particularly in the North Omaha community, but she was very active in the volunteer things she did. Also Planned Parenthood, she was president of Planned Parenthood. And she just, and she lived it. She didn't just write the check, she lived it.

1:20:28What lessons did you learn from your first wife, Susan? Oh, well, I mean, she, she, well, she understood people in life way better than I did. I mean, I knew a lot about stocks. I knew about a lot of things, but she knew a lot about human beings. And she wasn't interested in money at all. She wanted to be sure we had enough. I mean, leave it to me to be sure we had enough. But if I told her we were living on$175 a month, which I think was the original sum, I mean, that was fine. But she would occasionally ask me, are we rich yet? And I would say, well, we're getting close. Just give me another year or two of compounding.

1:21:14But it didn't really mean anything to her. And she would use it for other people in an instant. And she would not only give of her money, but she'd give of herself. And so she really meant it. And fortunately the kids took after her. What's an important lesson you've learned from your wife, Ostred? BILL MOYERS She came from a much tougher life. And she and Susie were very close. And Susie did not want the life of being Mrs. Big in Omaha or something like that. And so Austrin moved in and the three of us lived happily ever after. But it was a very strange arrangement. But it worked for all three people.

1:22:03But Asher would do, she would rather do something for someone else than do it for herself. I mean, it's genuine. It's not contrived that if she looks that way for a week or a month, that somehow it'll benefit her later on or anything of the sort. I mean, she is exactly what she seems to be. And she's the same person that I started living with, you know, in 1978 or thereabouts. And that's who she is and that's who I like to be with. Part of your thoughts on philanthropy evolved over time. You and Susie had some thoughts that you talked about when you were very young. Yeah, if you look at my will from, I've got one will that goes back to when I was 30 or something.

1:22:55Susie and I both only agreed on what should be done with money. And I said that I would compound money better than most people. And so that it made sense for me to be a saver during my life because a typical saver would not accumulate what I was going to accumulate. and that she would outlive me and disperse it. Now, we did some things before that, but that's when the big money would hit. And then she died first. But the idea was that she, along with, she got help in doing it and everything, and we never dreamt that the sum would get so large, but I dreamt that we'd get a lot larger than she dreamt.

1:23:42And it didn't really make any difference to her. and she would have done it earlier but she understood the math of what I was saying she just wasn't as impressed by it as I was How much did you think it would eventually be to give away? Well I didn't think I'd live to be 94 you know let's say I died when my dad did at 60 you just don't know what but I did think that well I always thought We would be rich by general standard by the time I was 30 or thereabouts, which turned out to be true. But it wasn't super rich at all. But I also knew that it would just keep, it would keep growing, but I didn't.

1:24:29You know, my dad had died at 60, and if I died at 60 it would have been a fraction of what it is now. But an awful lot of people would be using the excuse never to give it away. And I never, I didn't feel that way. I mean, we were always, you know, the wills I wrote. I mean, we provided for the foundation we had, which was peanuts. And we did change our ideas on how much the kids should have. You had to drastically rethink things when she passed away, though. I have roughly 14.25 million shares of B-Stock, and by letters which were delivered earlier today, I've committed 12 ,050 ,000 shares. They're earmarked, held by me, but every July I will be giving a million shares to the Bill of Melinda Gates Foundation.

1:25:37Did I say 10 million? I meant to say 10 million. And a million shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 350 ,000 shares each to the three foundations headed by my children, Susan Howard and Peter. And that will continue throughout my lifetime. What has your, I mean, your dad has evolved over your whole lives with him in terms of the basic ideas of what he wanted to do, which was to give the money away. But how he wanted to go about doing that has sort of evolved. At one point it was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he was funneling a lot of this money. What's your view of this evolution and his thinking through this?

1:26:21What's it been like from where you all sit? it just seems natural to me to be honest with you i mean it's not he is don't you think he's i think he's really he's mellowed he's evolved he's grown i'm trying to think what other adjectives but since my mother died um i think um i i keep saying to people you know he turned out he was listening that whole time yeah um it was just fascinating to me how you could kind of see the wheels turning in his head in various ways after she died i think he knew he needed to step up forced him to change yeah and he needed to step up and yeah and he had to he mom wasn't there to to be the person who was the buffer the buffer the person talking to us i always say the governor I just think it's been so interesting to watch him evolve through all this.

1:27:19And also, you know, she died in 2004, so 21 years ago. And I think his thinking about things comes from a lot from her.

1:27:36and now well with the you know with the gates when he when he gave the money away in 2006 we were how many years younger almost 20 horrifying but true yeah um you know and we had very little experience and i think he's watched us over the last 20 years the other thing that i think has helped, first of all, it's easier to get along when things are set up the way they are with three separate foundations. I've encouraged friends of mine who have a lot of money, who have their kids in a foundation to split it up. You know, everybody, because some people have said to me, oh, but I think it'll help them get along better.

1:28:18No, it'll help them not get along better, is the truth. So I think that was really smart on my dad's part to do it. Well, I guess mom was alive when that happened. She probably was the one that thought of it. I'll give her a lot of the credit, Howie. And so I think that was a really smart thing to do. And I think that's helped us because we've all been able to do what we want to do. And I think it's safe to say we all get why each other likes and cares about the things we all care about. And we all respect it. You guys have done this for a long time. It's not as easy as it looks. Tell me a lesson, something you've learned along the way that people on the outside would be surprised to hear.

1:28:59Well, things sometimes don't work out the way you think they will. Sometimes that's a good thing. I was going to say, that can be a good thing. Or can turn even better than you thought. We call those successful failures sometimes. I mean, you learn enough. You learn from it. And sometimes you just learn that it didn't work and you couldn't have done anything else. But sometimes you learn it didn't work and here's why. So you change it. Right. You know, so I... We did a complete end report about our failures one time, maybe 10 years ago or something. You should have seen what it took to get information from our partners.

1:29:33I want every bit of bad news if there's bad news. And it makes the nonprofit nervous. And the evaluators think, oh, if I tell them it's bad, I might not get hired again. And, You have to get super clear with people about, you know, it's okay. It's okay. We want to hear everything. And also what Susie's saying, the performance aspect of all of it, it can just be something to navigate and figure out where all the distortion is because people are telling you things they think you want to hear or you'll say something and they'll just be listening for that word that they need to use to get the thing.

1:30:12And I would even say in Omaha, my staff has said to me many times, it's so refreshing to be in a place where we can screw up, we can make a mistake. I mean, one thing you have to do, I think, to develop leadership within your own organization is to give people enough space and enough responsibility to make mistakes. And then how you react to that is super important. Yes. Not you're fired. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, but if you're going to build a competent staff and people who can learn the kind of judgment you want them to have. And you're sort of charged with taking risk. Yeah. So you're bound to, yeah.

1:30:58But at the end of the day, you know, and they've probably done this too, but, you know, I have been in places where I've made a$50 million decision right there after a two-hour meeting. and you know it's like we want to do this we're going to spend the money and people are like okay let us know when you make the no i'm making the decision we made it it's going to happen now you have to follow our rules in terms of you know how we give the money and all that but usually that gets done so you know i that's the other thing that's unique i think it's a huge luxury yeah because most foundations the staff isn't allowed to you know make any decisions or or even say, we're interested in this, we might want to do this.

1:31:41And then they have to have a board meeting. And then the trustees have to look at it, and they vote on it and decide if it's going to happen. It just drags everything out a lot. And the performance. Right. It just changes the whole way everything works. People are always amazed that we just do it just like how I said. It's like, yeah, we can do it. It's fun, actually. It's fun. So hearing you all describe that, it just occurs to me that it sounds an awful lot like the philosophy that your father and I guess your mother used with you. There's way more of that at work than I think people do. And it's also the philosophy I think he uses at Berkshire.

1:32:19Yeah. I mean, he makes decisions like that. What I just heard from you three, I cannot believe how much you all are so much like your father and how you do this. Really, so much like your father and how you take these operations. It's the same way he does it. We taught him a lot. It never occurred to me until I was sitting there listening. Wow. And then you threw our mother in there, and you've got a pretty potent... Well, I always say if it weren't for my mom, I'd be in jail. If it weren't for my mother, my dad would be in jail. If it weren't for my mother, I wouldn't be here. I didn't realize until sitting down with them how similar they are in terms of how they think about things, all different areas of interest and expertise, but how similarly they view things in relation to how you view things.

1:33:12I was actually very surprised. Well, that surprises me a little, too. That they, well, they would disagree with me on a lot of minor points, but they don't disagree with me on major points. and they didn't disagree with their mother. I mean they were raised in a household that behaved generally inconsistent with what their parents believed. They didn't have to watch hypocrisy. There's a lot of things that they were affected by favorably that they didn't see. Now They had all kinds of gripes with it. And I was tougher with them than I should have been probably looking back. But I just kind of couldn't imagine how well they would all three of them would turn out.

1:34:05And of course I didn't imagine that they would be the ones that were disposing the money. I thought Susie Senior would be doing it. I guess some of the things that struck me as being so similar to you is how your children view running their organizations. They are all running large charitable organizations that give away a lot of money with very small staffs. But a lot of personal involvement. And a lot of personal involvement. They're on the ground making every one of those decisions. They don't like bureaucracy, I think, any more than you do. No. No, that's one thing that they've seen it. Now, they hadn't seen it when they were 20 or 30.

1:34:44I mean, you should be wiser in the second half of your life. I should be, my kid should be. There's nothing that really is important with money that they can't do and on the other end they can't sit around doing nothing. And that goes back to the line that I think that, I think King Graham may have said this too much, but you know, if you're super rich you should leave your kids enough so they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing. I get credit for that line. And it was not original with me, but I don't know who said it first. Still ahead. There's nothing magic. You just have to think a little and use a little discipline.

1:35:36You know, Warren, over time, you became so much more than the CEO of Berkshire. I can think back to times like after the financial crisis when you would come on our air and basically try and calm people down. They were worried about what the stock market was doing. They were worried about what was happening to their money. They were worried about what was going to happen to their jobs. They weren't just worried. They were scared. They were scared stiff. That happens periodically in civilizations. And it doesn't happen to me in terms of making business decisions. I mean, where else? You can buy something cheaper.

1:36:14You get upset about it. But I wonder when it occurred to you that you could be the voice of authority that could come on the air and calm people down. Fireside chat sort of. I mean, that's much more than just being a CEO. I always like to talk. And I always like to talk to older people. I can't find older people anymore, but that's another separate problem. But I used to, you know, when I'd go over to choir practice or something at the Dunney Presbyterian Church, I'd have a kind of little route of women who were washing dishes or doing things that they had to do in those days. And I would just make stops and I would do most of the talking.

1:37:01And then for one reason or another, something happened. I was, I still was the same way privately. But I got, so I was terrified of public speaking. And so I took a course when I was, I actually took the course when I was 21, I guess. I actually signed up for the course when I was at Columbia, the Dale Carnegie course. And I'd written them a check and I stopped payment on it. And I just, I was terrified of speaking in public. I couldn't breathe when I did. I said everything was fine, but I just couldn't breathe. And I don't know what caused that. I've got a theory, but obviously I had something that happened that I must have gotten embarrassed in front of talking in front of people because I could still talk to people individually and couldn't stop talking to them practically.

1:37:55But that happened, and then I knew that if I didn't start talking in front of people, I knew I would revert back to where I was, and I didn't want that to happen, So I went out to the University of Omaha, which is now University of Nebraska in Omaha. And they had night classes and different things. And I just said, I'd like to teach here. And they said, well, you don't have a PhD. And I said, well, I barely have a master. But I'd still like to teach. And fortunately, I didn't know it at the time, but the three judges of whether I would be allowed to do this with Dean Thompson who was, I was going to marry his daughter a little later and he really liked me, and Dean Helmstetter and his daughter was the first girl I kissed, and Dean Lucas, he liked me too and I liked his daughter too, but she wasn't.

1:38:55So I think I probably got a unanimous vote there and then I kept teaching every year, essentially for 67 or 68 years, something like that. And I did it every, I mean, I did it with college students. I did it with groups of women that Creighton University got together. I did it with the Scarsdale Adult School. I did it, you know, I just couldn't stop talking. And you felt the need to teach because? I loved it. It appealed to my didactic style and I liked my own ideas. I just had fun teaching. And I still do, except I ran out of gas a few years ago. Is that, you think, what made Warren Buffett? I mean, becoming Warren Buffett, you are more than just the CEO of Berkshire.

1:39:52I've been a teacher. You've been a teacher and a national idea. And when you talk about teaching, that's what you've done with the shareholders for years and probably why you have 40, 50 ,000 of them show up for these annual meetings. Yeah, and in 2008 and 2009, everybody was terrified. And it was a scary time, I understand. But actually, George Bush got it. I mean, he went out there on the lawn and basically said, I don't know what the hell is happening, but it ain't good. And he said it more colorfully than that even. And so he turned it over to guys that were very able, Tim Geithner, but probably Hank Paulson more than anybody else.

1:40:31And he gave him a lot of authority. He was restricted in how much authority he could give because he had a Congress that really had the power of the person. And luckily, well, Hank, he had somebody that just, if he needed to ignore the rules, he found something to hang it on. But he did what was necessary. He's kind of like Paul Volcker was at the Federal Reserve. Same exact type, except Hank made a lot of money and Paul Volcker never made any money. The thing that has always struck me is anytime there's a crisis, you're getting calls from the government. You're getting calls from the players who are in big trouble when the financial system's in trouble.

1:41:12You're going on and trying to calm down investors and make them realize that this is temporary. but I won't say anything I don't believe. You always do speak very honestly, and I think that's why people trust you. But that's why people listen, sure. And why they listen. Yeah. This is a mantle that's developed over the last 60 years. Was there a point where you realized that this was a mantle you were carrying? Well, it became evident after quite a while, though, because I started investing, well, I started out as a stockbroker, then I went to work for Graham, and then I came back to Omaha. all.

1:41:45But then I actually, I had seven members basically of the family that said we want you to, we want to know what to do with our money. It wasn't that much. It was$105 ,000 in total. And they said, I said, well, I'll do it on these terms. And I wrote out something that was a limited partnership agreement. And then it sort of, we never had a single a single institution. I mean, it's just a different game than that. These were people, you know, like my dentist and the dental assistant that was there, you know, put in$5 ,000 and then I got out of it in 1970. But the people stayed with me, a lot of them in terms of Berkshire.

1:42:34So life takes funny turns. You don't know what they're going to be. So if somebody, your dentist and your dental assistant put$5 ,000 with you when it was just your partnership and they stayed with you through it, what would that be worth today? A lot. A whole lot. And some of them, you know, they added to it. Take the Davis family that introduced me to Charlie. You know, I mean, I told them I wouldn't tell them what I owned. And they could get out, I think, twice a year or once a year. and not to ask me how things were going. Because I didn't want to be under pressure to try and do something I couldn't do.

1:43:19So I ran out like my own money. Warren, I think people come to you because you've seen so much, you've experienced so much, and you're so willing to share what you've learned along the way. If you go to the annual meeting, people might ask you about what happened at the BNSF last quarter They might ask you about Geico insurance. They might ask you about your thoughts on U.S. treasuries, or they might ask you, what's the most important lesson to life? I mean, you get a pretty wide variety. Those philosophical questions come at you pretty fast. Yeah. But if they ask me that last one, I'll need help.

1:43:57So, but no, in the end, it's just, you're talking to one person that asks the question. I mean, in the end, every now and then somebody wants to sandbag you in some way, but over time you'll learn how to handle that, basically. But those people aren't coming to sandbag me. They came because they wanted to hear your advice and Charlie's advice on how to live that. They come and ask about it, you know, who do I marry? Right. Yeah, and I said, well, Charlie's the expert on that, but Charlie, I mean, those are important questions. And Charlie answered, you know, you marry the best person that will have you.

1:44:39I mean, that was a very practical answer. So what do you tell these people who come to you looking for advice on these things? What's the toughest question you've ever gotten? What's maybe the best answer you've ever given? That's a good one. That itself may be the best. That's the toughest question. No, I mean, I have the ability to some extent because of where I am in life that people will listen to me and they'll hear the same damn thing they would hear from somebody else, but they'll just pay more attention to it. They know I don't have an ax to grind. I'm not selling them time by the hour.

1:45:18I'm not doing anything. And I've got this didactic streak, so if I like them, I will talk to them. And I like to talk to big groups. That's why I did the college students. I just loved the idea. We had 200 schools that wanted to come every year, and they would ask me great questions. And they'd all have a good time, and I'd have a good time. But one of the things I would tell them, it's kind of simple. advice but I would say you know let's just take the class you're in back at whatever school it may be and maybe there's 300 students in it you know and you could get 10 % of the earnings for the lifetime of five of them which would you pick and why and you won't pick the one with the highest IQ you won't pick the you know the best athlete and you won't pick the best looking, you know, all kinds of things.

1:46:17And just examine that. And then I would tell them, you know, now let's say you got to sell short. This is more fun. And five of them, who do you sell short? You know, and then, and then of course I'd explain at the end, you can be the person that you would buy. You know, I mean, there is nothing impossible because it isn't whether you can, you know, throw a football 60 yards and it It isn't the one with the highest IQ. You can be one of the five, and why not? So you want to be on that list. I just have fun with giving advice. It's kind of obnoxious. You've got a long line of people waiting to ask you questions like that.

1:46:59But if there was one word, maybe two words, on what it is that creates success, what is it? If it's not IQ, if it's not your athletic abilities, if it's not how much homework you've done, what is it? Well, it depends how you find success. But if you define it as, you know, many people, it's how much they earn, you know, in life. That determines an awful lot of things that happen with their family and everything. And, you know, it's luck, a lot of it. And if you choose the right parents, you're rich when you come out. I mean, you have won the lottery, the ovarian lottery. And if you're born rich, your father's established a trust fund for you already, you're creating a dynasty, you don't have to do one thing in this life and you can live better than all kinds of people who work their tail off.

1:47:53And I don't like that myself, but that is a reality. So the easiest way to become rich is to pick the right wound to come from. But an awful lot is luck. But when you're telling students who come to see you, hey, you can be that student that you would like to bet long on, by doing what? Well, you can do it by being a good person, by reading a lot, by spending less than you take in. I just tell them, you know, you can spend 110 % of what you earn once. And then you've used it up. I mean, the rest of your life you're underwater. And why in the hell do you want to be underwater? And why do you want to borrow money on credit cards?

1:48:42And we own credit card companies. I mean, you know, people love spending beyond their income, a lot of people. And just forget it. And nothing wrong with a mortgage on a house at some point. But even that, I'd be careful. You know the people that aren't worried about money. On balance, they're quite a bit happier than people that are worried about money. And there's nothing magic. You just have to think a little and use a little discipline. And of course, who's inclined to use a lot of discipline when they're teenagers or in college? I mean, you know, I understand that. But I will tell you that don't get in debt.

1:49:33And you know, I used to tell students back many years ago, I could make$150 a month delivering papers in the morning. Well, what did it take an extra hour and a half? Just get up an hour and a half earlier and have$150. Charlie used to sell himself the best hour of the day. He was charging$20 an hour for legal advice, and he just decided that his best hour was from 6 to 7 in the morning, so he was just going to sell himself that hour. And that's not crazy. Your future is your future, and you can't expect anybody else to do it. And beyond a certain point, if you get in a hole or anything, it is difficult to dig out.

1:50:22It isn't that it's impossible and I give credit to people who do it, but do it the easy way. One of the things about you is that you have stayed so much the same over the years. You're still living in the house that you bought 60 years ago? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. 60. 65. 67 years. Okay. 67 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. 30 % of the life of the country or something like that. Why haven't you changed? Why haven't you? I wouldn't be happier anyplace else. And Susie was going to be happier in Omaha. And that likely meant that our kids were going to be happier in Omaha. What are you proudest about with your kids?

1:51:06Oh, I just... The fact that they took it after their mother. No, they really... It was a good thing. Probably a good thing that... Well, we weren't rich early. They never saw us behave like we were extremely rich or anything, although they saw us fly off to New York and do different things. Anyway, we had plenty of fun. They saw me very intense about investment management and obviously proud of the results and all kinds of things like that, but they didn't see us craving money just to show other people that I've got money and you don't ha ha ha ha, you know, type of stuff. And they didn't see any dynasty building, whereas they saw it some places, some other places in Omaha.

1:52:00They had a good feeling of what life was about. But they still did a lot of crazy things, but of course I did too.

1:52:11You're going to do crazy things when you're alive. One thing you should, it's a difficult thing because you should be very forgiving of yourself, but not totally forgiving of yourself. But there's no sense looking back and saying, you know, if I hadn't done this, if I hadn't done that, everything. It's just forget it in life. Nobody cares. I mean, it is history. You can't change it. You can change your behavior going forward, but and your second half of your life should be better than your first half. The problem is you don't know what it's a half of what, but you should be wiser when you get older.

1:52:52And I think my kids have all become quite a bit wiser, and I think they were always intelligent. They all showed the same kind of things that kids show. So, I mean, my dad was always very forgiving of my misbehavior. He'd just say, I know you can do better.

1:53:17And that's pretty, that was very powerful stuff. I mean, because I could do better. I mean, I knew it, he knew it, and I was behaving like a jerk for a long time. And it's nice to have somebody have faith in you. If you want to have good children, be a good parent. But I mean you just care about them. But you don't expect, you don't give them lectures about doing bad things when you're doing the bad things and they're actually just acting like teenagers. You're still, you feel good right? I feel terrific, yeah. But I know it won't last forever. I know it never would last forever in 94. I've won a game I didn't deserve to win.

1:54:01Well, that's fine. I accept that, you know. This is our kind of world, folks. But the one quality that I measure people by enormously, because everybody can do it, and that's why people are kind. That is something that really doesn't cost you anything. You know, it is an act that doesn't belong to any religion, doesn't belong to anything. And why in the world wouldn't you be kind? I mean, and some people are and some people aren't, but you feel better if you're kind, I think, too. Johnny Agnelli one time, I only met him one time, Johnny Agnelli of the Fiat Group, he He was really, he was quite a guy and I met him one time and he said, you know when you get old, he says you got the reputation you deserve.

1:55:07He says you can get away a long time with the other. And he was reflecting, you know, but it's true. I mean if you look at those people I named, you know, whether Tom Murphy or Sandy Goddard when their wars got, they had the reputation they deserved in the end. But of course, if somebody dies at 40 or 30, I mean, it's a different situation. But if you live a long time, you've got it.

1:55:41Kindness is, it just doesn't cost anything. You haven't given up anything. It's just so easy. and you get it back

1:55:54with interest. Warren, we've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything that you feel like we've missed out on? Oh, I would just ask anybody to challenge me on whether being kind couldn't hurt them in any way and whether the net happiness of the world wouldn't be better if they just, if every morning they said to themselves, you know, all the things that are good and bad that happened to me today, but I can be kind to anybody.