Emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire while fighting long wars on the northern frontier and enduring a plague that swept across the provinces. In whatever quiet hours he could find, he wrote notes to himself in Greek. Those notes became Meditations. He never meant for anyone else to read them, which is part of […]
5 Habits of Mentally Weak People, According to Marcus Aurelius Read More »
Ask most people what would make them happier, and they’ll describe something they want to add. It might be a raise, a bigger house, or the long trip they keep pushing back to next year. Charlie Munger went the other way. He spent decades arguing that a decent life comes mostly from cutting out the
Charlie Munger Advice: The Art of Letting Go: 5 Simple Ways to Achieve Happiness Read More »
Most people learn about money from whoever raised them. If your parents worked hard for a paycheck, paid the bills, and tucked away whatever was left at the end of the month, that habit probably became your blueprint too. Wealthy families tend to pass down a different playbook. Schools rarely teach it, and plenty of
10 Upper-Class Lessons That Middle-Class and Working-Class People Learn Too Late in Life Read More »
Most people think financial freedom requires a big salary or a lucky stock pick. It doesn’t. The whole thing runs on a few equations you probably learned how to do in high school algebra and forgot about by graduation. Financial freedom simply means your passive income covers your living expenses. That income usually comes from
People Who Want Financial Freedom Must Understand This Math Read More »
Marcus Aurelius ran the Roman Empire for nearly two decades. He also kept a private notebook full of reminders to himself, which became Meditations. He never planned for anyone to read it. That’s part of why it still works so well as a personal checklist, because he was writing to correct his own habits. Here
Money is easy to measure. Social class is harder to pin down because it shows up in daily habits, like how a person spends a Saturday, talks to a waiter, or decides where to buy a house. Very few of these signals involve yachts or designer logos. The 10 habits below are the quieter patterns
“Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought.” – Charlie Munger Charlie Munger spent most of his 99 years watching smart people wreck their own lives. Bad luck was rarely the cause. He kept coming back to four mental habits he named again and again: envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity. Munger
Marcus Aurelius ran the Roman Empire through years of war on the northern frontier and a plague that negatively affected enormous numbers of people. Somewhere in the middle of all that, he kept a private notebook written in Greek. We call it the Meditations today. He wrote it for himself, with no plan to publish
A lot of buyers start their home search by asking a lender for a preapproval number. That figure tells you what a bank is willing to risk on you, and it can be a lot higher than what your budget can comfortably afford. A better starting point is a pair of ratios that lenders have
Charlie Munger lived to 99 and spent most of those years studying why smart people wreck their own lives. He didn’t think the cause was usually a lack of brains. His view was blunter. Most ruin comes from a handful of bad habits that almost anyone can avoid, and he named them again and again
10 Self-Destructive Habits That Will Ruin Your Life, According to Charlie Munger Read More »
Two families can earn nearly the same salary and end up miles apart after twenty years. Income gets all the attention, while bad spending habits do most of the damage. Much of the gap comes from small purchases repeated so often that nobody questions them anymore. The upper class tends to skip these without making
Some people seem to wake up looking for a fight. You’ll run into them at work, and if you’re unlucky, at your own dinner table. Marcus Aurelius had more of them than most of us ever will. He was emperor of Rome, surrounded by ambitious generals and courtiers who told him what he wanted to
“Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. I thought it was undignified to have to send invoices to other people. I don’t know where I got that notion from, but I had it.” “I didn’t intend to get rich. I
5 Skills People Need To Achieve Financial Freedom, According to Charlie Munger Read More »
Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome from 161 to 180 AD. Plague swept the empire during his reign, war kept him on the northern frontier for years, and one of his most trusted generals, Avidius Cassius, declared himself emperor in 175. Through it all, he kept a private notebook in Greek. We call it Meditations, though he
Most of us grew up hearing the same financial advice. Get a job, work hard, put a little in savings every month, and hope it adds up to something by retirement. That advice gets you partway there. It leaves out what the upper class actually does with money once it lands in their accounts: they
Charlie Munger spent decades studying why smart people make terrible decisions. He had a front-row seat to Warren Buffett’s decision-making as his partner at Berkshire Hathaway. His famous talk on the subject was called The Psychology of Human Misjudgment. Most people learn its lessons the hard way. 1. Incentive-Caused Bias: Follow the Paycheck “Show me
10 Psychology Lessons Charlie Munger Understood That Most People Learn Too Late in Life Read More »
Money problems hit every income level. A warehouse worker can lose shifts, a manager can get cut in a corporate restructuring, and an executive can be fired for not making their numbers every quarter. Business owners get hit too, sometimes by one phone call from a big client who’s leaving. The assets that protect against
Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable. It shows up after a good night’s sleep and disappears the moment a task gets boring. Self-discipline works on different terms. Marcus Aurelius, who ruled Rome from 161 to 180 AD, treated it as a commitment he renewed every day, whether he felt like it or not.
Ask most people how to tell the economic social classes apart, and they’ll point to a paycheck, a new luxury car, or a bigger house. That view misses most of the picture. Financial class has much more to do with not what you own, but how much of your income keeps arriving after you stop
Charlie Munger spent close to a century watching smart people do dumb things. The longtime vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and Warren Buffett’s business partner for decades, had a blunt theory about why it happens. He pinned most of it on predictable mental blind spots. Munger laid them out in his 1995 Harvard talk “The
Charlie Munger’s 5 Psychology Rules That Keep Smart People From Making Bad Decisions Read More »