Warren Buffett is used to giving advice.
For decades, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman has sat before a packed arena during his company’s annual shareholder meetings, fielding investor questions on everything from artificial intelligence to the ins and outs of the insurance business to marriage advice.
In “Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy,” which airs on Jan. 18 at 3 p.m. E.T. on CNBC, Becky Quick asks the Oracle of Omaha about some of the toughest questions and best advice he’s ever given. Buffett eventually arrives at a challenge he used to pose to college students.
Buffett would ask the students to consider a scenario in which, given a class of 300 or so of their peers, they could receive 10% of the lifetime earnings of five of them. Who would they choose — and why? And who would they sell short? The people you chose, he says, wouldn’t necessarily be the best looking or the smartest or the most athletic.
“Of course, I explained at the end, you can be the person that you would buy,” Buffett says. “There is nothing impossible. Because it isn’t whether you can throw a football 60 yards, and it … isn’t the one with the highest IQ. You can be one of the five.”
How to get on the list
So what could get you on the list of someone with high expected lifetime earnings?
“It’s luck, a lot of it. If you choose the right parents, you’re rich when you come out,” Buffett says. “You’ve won the lottery — the ovarian lottery.”
But Buffett told students they could still be one of the people in the room their classmates should bet on.
“You can do it by being a good person, by reading a lot, by spending less than you take in,” he says. “I just told them you can spend 110% of what you earn once, and then you used it up. The rest of your life you’re underwater.”
Buffett makes sure to emphasize the latter point. While certain types of loans, such as a mortgage, may make sense in some instances, you generally want to avoid going into debt, Buffett says.
“Beyond a certain point, if you get in a hole or anything, it is difficult to dig out,” he says. “It isn’t that it’s impossible, and I give credit to people to do it. But do it the easy way.”
Of course, you’re not going to end up being one of the top earners among your peers if you don’t work hard and focus on self-improvement, Buffett says. He recalls longtime partner Charlie Munger’s habit of “selling himself” his most productive hour of the day — spending one hour each morning focusing exclusively on improving his mind and selling the rest of his working ours to clients.
“That’s not crazy,” Buffett says. “Your future is your future, and you can’t expect anybody else to do it.”
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