
Warren Buffett’s 7 Secrets for Living a Happy and Simple Life - kyro
http://www.successsoul.com/2008/07/15/warren-buffetts-7-secrets-for-living-a-happy-and-simple-life/
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dominik
The secrets:

1\. Happiness comes from within: "In my adult business life I have never had
to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I tap-dance to
work, and when I get there it’s tremendous fun."

2\. Find happiness in simple pleasures: "I have simple pleasures. I play
bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill and I play, he’s “chalengr” and I’m
“tbone”."

3\. Live a simple life: "I just naturally want to do things that make sense.
In my personal life too, I don’t care what other rich people are doing. I
don’t want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat."

4\. Think Simply: "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do
only the things I completely understand."

5\. Invest Simply: "The best way to own common stocks is through an index
fund."

6\. Have a mentor in life: "I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who
your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of
the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make
your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit-forming."

7\. Making money isn’t the backbone of our guiding purpose; making money is
the by-product of our guiding purpose: "If you’re doing something you love,
you’re more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to
making money."

~~~
delano
The secrets through a warren-pass filter:

1\. "In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading
between professional and personal. I tap-dance to work, and when I get there
it’s tremendous fun."

2\. "I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill
and I play, he’s chalengr and I’m tbone."

3\. "I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life
too, I don’t care what other rich people are doing. I don’t want a 405 foot
boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat."

4\. "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things
I completely understand."

5\. "The best way to own common stocks is through an index fund."

6\. "I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and
I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire
are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that,
if practiced, will become habit-forming."

7\. "If you’re doing something you love, you’re more likely to put your all
into it, and that generally equates to making money."

Also note that this is just a list of some things that Warren Buffet has said.
It's not _his_ list of 7 "secrets".

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dcurtis
Although the title is cheesy, these are really great points. I wouldn't call
them "secrets" as much as common sense and great advice.

While I respect him as a businessman and as a person, it kind of surprised me
when he gave all of his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You'd
think that someone as opinionated as Buffett would have some ideas about how
to apply billions of dollars to make the world a better place.

My favorite is number 4: "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means
I do only the things I completely understand."

~~~
jond2062
While I would generally agree that his advice is more "common sense" than any
amazing "secrets", the issue lies not in knowing what to do, but rather in
doing it. Many of us have heard Buffett's rules before in one way or another,
and some of us may even preach them to others, but how many of us actually
live by them ourselves?

~~~
hugh
Well, a lot of his advice is easier to follow when you're Warren Buffett. It's
easy to enjoy every day at work when you're the boss, your employees all love
you for making them rich, and you've already achieved every goal you could
reasonably have.

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tyn
Number #5 needs some clarification. Apparently he doesn't believe this to
apply to himself since he didn't make his riches by investing in an index
fund. I don't know in what context he said it, probably he means it's the best
strategy for the average investor. Quoting Buffet again: "Diversification is a
protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know
what they're doing."

~~~
eposts
There are very few people who have done better than the market over a long
period of time. So unless you are as skilled as Buffett, you are better off
with low cost index funds.

~~~
hugh
On average, shouldn't roughly half of investors do better than the market and
roughly half do worse?

~~~
nostrademons
In practice, it's more like 25% do better than the market and 75% do worse.
This is because those who do better tend to do _much_ better, while those who
do worse tend to do only slightly worse. (Remember, if you don't short your
losses are capped at 100%, while your gains are potentially infinite.)
Mean/median confusion strikes again.

~~~
hugh
I'm not suffering mean/median confusion (note I said "roughly"), I'm just not
convinced the distribution is quite as asymmetric as you think(despite, as you
say, being capped at zero). But we don't have any numbers either way, so
_shrug_.

~~~
nostrademons
Could've sworn the roughly 75% figure _did_ come from data (thought it was a
Berkshire Hathaway annual report, and it may've been 70% or 80% or something
in between), but I can't seem to dig it up, so I guess we'll have to leave it
as idle speculation.

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Tichy
He doesn't have a computer at home and plays 12 hours online-bridge per week.
It seems like he is playing games at the office. No wonder he is tap dancing
to work... ;-)

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time_management
Not to play devil's advocate or disagree with the general message, with which
I agree, but Warren Buffett _can_ live in a three-bedroom house in Nebraska.
He's immensely talented, extremely well-established, and in a position where
his business is entirely results-oriented, so he doesn't have to answer to
anyone.

Most people who get caught up in the status bullshit don't start out that way,
but develop those obsessions and complexes in order to climb the corporate
ladder. They buy fancy cars and apartments to appear "hungry" to their bosses
and co-workers. Eventually, they're interested in the status symbols to
further their career progress, and interested in that career in order to buy
more status symbols; this mixture of toxic attitude and environment becomes
cyclical and, once one has a wife and kids, somewhat inextricable.

