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Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

latimes.com

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Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#371

Post by csomar »

yearesadpeople wrote: post #183
walthamstow wrote: post #10

Driving 7 minutes to work and stopping at a drive-thru to pick up McDonalds breakfast every day. The man is a true American hero.

America, as an idea, is so strange

Is the drive-thru pickup or the McDonald the strange idea. Actually, wait, both are strange.

That being said, McDonald did know how to do business. I’ve found myself there several times because their spaces are well located and they invested well in their interior that it made it a good place to grab a coffee alone, with a laptop or for a random meet.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#372

Post by scott_w »

dheera wrote: post #314
rhubarbtree wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.

Meh. If you have the resources, buy whatever makes you happy. If a bigger house makes you happy because you have space for your hobbies and you don't need to fight with your family members for space, buy a bigger house. The whole "money doesn't bring happiness" thing is bullshit unless you are a Buddha. A mansion in Malibu isn't going to make me happy, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do in Malibu. An upgrade…

> An upgrade from a 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom home with a garage so I don't have to smell laser cutter fumes anymore and hack a ventilation system out a bedroom window? That very well might.

As someone who upgraded from a 2 bedroom flat to a 3 bedroom house with a garage, I concur. Having a place to store my bikes and other “dirty” tools that’s not inside was such an improvement to my quality of life that I tell people to always look for a half decent garage when they buy. Especially if they also like cycling!

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#373

Post by csomar »

WalterBright wrote: post #328
dullcrisp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always salute at the McDonalds drive-thru.

McDonalds has healthy food options. Getting a quarter pounder, a salad, and a cup of water is reasonably healthy. It's the soda and the shakes and the fries that'll getcha.

None of what you described is either healthy or tasty. McDonald food is hyper-processed. They add a lot of sugar to a lot of ingredients.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#374

Post by jdhsgsvsbzbd »

ronbenton wrote: post #285
rhubarbtree wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.

>You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Well that seems like an assumption! Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. I don't think we need to tell people what should make them happy.

[flagged]

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#375

Post by TheAlchemist »

Loughla wrote: post #347
TheAlchemist wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read his biography - "The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life". It's quite long but pretty accurate picture of the man and what drives him. His answer was always that he just loves what he does and he does it with people he loves (Charlie). One can hardly ask for more in life.

Yeah, from the outside it seems like he has lived exactly the life he wanted to. I only know one person like that, and have always tried to learn from him.

From the outside yes - money and career wise, he accomplished everything he wanted.

His personal life is much more complicated though - impossible to know if he was happy or not, but for sure it was not usual.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#376

Post by AngryData »

ronbenton wrote: post #285
rhubarbtree wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The last one is important. You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy.

>You can buy a bigger and bigger house car tv stereo whatever, but it will not make you happy. Well that seems like an assumption! Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. I don't think we need to tell people what should make them happy.

Yeah but what is meaningfully "nicer" becomes and exponentially more expensive and ends up being mostly wasted value. And by time someone has to start actually worrying about such questions they have enough free capital to spend that they can have a high quality version of almost anything anyone would want to possess or use other than pure displays of wealth.

Maybe if the basic needs on the average person were taken care of then random displays of extravagant wealth would be acceptable. But when something as simple as getting a rotten tooth extracted or a filling on a front tooth is too much "luxury" for many working class citizens, it is a complete misallocation of society's resources.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#377

Post by tosapple »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #325
creato wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he just likes building things that others find useful. When I was younger I rented furniture from a company called CORT. I happened to notice on the contract or receipt or something, that it was a Berkshire company (I didn't know that before then). If I were Warren Buffet, I would have been happy to know that someone was a satisfied customer of one of his companies. I got some decent furniture for a few months…

What has he built

That's not entirely fair, he may have been profit chasing or he may have actually believed in the companies he was investing in.

If he believed in them as an investor he helped build the companies.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#378

Post by [deleted] »

pm90 wrote: post #365
_heimdall wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding scaling your lifestyle with tour current wealth seems like an extremely important lesson people could learn here. Very few people know what "enough" means to them. Its probably worth noting that I mean "enough" in the context of consumption and physical goods. "Enough" wealth doesn't really matter, its only a number in a database or a piece of paper until you spend it.

To a certain extent this is true. You shouldn’t be going into debt just because your income level allows you to get more loans etc. But once you reach a certain income threshold it doesn’t really matter. So what was the point of him living a frugal, simple lifestyle? I would argue that its just something he was used to and found joy in, and thats ok. Some people like that. Others might want to use their money to unlo…

[deleted]

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#379

Post by toomanyrichies »

pm90 wrote: post #366
toomanyrichies wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. Are they truly happier, in the sense of being more content? Or are they just deriving more temporary pleasure from the hedonic treadmill they're on? You can probably tell which one it is, by how long their happiness with their house / car / TV / fill-in-the-blank lasts, before they start thinking about trading up to an even nicer fill-in-the-blank. Buddhist monk Matth…

This is a deeply personal decision and I categorically reject any kind of moralization around frugality.

Fair enough on the personal decision part. I'm less interested in telling people what to do and more interested in whether the premise ('nicer things = happier') actually tracks with how human satisfaction works. The research suggests it often doesn't, which seems worth knowing regardless of what you choose to do with that information. [1]

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/690806/

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#380

Post by rib3ye »

kwanbix wrote: post #3

I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner. I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.

Charlie’s will explains their mindset:

https://youtu.be/FvRT15EayG0

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