An Omaha boyhood
Six blocks from where Buffett would grow up.
- 1 January 1924
Born in Omaha, Nebraska
Charles Thomas Munger is born on New Year's Day. His father, Al, is a lawyer; his grandfather is a federal judge.
- 1930s
Working at Buffett & Son
As a teenager he works Saturdays at the grocery store run by Warren Buffett's grandfather, Ernest, for long hours and little pay. Warren later works there too. The two do not meet until 1959.
- 1941 · age 17
Mathematics at Michigan
He enrols at the University of Michigan to study maths. He never finishes a degree.
War, law and loss
Meteorology, Harvard, and the hardest decade of his life.
- 1943
Army Air Corps meteorologist
Days after turning 19 he joins the Army Air Corps, which sends him to Caltech in Pasadena to train as a weather forecaster. He is posted to Nome, Alaska.
- 1948
Harvard Law, without a bachelor's degree
A family friend, former Harvard Law dean Roscoe Pound, helps him in. He graduates magna cum laude and moves to Los Angeles to practise law.
- 1953 – 1955
Divorce, then his son's death
His first marriage ends in 1953. In 1955 his son Teddy dies of leukaemia, aged nine. Munger later said he walked the streets of Pasadena crying. In 1956 he marries Nancy Barry Borthwick; between them they raise eight children.
- 1959
Dinner in Omaha
Back home to settle his father's estate, he is introduced to a 28-year-old investor named Warren Buffett. They talk for hours. Buffett tells him law is a poor use of his brain.
Wheeler, Munger & Co.
His own partnership, run from a Pacific Coast Stock Exchange office.
- 1962
A law firm, and an investment partnership
He co-founds the law firm Munger, Tolles & Hills (today Munger, Tolles & Olson) and, with Jack Wheeler, the investment partnership Wheeler, Munger & Co. He stops practising law in 1965.
- 1973 – 1974
Two brutal years
The partnership loses about 31% in 1973 and again in 1974. Investors want out, and he winds it up in 1975, folding his interests into Blue Chip Stamps and, later, Berkshire.
What a dollar became by 1975
14 years at 19.8% a year versus 5.0% for the Dow, as Buffett reported in his 1984 essay "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville". The figure includes the two years of roughly 31% losses: concentrated portfolios swing hard.
The partner
How he changed Buffett, and Berkshire.
- January 1972
See's Candies: paying up for quality
Buffett, trained by Graham to buy cheap "cigar butts", balks at paying three times book value for See's. Munger pushes. See's goes on to send Berkshire about $2 billion in profit. "Charlie shoved me in the direction of not just buying bargains," Buffett said.
"A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price."Munger's idea, in Buffett's 1989 letter
- 1978
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
He holds the job for 45 years, sitting beside Buffett at every annual meeting and answering long questions with famously short replies.
- 1980
Losing an eye
A complication after cataract surgery costs him his left eye, and he is warned the other may fail too. He starts learning Braille, then decides he does not need it.
- 1977 – 2022
Chairman of the Daily Journal
He runs a small Los Angeles legal newspaper company for 45 years. Its annual meetings become a second stage for his views.
- 1997 – 2023
Costco
He joins Costco's board and never sells a share, praising its low prices and fair treatment of staff as a model of how to run a business.
How he thought
Inversion, incentives and the psychology of human misjudgment.
"Tell me where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there"
Borrowing from the mathematician Carl Jacobi, Munger solved problems backwards: work out what guarantees failure, then avoid it. Pick a goal and invert it.
How to guarantee failure
So, avoid that and do this
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome"
His favourite example: FedEx could not get its night shift to move packages between planes on time. Lectures failed. Then it stopped paying by the hour and paid by the shift, so workers could go home once the planes were loaded. The problem disappeared. Switch the pay scheme and watch.
His 25 tendencies that make smart people stupid
First given as a talk at Harvard in 1995 and expanded in Poor Charlie's Almanack. Tap a card to flip it.
Why a Tupperware party sells so much Tupperware
Munger's example. One tendency nudges you. Several acting together overwhelm you. Switch them on one at a time and watch the pressure climb. The numbers are an illustration of his point, not a measurement.
Yes, no, or too tough?
"We have three baskets for investing: yes, no and too tough to understand." Most ideas go in the last one, and that is fine. Sort these the way Munger might have. The answers are our reading of his stated rules, not his own verdicts.
Why sitting still beats trading
Two investors earn the same return before tax. One holds for decades and pays capital-gains tax once at the end. The other sells every year and pays as he goes. Same skill, very different result. Munger called it "sit on your ass investing".
The late bets
China, a newspaper's portfolio and a windowless dorm.
- 2005
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Peter Kaufman collects his talks into a book that becomes a cult classic. A new edition from Stripe Press arrives in December 2023, weeks after his death.
- September 2008
BYD
Introduced by his friend and fund manager Li Lu, Munger persuades Berkshire to buy 10% of BYD, a Shenzhen battery and car maker, for about $230 million. By 2022 the stake is worth about $9 billion. Berkshire sells down from 2022 and confirms a full exit in September 2025.
About 39 times the money at the peak. BYD's shares rose roughly 4,300% while Berkshire held them.
- 2016 – 2023
Munger Hall
He gives $200 million to UC Santa Barbara for a giant dormitory he designed himself, with most bedrooms lacking windows. A consulting architect resigns in protest in 2021, and the university later drops the design.
- 2021
Buying Alibaba at 97
As chairman of the Daily Journal he buys Alibaba shares for its portfolio, a rare tech bet. He later calls it one of his worst mistakes.
- 28 November 2023
Dies in Santa Barbara, aged 99
He dies 34 days before his 100th birthday. "Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie's inspiration, wisdom and participation," Buffett writes.
His words
Short, dry and usually right.
"I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time"
Some of the books Munger recommended again and again, across the disciplines of his latticework. Pull one off the shelf.
Ask the vice chairman a question
At Berkshire meetings Buffett would talk for minutes, then turn to Munger. Pick a question and get one of his real answers.
"It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid."
Munger left a fortune of about $2.6 billion, small next to Buffett's, partly because he gave so much away and partly because he cared more about being right than being richest. He left a way of thinking that is still being taught.