Arnold Schwarzenegger says he saved every dollar until he had about $26,000, then put all of it into a $235,000 apartment building. Two or three years later he sold it for roughly double, and by 30 he was a millionaire, before his Hollywood career took off. In the video below, he explains how a bodybuilder with almost no income pulled that off. He started working at 13 because his parents couldn’t afford his gym clothes or a bike. At a glass factory he swept up broken glass and talked them into paying him like an adult. In America, he saved every dollar from seminars, posing exhibitions and a small mail-order business. Before buying a home to live in, he wanted property that paid him. His first purchase was a 6-unit building with an owner’s apartment twice the size of the others, and he moved into it. When he sold, his $26,000 had turned into a profit of $150,000 to almost $200,000 in about 3 years. He says there was not a single dollar left after the deal. He kept doing it anyway, until he owned more than 100 apartments plus offices in Santa Monica. Would you put every dollar you have into one building, or is that a risk only someone with no backup plan would take?

In November 2022, Kanye West agreed to pay Kim Kardashian $200,000 a month in child support. A few weeks later, she broke down on camera talking about what it actually takes to raise four kids with him. In the video below, Kardashian sits down with Angie Martinez and tries to describe it. “It’s really f***ing hard,” she says, fighting back tears. “You’re not co-parenting with just anyone.” By then, Ye had become one of the most controversial men in America. Adidas ended its Yeezy partnership in October 2022 after his antisemitic comments, and Forbes said the move cut his net worth from about $2 billion to around $400 million. Weeks later, he went on Alex Jones’ show and said he liked Adolf Hitler. Kardashian still said she had protected him, and would keep doing it. Her reason had nothing to do with him. “I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience,” she said, “and that’s all I want for my kids.” Her father, Robert Kardashian, died in 2003 when she was 22. She has spent years talking about how much he shaped her. One of the richest women in the world could pay for almost anything. The one thing she was fighting for was a normal relationship between her children and their father. Do you think she was right to keep protecting him for the kids, or did she go too far? Save the video to hear the rest of her story later, and follow for more stories from behind the lives of the world’s most famous billionaires.

In 1980, Donald Trump, then a 34-year-old New York developer, said on TV that Abraham Lincoln would probably lose an election to “somebody with no great brain but a big smile.” Two years later, Forbes listed him among America’s richest people at $100 million. By then he had opened the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan and was building Trump Tower. In the video below, he explains why he thought television had broken the way America picks its leaders. “Abraham Lincoln would probably not be electable today because of television,” he said. “He was not a handsome man.” Rona Barrett had asked why a man with “all the money that you possibly need” wouldn’t run himself. He answered that it was “a very mean life.” He believed the best people were staying away. “Most people who are capable are not running for office,” he said. Someone with views that “may be right, but may be unpopular” would struggle on a screen. So in his view, the camera rewarded how you looked, not what you knew. The money had an image side too. Jonathan Greenberg, the Forbes reporter behind that 1982 list, later said Trump’s real net worth at the time was closer to $5 million. Then came what was next. Trump became a household name on network TV with The Apprentice, announced his run in 2015, won in 2016 and won again in 2024. In 1980 he warned that a screen could beat a résumé. Few people would learn to use one better. When you judge how rich someone is, do you go by the number they show you, or the one they actually have?

In 1977, a 28-year-old from Czechoslovakia signed a prenuptial agreement and married Donald Trump. When they divorced, her settlement came to about $14 million, a Connecticut mansion and an apartment in Trump Plaza. By then Ivana Trump had run the Trump Castle casino in Atlantic City and managed the Plaza Hotel. In the video below, she explains what she thought she was agreeing to all those years earlier. “I did not understand what I was signing,” she said. “I was young girl, and I did not speak very well English.” Her parents never had a prenup. In communist Czechoslovakia, she says, they didn’t exist. She believed she was only giving up a claim to the family’s inherited money. “That I would not claim the money of the family,” she said. “Let’s say the fathers and grandfathers and all that stuff. That’s what I understood I was signing.” So when the marriage ended, her terms traced back to a prenup she says she never fully understood. The work had changed the marriage too. One voice in the clip says she “became an executive, not a wife,” and their evenings turned into talk about what had to be done and repaired. Then she pointed to what came next. She was engaged again, to Italian businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli. Was she nervous? “I’m scared to death,” she said. “But you cannot let the divorce and one disappointment totally affect your life.” Signing took a few minutes. Living with what she signed took the rest of the marriage. Have you ever signed something about money that you didn’t fully understand?

Charlie Munger once explained how a lawyer who earned about $350,000 in his first 13 years of practice ended up a billionaire. He said most young lawyers who asked him how to copy that path should not try, but his way of thinking would work for anybody. In the video below, Munger describes the visitors who kept showing up. “I’m practicing law and I don’t like it, I’d rather be a billionaire, how can I do it?” He answered with Mozart. A 22-year-old asks how to start writing symphonies and is told he is too young. “But you were 10 years old,” the man says. “Yes,” Mozart answers, “but I wasn’t running around asking other people how to do it.” Then he shows how rare his own path was. Law, then real estate, then investing, each time walking into “the other fellow’s professional territory.” He admitted that “if I tried it again, it might not have worked as well.” He was just as blunt about what built his record. “The combination of luck and skill. That’s what all good records are.” Now put a number on it. Forbes counted 902 American billionaires in 2025, in a country of about 340 million people, roughly 1 in 377,000. Munger’s own partnership compounded at about 20% a year from 1962 to 1975, and he still credited luck. Munger’s fix was to copy the thinking, not the career. In practice that means staying rational and disciplined in the field you already know, instead of quitting to chase someone else’s path. Munger didn’t think any of this was secret. He said his approach came down to trying “to be very rational and disciplined,” and that much, he said, “will work for anybody.” Are you asking how other people got rich, or getting very good at your own thing?

Charlie Munger once explained how $10,000 can turn into $1.17 million, and why almost all of that money shows up only in the last 20 years. He told the USC Law class of 2007 that most of them would stop growing long before then, but the few who kept learning would end up “one of the few most competent people” of their generation. In the video below, Munger describes what Warren Buffett actually does all day. “If you watched him with a time clock, I would say half of all the time that he spends is just sitting on his ass and reading.” “Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine, continuous learning machine, the record would have been absolutely impossible.” The skill that carried Berkshire through one decade, Munger said, would not have carried it through the next. Then he shows how it works for everyone else. “I constantly see people rise in life who were not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up.” He was just as blunt about the fake version. He called it chauffeur knowledge, after Max Planck’s driver, who memorized a physics lecture and was fine until someone asked a real question. Now put a number on it. Put $10,000 away at 10% a year. After 30 years it is about $174,000. After 50 years it is about $1.17 million. More than 99% of Buffett’s fortune came after his 50th birthday for the same reason. Munger’s fix was to treat learning as a duty, not a hobby. In practice that means reading every day, and refusing to hold an opinion until you can argue the other side better than the people who believe it. Munger didn’t think only geniuses get to compound. “You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn after you leave here.” What did you learn this week that will still be paying you in ten years?

Charlie Munger once explained how Berkshire turned a $1.3 billion bet on Coca-Cola into more than $800 million a year in dividends. He said most years he and Warren Buffett could not find a deal like it, but when one showed up, they went in with everything. In the video below, Munger describes the moment they knew. Coke “was succeeding mightily on multiple fronts. And it was cheap in relation to what was plainly going to happen.” “There are times when even a company as big as Coca-Cola is too cheaply priced by the market,” he said. “And there are times when we can’t” figure that out. When they could, “we tend to go in heavily.” Then he shows how heavily. For months, Berkshire bought roughly a third of all the Coke shares trading every day. He was just as blunt about how they judged the price. They multiplied the share price by the number of shares outstanding and asked whether a rational person would pay that for the whole business. Even a wonderful company, he said, “is not worth an infinite price.” Now put a number on it. Berkshire still owns 400 million Coke shares, a stake worth well over $25 billion. The dividends alone return its entire original $1.3 billion about every year and a half. Munger’s fix was a simple filter in a fixed order. In practice that means passing on anything you don’t understand, then demanding a durable advantage, honest and talented management, and a price with a margin of safety before a single dollar goes in. Munger didn’t think these ideas were secret. They spread slowly, he said, because they are too simple. “The professional classes can’t justify their existence if that’s all they have to say.” If you priced the whole company instead of the share, would anything you own still look cheap?

In 1965, Berkshire Hathaway was a struggling New England textile mill. By the end of 2024, its stock had gained more than 5,500,000%, and Charlie Munger said almost all of it came from about 20 decisions. For most of those years, Munger and Warren Buffett were waiting. In the video below, Munger explains where he learned to wait, and when to stop. The lesson came from his mother’s grandfather, a pioneer who survived two Iowa winters in a sod house and rose to control the leading bank in Algona. “The real opportunities that come to you are few,” he told his grandchildren. When you find one, seize it boldly “and don’t do it small.” Twenty great transactions over more than 40 years is about one every two years, with two of the best investors alive searching full-time. “If you take out the 20 best transactions, our record is a joke,” Munger said. “Life is not just bathing you in unlimited opportunities.” He applied the same thinking to money. He and Buffett “always underspent our incomes and invested,” so the cash was ready when the rare chance came. And when it came, he said, don’t “hang back like a timid little rabbit.” From 1965 through 2024, Berkshire compounded at about 19.9% a year, nearly double the S&P 500’s 10.4%. Most of investing is waiting. The fortune gets made in a handful of moments. If your rare opportunity showed up tomorrow, would you have the money ready to go big?

Charlie Munger once explained how two ugly houses can trick you into paying about $24,000 more for a third one. He said he had little interest in teaching people how to get rich, but this one he made sure everyone in the room heard. In the video below, Munger describes a classroom experiment. A student puts one hand in hot water and the other in cold, then moves both into the same room-temperature bucket. One hand feels hot, the other feels cold. “The sensation apparatus of man is over-influenced by contrast. It has no absolute scale.” And cognition, he said, mimics sensation. Then he shows how sellers use it. A real estate broker takes a newcomer to “two of the most awful overpriced houses you’ve ever seen,” then to a moderately overpriced one, “and then you stick them.” He was just as blunt about how far it reaches. He saw terrible marriages made by women escaping terrible homes, and businessmen who acted like a frog in slowly heating water. “If it comes to you in small pieces, you’re likely to miss.” Now put a number on it. An extra $10,000 feels like nothing next to a $500,000 house. Financed over 30 years at 7%, that $10,000 costs you about $24,000. Munger’s fix was to fight the warp on purpose. “If you’re going to be a person of good judgment, you have to do something about this warp in your head.” In practice that means setting your number before you walk in, and judging every offer against it, not against the last thing they showed you. Munger didn’t think contrast only fooled fools. “You think you’re immune from these things,” he told the room, “and I want to tell you you aren’t.” What is the last purchase you made that only looked cheap because of what you saw right before it?

Charlie Munger once turned down 1,500 shares of a stock that would have made him about $5 billion richer. He rarely dwelt on his mistakes in public, but this one he kept coming back to. In the video below, Munger tells the story himself. It was 1977. A broker offered him 300 shares of Belridge Oil, a California oil company. Munger had the cash on hand, so he bought them. Then the broker came back with 1,500 more at the same price. The stock was not expensive, and Munger knew it. But to buy the extra shares, he would have had to sell something else or borrow. That small hassle was enough. He said no. Two years later, Shell bought Belridge for $3.6 billion. Munger later said the decision cost him about $5 billion and called it one of the dumbest investment decisions he ever made. One detail made it even harder to forgive. He admitted he got distracted by the company’s eccentric, heavy-drinking boss and paid too little attention to what he was actually buying. “But the oil field wasn’t drinking,” he said. One of the greatest investors who ever lived had the opportunity in his hands. A minor inconvenience took it away. Do you think a mistake like that would haunt you forever, or could you laugh it off the way Munger did? Save the video to hear the rest of his story later, and follow for more untold stories from behind the fortunes of the world’s greatest investors.

Charlie Munger explained why your feed makes you feel broke no matter how much you earn. It is not inequality. It is that the whole business model of modern media runs on pouring gasoline on your envy. He said it in a conversation in his late 90s. There are whole networks now, he said, built to make you feel bad about what somebody else has. The old Jews turned it into the tenth commandment three thousand years ago. Half the internet now sells the exact same thing back to you as content. Here is why the model never runs out of customers. Envy has no top. Greed asks for a number and stops when it hits it, but envy keeps moving the reference every scroll. The feed does not sell you cars. It does not sell you watches. It sells you back the specific version of yourself you had five minutes before you opened the app. So the question is not whether you have enough. The question is whether the next hour on your phone is going to leave you poorer in the only sense that matters. Be honest. If you deleted the three accounts that make you feel worst about your life, would any part of your actual financial plan change? The lecture is free. The people still refreshing to see what they do not have have never pressed play.

Charlie Munger spent decades at Berkshire Hathaway hunting for unfair advantages in businesses. About two weeks before he died at 99, he said he had used the same skill on getting old. In the video below, CNBC’s Becky Quick asks about his packed schedule of breakfasts, lunches and Zoom calls. “I just like it that way,” Munger says. “That’s my idea of a proper old age for me. And I didn’t plan it. It just happened.” Then he explains how. “I am very good at recognizing unfair advantages. I got unfair advantages in old age the way I got unfair advantages in non-old age. And when they came, I just grabbed them. Boom. Boom. Boom.” Quick reminds him of a line he liked to repeat: whatever you are, wealth and age will make you more so. Munger agrees. The man who spent a career grabbing mispriced chances was still grabbing them at 99. He was just as blunt about what age took away. He no longer wanted to chase a 200-pound tuna, something he once would have paid any amount for. “There are things you give up with time.” The one grab he never made was a third wife. “Too late,” he said. Some people are so much more comfortable married that they need it “to be human,” and for them he’d recommend a dating app for 100-year-olds. The catch: “Not many 100-year-olds want it. They’re just lying there.” Munger didn’t credit discipline or a plan for his old age. He credited noticing what was in front of him and moving fast. Was Munger’s good old age a skill anyone can learn, or a privilege only billions can buy?

Charlie Munger literally explained how Wall Street rebuilt the casino that blew up in 1929. It is not new technology. It is not bad luck. It is that every safety rule written after the last crash got taken apart, one at a time. After the 2008 crash, Munger was asked about credit derivatives. He went back to the 1920s bucket shop, a parlor where people bet on stock prices without owning any shares. By the end of that decade it was seen as a criminal enterprise. The rules that followed were a bigger protection than they sound. Banks were separated from investment banks. Margin rules stopped people from borrowing heavily against stocks. Then options exchanges and unregulated derivatives brought back nearly unlimited leverage. Munger named it. “Derivatives trading with no central clearing brought back the bucket shop.” AIG had sold credit default swaps on hundreds of billions in debt. Its rescue grew to about $182 billion in government support. Munger’s fix came from the old rules themselves. Limit the borrowing, and listen to the lone dissenter. In 1982 that was Warren Buffett, who warned Congress against stock-index futures. “He was totally right,” Munger said. The same thing runs your spending. Your own margin rule is the share of every paycheck you never borrow against. You set it on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and no lender gets to repeal it for you. The full interview is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained where his fortune really started, and it was nowhere near Wall Street. It is not a genius IQ. It is not a lucky stock. It is a grandfather who bought the meat nobody else would eat. Redlands, 2020. Munger, 96, was asked what set him on his path. His grandfather was born in extreme poverty, and as a boy he took a nickel to the butcher shop and bought the parts of the animal nobody else wanted. That start is a bigger advantage than it sounds. The boy became a federal judge for more than three decades, and Munger said he “always lived way below his income and was able to help other people when they needed help.” Munger named the habit with his grandfather’s own line on drinking. “Why would I take money out of my pocket and put something in my mouth that would make my head work less well?” When Munger died in 2023, his fortune was put at about $2.6 billion. He called himself “way short of prodigy.” Back in that talk, he gave the rule he learned from that same man. Munger’s fix came from a swimming lesson. “Swim as long as you want,” his grandfather told him, “but stay near the shore.” The same thing runs your spending. Living right at the edge of your paycheck is swimming far from shore. You keep the gap on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and you never get caught out where you cannot stand. His full 2020 Redlands talk is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained why people keep paying more for investments that do worse, at Caltech in 2008. It is not ignorance. It is not bad luck. It is that the higher price is paying someone to sell it to you. Caltech, March 2008. Munger, 84, put a simple question to a room of smart people. If you want to sell more units, when do you raise the price? About one in 50, he said, ever thinks of luxury goods. The real answer is a bigger trap than it sounds. “Suppose you raise the price and use the money to bribe the other guy’s purchasing agent.” The buyer pays more, and the extra money flows to whoever steered him there. Munger named where it lives. “That’s the way load mutual funds are sold in America,” he said, and title insurance too. A front-end load can take up to 5.75% of your money before a dollar is invested. On a $10,000 deposit, that is $575 gone on day one. Back in that talk, he gave the rule for spotting it. Munger’s fix came from avoiding folly instead of chasing brilliance. “I just avoid all the folly,” he said, and maybe “I can get an advantage without having to be really good at anything.” The same thing runs your spending. Every price that quietly pays a salesman is a leak in your savings rate. You trace where the money goes on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and the hidden commission shows up as a number. His full 2008 Caltech talk is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained why smart people get rich later than they should, at 93. It is not low pay. It is not bad luck. It is that the ideas they already hold block the better ones from getting in. Michigan Ross, 2017. A student asked Munger for the hardest idea he had ever destroyed. “I’m very busy destroying bad ideas because I keep having them.” An old idea is a bigger obstacle than it sounds. Every time you repeat it, Munger said, you are not convincing anyone else, you are pounding it deeper into your own head. The longer you hold it, the harder a better one has to fight. Munger named it with an old German saying. “We’re too soon old and we’re too late smart.” Berkshire lived it. He said the skill that carried it through one decade would not have carried it through the next. It bought Apple in 2016, a stock its old rules would have skipped, and by the end of 2023 that stake was worth about $174 billion. Back in that talk, he gave the rule for fixing it. Munger’s fix came from rewarding himself. Every time he killed a much-loved idea, he said, he would pat himself on the back, “sometimes several times.” The same thing runs your spending. “My savings rate is fine” is the best-loved idea most people never test. You check it on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and you kill the story before it costs you a decade. His full 2017 Michigan Ross talk is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained why most people never feel safe with money. It is not low income. It is not bad investments. It is that they paddle as close to the whirlpool as they can. Los Angeles, February 2019. Munger, 95, had just finished the Daily Journal annual meeting when CNBC's Becky Quick asked about money printing. He answered with a story about canoeists in Scandinavia who tried to run rapids full of giant whirlpools. The danger only made them more eager. They wanted to get as close as possible without going in. The death rate, Munger said, was 100%. Munger named his own rule. When something is big and dangerous, stay a long way away from it. Later in the interview Quick asked for the secret to a long, happy life, and he listed it without pausing. No resentment. "You don't overspend your income." Stay cheerful, deal with reliable people, do what you are supposed to do. He said he figured it out at about seven, watching adults who were "a little bonkers." Munger's fix was the same in both answers. Distance. A canoe far from the whirlpool, a life far from the edge of the paycheck. The same thing runs your spending. A paycheck spent to the last dollar is a canoe sitting on the lip of the whirlpool. You keep a gap on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and the current never gets a grip. His full 2019 CNBC interview is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained why most investors end up with mediocre returns, in the middle of the 2009 crash. It is not stock picking. It is not bad timing. It is that they cannot sit still while their money drops 50%. BBC, 2009. Munger, 85, was asked how worried he was that Berkshire shares had been cut roughly in half. He barely blinked. "This is the third time that Warren and I have seen our holdings in Berkshire go down top tick to bottom tick by 50%." A 50% drop is a bigger hole than it sounds. It takes a 100% gain just to get back to even, and the person who sells locks in the loss and misses the climb back. Most people sell near the bottom, because that is when selling feels safest. Munger named it. Fail that test, and "you deserve the mediocre result you're going to get." Berkshire's Class A shares traded under $75,000 in March 2009. They sell for roughly ten times that today. Back in that interview, he gave the rule for surviving it. Munger's fix came from Ben Graham. Pay a price with a margin of safety "considering the natural vicissitudes of life," he said. Then make sure you are never forced to sell. The same thing runs your spending. A paycheck spent to the last dollar turns every crash into a forced sale. You keep a share of it on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and the next 50% drop finds you able to wait. His full 2009 BBC interview is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Charlie Munger literally explained how Wall Street was about to blow itself up, days before Bear Stearns fell. It is not inside information. It is not luck. It is that he noticed one number nobody wanted to question. Caltech, March 2008. Munger, 84, sat on stage at the DuBridge lecture and described a crime scene that had not happened yet. Bonds rated AAA, the safest grade there is, were paying 60 basis points more than other AAA paper. Safe things do not pay extra. Somebody was being paid to carry a risk nobody was admitting. Grown men bought these CDOs, leveraged them four or five times, and told their investors they were earning alpha. Munger named it. A hurricane premium, collected right up until the hurricane. Days later Bear Stearns ran out of cash and was sold to JPMorgan for $2 a share. Six months after that, Lehman Brothers was bankrupt. Back in that auditorium, an undergraduate had asked the question that mattered, the best advice for a new investor. Munger's fix came from Ben Graham, who borrowed it from engineering. Keep a margin of safety, and underspend your income your whole life. The same thing runs your spending. A paycheck spent to the last dollar is a AAA bond with the risk hidden inside. You underspend it on purpose, one subtraction and one division, and the hurricane finds you with room to spare. His full 2008 Caltech talk is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.

Donald Trump literally explained why a crash ruins some people and barely touches others. It is not luck. It is not the economy. It is whether you are holding cash when something bursts. In a late 1980s interview, right after The Art of the Deal made him famous, he was pushed on poverty in New York. He answered with trade. The US, he said, was losing $140 to $200 billion a year to its own allies. He was certain where that led. Something was going to burst, and it was going to start here. He called it a question of when, and he meant depression, not recession. Asked what would happen to him, he said he was a very conservative guy who believed in having cash, unlike a lot of other people. Then his own bill came due. By 1990 his businesses carried about $3.4 billion in debt, and in 1991 his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City filed for Chapter 11. Banks had to restructure what he owed. The fix was in his own sentence. Having cash, as opposed to the people who do not, is the whole difference when the burst arrives. He said it on camera, then took on billions in debt anyway. The same thing runs your spending. Nobody knows when the next burst comes, and he said he had never seen an economist who was consistently right. You keep a share of every paycheck as cash, one subtraction and one division, so the when stops mattering. The full interview is free online, and almost nobody sits through it.