An appreciation note for Charlie Munger

This is an appreciation post for Charlie Munger – Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman, Warren Buffett’s business partner since 1959 and someone who I idolise. I have written about Charlie Munger multiple times on this blog, but I can’t have enough of him; so here is one more post!

Charlie Munger was born on 1st January 1924; so he is just 50-52 days away from celebrating his 100th birthday! He is very active even today and his brain is getting sharper with every passing day!

I discovered Charlie pretty late. In fact I discovered Warren Buffett pretty late in my life, in 2007, when I was 27 yrs old. Of course I had heard about him before. But when I say discovered, it means I started following him closely since then. As typical progression goes for every WB fan, you start reading about him, watching his interviews and soon you discovered who shaped up his life. And the prominent name you notice is Charlie Munger, who is six years older than Warren (who is not 93 years old himself, and still active, of course). Same was true for me. I discovered Charlie at around 2010-11; and since then it’s been my pleasure to just feed on Charlie’s wisdom nuggets – his speeches, interviews, philosophy, his book recommendations and so on. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett are two of my most influential heroes.

If you want a short synopsis of what hardship Charlie has been through watch this recent video by Vishal Khandelwal (of Safal Niveshak and author of book The Sketchbook of Wisdom) titled “A Story of Courage and Hope, the Charlie Munger Way”

Charlie is just short of 100 years and he did his first long podcast with the team of Acquired podcast. It’s a fascinating conversation that will trigger your thoughts and enrich your worldview! Do listen over here:

It often amazes me how completely stranger people sitting thousands of miles away, living almost in parallel universe can influence our lives so much – just by their thoughts, actions and life story. Of course, with the great help from technology it’s now possible to compress time and space dimensions – you can learn from the eminent dead not only through books, but from their videos too.

I am planning to start a new blog from 1st January 2024 (Charlie Munger’s 100th birthday) to focus and build on what I learnt from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett – which is, how to be a perpetual learner, how to be a student for life – and share whatever I find interesting through that blog. No politics, no topical, trivial stuff, just mental models and ideas and thoughts which I absorb from so many people and so many sources.

The new blog is going to be personally significant for me. More about that later…