Start Your Startup: "Don't Save Sex for your Old Age" (Warren Buffett) | Hacker News Reader

Start Your Startup: "Don't Save Sex for your Old Age" (Warren Buffett)

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75 pointsalanthonyc24 comments

Buffet actually had an interesting marriage in real life.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5133316.stm

In 1952, Buffett married Susan Thompson, with whom he had three children: Susie, Howard and Peter. Outwardly their marriage looked conventional - his wife accompanied him on almost all of his public appearances, served on the board of his company and was one of Berkshire Hathaway's largest shareholders.

But they ceased to live together in 1977, when she moved to San Francisco. As a parting gift, however, Mrs Buffett had introduced her husband to Astrid Menks, a Latvian-born waitress working in Omaha. She moved in with Buffett and remains his companion.

The unusual friendship led the three to send presents to relatives from "Warren, Susie and Astrid". Warren and Susan remained married until her death in 2004.

You should read "Snowball" if you want to know more.

So he lived together with one woman first, another one afterwards. Not my definition of 'harem'.

Fair point. Edited.

Lots of nuggets. Here's another on selling out your company:

"You can sell it to Berkshire, and we'll put it in the Metropolitan Museum; it'll have a wing all by itself; it'll be there forever. Or you can sell it to some porn shop operator, and he'll take the painting and he'll make the boobs a little bigger and he'll stick it up in the window, and some other guy will come along in a raincoat, and he'll buy it."

Do you think they might have meant "pawn shop"?

Given the references to "boobs" and a "man in a raincoat", no.

> On being active: "It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age."

Ironic. Isn't Warren Buffet known to be tight with money?

I think that for Warren Buffet, "things" refers to multinational corporations :)

He's buying more stocks.

I have to disagree with him here. I don't believe saving your money long-term is anything like saving sex for old age. One could argue that you need some form of monetary support for the rest of your life, securing your money is smart, however, sex is not an essential part of old age. The two ideas are quite different.

Warren Buffet is not talking about "Personal Financial Management" - He's talking about making use of the utility of money when it has value - and not holding onto it for the sake of holding onto it - until you have it a time when it might not be useful anymore.

The money you are talking about is consumption spending, not investment spending. (And I suspect, even in your case, you wouldn't just "hold onto/save the money" - you'd probably invest/"Buy" something instead - T-Bills, Equities, etc...)

In general - disagreeing with Warren Buffet with regards to Investment Advice is like disagreeing with Plato with regards to Philosophy - You may _feel_ like you know more than them, but you don't. You really don't.

I feel you can disagree with Plato on philosophy. We know much more than the poor chap. E.g. I think that seeing numbers and math as a inter-mental construct (with remarkable applications) is a more adequate point of view than claiming they are in any sense `out-there'. (Of course it's hard to prove either way.)

You can also disagree with Warren Buffet, though his case is stronger than Plato's: There's evidence in Warren Buffet's favor.

E.g. George Soros made a lot of money with speculation.

E.g. George Soros made a lot of money with speculation.

How's that in support of Buffet? Soros has totally different philosophy!

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. That was meant in support of "You can also disagree with Warren Buffet [...]."

  On internal yardsticks: "Would you prefer to be the 
  greatest lover in the world and known as the worst,
  or would you prefer to be the worst lover and 
  known as the greatest?"

Which one is supposed to be better?

Some people are much better at interviewing for a job than doing the job. Others are great at the job but fail at interviews.

I started to notice a few years ago that I fall pretty extremely into one of those categories, but I made peace by being glad I wasn't at the other extreme.

Maybe the point is it is an /internal/ yardstick. You get to decide which one suits you!

In one, your skill is greater than the opinions of others. In the other, the opinions of others are greater than your skill.

To me, the choice is clear.

I think the latter's assumed to be better: you get lots of sex, and although you don't get many repeats, you get a lot of access. It'd suck once you fell in love, though.

On the other hand, the former could be spun into a good situation. If your reputation is that horrible (worst in the world) and widespread, people would sleep with you on dares, find out that you're actually awesome, and you could marry the one of them you liked the most.

It's easier to fix a really bad reputation when you're really good than to get really good when everyone is measuring you against a really good reputation, but you're actually really bad.

In the first case, people will be surprised if you do anything right - so if you do everything right, they'll be amazed. In the second, if you do anything wrong, they'll be dissapointed - even if it's something really minor (but being the world's worst says that it will be more than something really minor).

The point he's making is that it isn't all about feeding your own ego.

With the implication that that would be bad.

makes you wonder if his skills in bed are equal to his skills at investing.

No, no it doesn't.

I guess like everything about Buffet it's frugal but satisfying :)

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