Warren Buffett isn’t just one of the richest persons on this planet, he is probably also
the billionaire with the lowest expenses out there, and he has kind of always been this way.
He usually spends $3.17 on breakfast at McDonald’s.
If the market is down, he’ll pick the cheaper option.
He still lives in the same old house that he purchased for just $31,500 more than 60 years ago.
Heck, he even used to drive a car with a license plate that read “THRIFTY”.
At the same time though …
In 1989 Warren Buffett’s company spent $6.7 million on a personal jet airplane.
In 1952 he bought a Dale Carnegie speaking course,
which turned out to be quite expensive if you talk in terms of opportunity cost,
but we’ll get to that later.
Also in 1952, Buffett splurged 6% of his then net worth on a wedding ring.
He even calls his purchase of the wedding ring “the best investment” he ever made.
I’ve never bought a piece of jewelry that I’ve regretted.
Although Charlie Munger used to call the jet airplane “The Indefensible”.
Anyhow, it is clear that the Oracle of Omaha thinks that sometimes,
an investor must be willing to pay up – even outside of the stock market.
So that begs the question – how frugal should an investor be?
In this video – we will boil the topic of deferred gratification down into three separate takeaways.
This is the Swedish Investor, bringing you the best tips and tools for reaching financial freedom,
through stock market investing.
First and foremost – let’s discuss why frugality is important for the investor.
Here’s how Warren Buffett defines investing:
“Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.”
Buffett, who understood the wonders of compounding early on,
has always thought that every dollar today might be ten dollars some other day.
In Buffett’s case, that has proven to be a modest assumption, and when you think
about the mathematics of it, expenses snowball really quickly.
Given the stock market returns that Buffett has had over the years,
what do you think that the cost of that Dale Carnegie course that he bought at age of 22, is in today’s terms?
If he would have invested the money, it would now be $291m.
No, this is not a typo.
This is compound interest at its fines,
or worst, depending on how you view it.
It may be a bit aggressive to expect
that you and I will ever have the same type of returns as the Oracle of Omaha,
but let’s assume that we can make half of what a young Buffett was able to perform.
Then, what’s the opportunity cost of purchasing a car when you are in your 20s?
We’re not even talking a flashy car here, I mean basically the cheapest model that you could get at current prices.
If you would have invested the money it could have purchased a much fancier car at the age of 30.
At 40 you could have gotten a whole house (yes, in cash).
And when you turned 50, you would already have reached financial freedom.
Hadn’t you purchased that car, of course.
Warren Buffett’s first rule of investing is to never lose money.
His second rule is to never forget the first rule.
Overspending is a guaranteed way of breaking this rule,
without even making a mistake in the stock market.
Also, it’s a guaranteed way of delaying the date at which you will reach financial freedom.
So compound interest and its wonders is the reason
why it’s a good idea to at least be somewhat frugal. Most investors understand this,
and that’s why it’s almost a bragging right within our circles to talk about your high savings rate.
I always believed in spending two or three cents out of every dollar I earn and saving the rest.
But how frugal should an investor be? What is a reasonable savings rate?
10% of your income? 30%? More? This obviously comes down to personal choices but let me help you
to analyse your own situation by giving you a few rules of thumb from Warren Buffett.
Any money you save before you get out and start having a family is probably - or any dollar
is probably worth $10 later on simply because you can save it. The time to save is young.
The first rule of thumb, which was hinted at before, is that the younger you are,
the larger the financial incentive to be frugal is.
One of the biggest reasons to why Warren Buffett is the richest investor out there,
is because he started early.
He bought his first stock when he was just 11 years old
and he managed to make and save a ton of money already in his teens.
The best day to start was probably yesterday, but today is the second-best day, so do not feel discouraged.
Secondly, well, it’s a personal choice of how much you value a certain activity.
Who’s to say whether it’s better to defer a dollar of expenditure on your family on
a trip to Disneyland or something that they’ll get enormous enjoyment out of
so that when you’re 75 you can have a, you know, 30-foot boat instead of a 20-foot boat?
In the intro of the video, we saw that Buffett spent 6% of his net worth on
a wedding ring in 1952 and calls it the best investment of his lifetime.
And you know that this man has made a lot of great investments.
Moreover, Buffett would never suggest that you should be frugal or defensive when it comes to
making purchases which are expected to return much more for you somewhere down the line.
Like he did when he spent 1% of his net worth on a Dale Carnegie speaking course back in 1952,
which would have been $291 million today, had he invested the money.
It might be difficult to imagine today,
but Warren Buffett used to have a ton of stage fright back in the days.
He realized that this was going to set him back a great deal in his quest for riches,
so he decided to pay up to help him in growing as a person.
I bet that the $100 which he paid for the course is at the top of the list
of his greatest investments of all time, too.
Thirdly, you can argue that how frugal you are supposed to be
depends on where we are in the market cycle.
And if you find that everything is extremely cheap, like in ’74,
you should put every available dime into equities. And that’s what we’ve tried to do.
Let’s pick the current situation in the stock market as an example.
The average 3-year earnings yield of the S&P500, meaning how much the companies in that index
has earned during the last 3 years compared with what they currently cost, is 2.9%.
As you can see from this graph, that is lower than at any other time in history.
In 2008 & 2009, for example, it was a much greater time for penny-pinching for us investors.
Why? Because we would have gotten more than 2 times as much
earnings from for going consumption back then as we get now.
Because of how expensive the stock market currently is, yes, it is actually relatively more justified
(I mean – less unjustified) to go out and splurge on a Lamborghini right now, than it has ever been.
That is not financial advice though, and you should not forget about rule 1 and 2.
I have everything in life I want. It’s a very simple thing. If there’s anything that
money can buy — there are things money can’t buy, but if there’s anything money could buy
that I wanted, I’d do it this afternoon.
If I’m allowed to speculate a little bit myself,
I think Buffett’s ability to remain frugal, even with the enormous sums of money
which he has today, comes down to two things:
- His perception of his own self-worth is not generated through a money-consuming activity;
and - He does not have any expensive hobbies
If you can combine those two for yourself, you’ll have a much easier time reaching financial freedom
I have, kind of accidentally, implemented this in my life too.
Spending money on … stuff doesn’t really help me in increasing the reach of this YouTube channel,
improving the performance of my portfolio, or adding plates to the barbell.
Also, neither YouTube, stock market investing,
nor powerlifting are activities that require a ton of money to practice as a hobby.
- For us as investors, a dollar today is worth a bunch of dollars in a few years
- Save more when you are young and when you are finding great investments in the stock market.
However, some activities outside the market are too valuable to be cheap with.
- Stay frugal by trying to figure out a way to feed your ego without flashing expensive items,
and by avoiding expensive hobbies
Cheers guys.