Charlie Munger on Delayed Gratification:

I've also got the money-sense gene. The first 13 years I practiced law, my income from practicing law was $300,000 total.

At the end of that 13 years, what did I have?

1/

A house. Two cars. And $300,000 of liquid assets. Everyone else'd have spent that slender income, not invested it shrewdly, and so forth.

I just think it was, to me, it was as natural as breathing, and of course I knew how compound interest worked!

2/

I knew when I saved $10 I was really saving $100 or $1,000 ,because of the future growth of the $10.

It just took a little wait. And when I quit law practice it was because I wanted to work for myself instead of my clients, because I knew I could do better than they did.

3/

You only get a few opportunities, and you have to grab them aggressively when they come because even in the most favored life, they're really rare.

I always feel that the opportunities are rare. I only get a few and then I have to seize them aggressively.

4/

Now that lesson I just talked about, it is taught in no business school I know of. But…everybody who has any sense ought to know [that] at the start of life, and practically nobody does.

I just described reality the way it really is.

5/