A billion-dollar portfolio can’t negotiate with grief. It can’t rewind a funeral, rewrite a diagnosis, or turn a terrible year into a good one. Money can solve plenty of problems. It can’t solve the ones that matter most.
That was something the late Charlie Munger, the billionaire investor and longtime vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), knew firsthand. In his final interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick in November 2023, the 99-year-old was asked about the hardships he had faced in a life that, from the outside, could look almost impossibly fortunate. His answer wasn’t polished into some feel-good philosophy. It was blunt.
“Of course. Everybody struggles. The iron rule of life is everybody struggles.”
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Munger died on Nov. 28, 2023, just weeks shy of his 100th birthday. By then, investors had spent decades listening for his next observation about markets, businesses, and human behavior, whether at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings or during his years leading the Daily Journal. Yet some of the advice people carried away had nothing to do with getting richer.
It was about what happens when life takes something that can’t be replaced.
His Answer Wasn’t to Stay Positive
Quick asked how he had made it through the toughest moments of his life.
The answer was “soldiering through.”
“Well, we all know how to get through them. The great philosophers of realism are also the great philosophers of what I call soldiering through," Munger said. "If you soldier through, you can get through almost anything. And it’s your only option.”
That last part is what makes the advice so stark. There are problems that can’t be solved. There are losses that can’t be recovered. There are moments when optimism isn’t particularly useful because the reality in front of someone is simply awful.
Munger didn’t suggest pretending otherwise.
“If you have to walk through the streets, crying for a few hours a day as part of the soldiering, go ahead and cry away. But you have to — you can’t quit. You can cry all right, but you can’t quit.”
The Billionaire Was Speaking From Experience
Quick followed up by asking whether he’d actually had moments when he needed to do exactly that.
“Sure. I cried all the time when my first child died. But I knew I couldn’t change the fate. In those days, the fatality with childhood leukemia was 100%.”
Munger's son, Teddy, died of leukemia at age 9 in 1955. Munger had also experienced divorce earlier in his life. No amount of investing success could change either event.
That’s what gives his advice a different weight.
Munger wasn’t telling investors to toughen up because markets can be unpleasant. He was talking about something much bigger. Life eventually presents circumstances where there is no clever strategy, no shortcut, and no deal that makes the problem disappear.
There is only the next step.
There’s an Investing Lesson in It, Too
That philosophy also helps explain why Munger’s investing advice was so heavily rooted in patience and temperament.
Markets don’t reward every decision immediately. Businesses stumble. Investments decline. Predictions go wrong. The ability to remain rational through uncomfortable periods can matter just as much as the ability to identify a good investment in the first place.
The same lesson applies outside the market.
Not every setback can be turned into a success story. Some things simply hurt. But a setback doesn’t have to become the end of the story.
That may be the most enduring part of Munger’s final lesson. There was no promise that everything would work out. Just an instruction for what to do when it doesn’t.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.