Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's Right-Hand Man, Gave Six Rules for a Happy Life: Only One Relates to Money

Charlie Munger gave six rules for a happy life in a CNBC interview in February 2019, and only the last one was about money. He was 95 and had been Warren Buffett’s vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway for 45 years.

Munger died in November 2023, aged 99, five weeks short of his 100th birthday. His rules outlived him. One of them has since been tested on 807 investors in a lab.

What the Six Rules Actually Say

Three of the six rules are about other people. Munger said not to envy, not to resent, and to deal only with reliable people. Two more are about the self, asking for good cheer in bad weather and for work that fits a person’s talents. The remaining one is about money, and it asks only that a person spends less than they earn. Munger gave other lists at other meetings, and some run to seven items, so this is the 2019 count.

Munger called the list trite when he gave it. He was answering Becky Quick of CNBC, who spoke to him at the end of that February. She had asked him what the secret of a long, happy life turned out to be. Envy, he told CNBC, is ‘a really stupid sin.’ His reason was that it is the only vice nobody enjoys.

What Happened When Someone Tested One

In 2023, a team at ETH Zurich, the Swiss federal institute of technology, ran the envy rule as an experiment. They recruited 807 people who already owned shares in American companies. Each traded a fake market built from 20 years of Swiss share prices, starting with 10,000 units of play money. Before the second round, half were shown how three top performers had done. Everyone else saw only their own results.

Investors who saw the winners took more risk with their money. They traded more shares, and rated their own results lower than the group left alone. Earnings came out the same in each round for both groups. The extra risk and the extra trading bought nothing.

Sandra Andraszewicz, the study’s lead author, and three colleagues wrote that investors shown a top performer ‘take more risk and trade more actively.’ Inside the lab, the effect was small. Scaled to the American market, the authors reckoned that would mean about 600 million extra shares a day. Scientific Reports published the paper in December 2023, three weeks after Munger died.

The One Rule About Money

Munger tied the money rule directly to investing. Writing to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett quoted his partner saying that nothing in investing is ever sure, and that borrowing to invest is risky for that reason. Buying on margin means buying with money that has not arrived yet. That is the same habit the sixth rule warns against, in a trading account rather than a shop.

There is an obvious objection. Not envying people is cheap advice from a rich man. Munger was worth $1.7 billion (£1.25 billion) when he gave the list, according to Forbes. But he had been divorced, broke, and burying a nine-year-old son by 31. The 807 people in the experiment were not billionaires either, and envy still made them take risks that paid nothing.

Greg Abel now runs Berkshire Hathaway, and took the job on 1 January 2026. Buffett stayed on as chairman. At Abel’s first yearly meeting in May, the company hung a jersey for Munger with the number 45 on it, beside one for Buffett with 60. Attendance was well down, and the arena was just over half full.

Munger never offered the six rules as an investing strategy. He called them housekeeping, and said himself that they were obvious to anyone. One of them has since been put in front of a control group, and it held up. The other five have not been tested, and the man who listed them is no longer available for questions.