Hey Afforders —
Three stories today:
One about Charlie Munger, one about Taylor Swift, and one about a NASA astronaut who also starred (no pun intended) on the Big Bang Theory.
Charlie Munger’s Deathbed Regret
A few weeks before he died, Charlie Munger was asked if he had any regrets in life.
Only one, he replied.
“I would have paid any amount to catch a 200 pound tuna when I was younger. I never caught one,” he said in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick.
But at age 99, he didn’t have the youthful strength and vitality of a 96-year-old, he said.
“I am so old and weak compared to when I was 96 that I no longer want to catch a 200 pound tuna. It’s just too goddamn much work to get it in. Takes too much physical strength … Now if you give me the opportunity, I would just decline going after [the fish]. There are things you give up with time.”
Lessons:
- At the end of your life, you don’t think about your net worth. (Charlie’s is estimated at $2.6 billion.) You think about experiences. Don’t trade the opportunity to enjoy experiences for the sake of clutching onto your cash.
- If you’re under 96, stop complaining that you’re too old. The future version of yourself will regard your current age as young.
- There’s no alternative but to act now. Opportunities are fleeting.
Munger also described fishing as a metaphor for investing:
“I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are,” Munger said when he was 93. “The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. We’ve gotten good at fishing where the fish are.”
Taylor Swift’s Windfall at Age 18
From TIME’s Person of the Year profile on Taylor Swift:
Most people, at 18, would spend that cash on a more comfortable lifestyle, or pay for college, or make market investments (stocks, crypto).
Instead, she invested in her fledgling music career. Tour buses.
Lesson:
The best investment is the one that you make in yourself.
In expanding your business or side hustle. In building your skills and smarts. In honing your craft. In strengthening your relationships. And even — dare I say — in your appearance.
No, the ROI can’t always be measured. I doubt anyone has plugged the cost of those tour buses into a spreadsheet and amortized those across her 15-year career.
But *YOU* are the investment with the strongest upside potential.
The Astronaut Who Almost Didn’t Make It
In this special Afford Anything podcast episode, former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino explains how YOU can take your own moonshot.
We met at a video studio in Brooklyn and spoke for hours about tenacity, drive, determination — and about sending the first tweet from space.
He described getting mocked by Seth Meyers on Saturday Night Live, joining the cast of the Big Bang Theory 💥, and how astronauts fart in space.
And he shared lessons that anyone can apply to their own life, as they chase dreams that society says aren’t “realistic.”
Watch our interview on YouTube
