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At 99 years old, Charlie Munger had seen it all. The Great Depression, world wars, dokis, housing crashes, market manas that made fortunes overnight and destroyed them by morning. And through it all, there was one thing he warned about more than anything else. Not bad stocks, not market crashes, not even bad partners.
Debt. Once you get into debt, it's hell to get out. Munger said, "Don't let credit card debt carry over. You can't get ahead paying 18%." This wasn't just investment advice. This was a life principle from a man who built billions without needing to borrow his way there. Here's the irony nobody talks about.
Charlie Mer was famous for saying liquor, ladies, and leverage were the three ways smart people go broke. He preached caution about debt his entire life. And yet in his final years at Daily Journal, Munger used leverage. He bought Alibaba with borrowed money. At 99 years old, when shareholders questioned him at the 2023 Daily Journal meeting, he admitted, "I operated with no leverage for long stretches of my old age.
And recently, I did use a little bit of leverage because the opportunities were so ridiculously good." So, what changed? Had the old man lost his edge? No. He revealed something deeper. I think most people should avoid leverage, but maybe not everybody need play by those rules. I have a friend who says, "The young man knows the rules and the old man knows the exceptions." This is where most people get confused.
They think Munger was contradicting himself. He wasn't. There's a massive difference between stupid debt and strategic debt, between credit card balances at 27% interest and carefully calculated risk with assets you deeply understand. Recent surveys show roughly a third of US households making more than $150,000 a year can't pay off their credit card balance.
That's not leverage. That's financial suicide on an installment plan. Mer's message was simple. If you're borrowing money to maintain a lifestyle you can't afford, you're not investing. You're gambling with your future. Credit card debt doesn't compound wealth, compounds misery. But here's the thing about Munger's late life leverage.
He knew exactly what he was buying. He understood the business. He had decades of experience knowing when the odds were genuinely in his favor. And even then, he called his daily journal leverage a tiny little bit of margin debt. When you're 99 years old, have built a fortune, and spot a once- ina- decade opportunity, maybe you've earned the right to bend your own rules.
The rest of us, we haven't. Mer once admitted that Berkshire Hathaway could have been worth double if he and Warren Buffett had used more leverage. All we had to do is just use a little more leverage that was easily available. So why didn't they? The idea of disappointing a lot of people who had trusted us when we were young.
If we lost threearters of our money, we were still very rich. That wasn't true of every shareholder. Losing 3/4 of the money would have been a big letdown. Read that again. They chose certainty over maximum returns. They chose protecting others over enriching themselves. They understood that leverage doesn't just amplify gains.
It amplifies the consequences of being wrong. And in markets, everyone is eventually wrong about something. Mer saw countless brilliant people destroyed by leverage. Not because they were stupid, but because they were overleveraged when the unexpected happened. Markets don't care about your thesis. They don't care about your PhD.
They don't care that you were right on 90% of your positions. If you're leveraged wrong when everything goes sideways, you're done. So, what's the actual lesson from a 99year-old who spent 60 years building wealth? First, live within your income and save so that you can invest. This sounds boring. It is boring.
It's also how you actually get rich. Average credit card interest rates are hovering around 27.81% right now. You cannot invest your way out of that hole. You cannot trade your way out. You can only stop digging. Second, debt is a tool, not a strategy. Mer used leverage exactly three times in 30 years, and only when the opportunity was extraordinary and the risk was contained.
The difference between Munger's leverage and consumer debt is like comparing a surgeon scalpel to a chainsaw. One is precise, calculated, used only when necessary. The other just does damage. Third, nobody builds lasting wealth on borrowed money and borrowed time. Compounding works, but only if you stay in the game long enough to let it work.
Debt is the thing that kicks you out of the game right when you should be staying in. Charlie Mer lived 99 years. He became a billionaire. He partnered with Warren Buffett to build one of the greatest investment records in history. and his advice on debt never changed, even when his own actions seemed to contradict it.
Stay away from consumer debt, always. It's a trap designed to keep you poor while making someone else rich. Use leverage only if you're experienced. The opportunity is exceptional and you can survive being completely wrong. But if you're just starting out, if you're still learning, if you haven't built your first $100,000 yet, then Mer's words from decades ago still ring true.
Once you get into debt, it's hell to get out. Don't start from hell. Build from solid ground. Because the real secret to getting rich isn't how much you make or how smartly you borrow. It's how much you keep and how long you stay in the game. Mer proved that for 99 years. And at the end, even when he bent his own rules, he never broke the principle.
Respect the downside. Protect what matters. Stay rational when everyone else loses their mind. The man who could have doubled Berkshire's wealth with leverage chose not to. That tells you everything you need to know about debt. Subscribe for weekly finance ideas that actually make sense.
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