Charlie Munger worked 12 hours a day to earn $2 - A kid in the Great Depression

Charlie Munger might have been branded the ‘Oracle of Pasadena’ for being an ace investor, but his beginnings were much humbler. Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman and longtime confidante of Warren Buffett, once worked at his grandfather Ernest’s grocery store to earn a meager $2. 

One of his first jobs was as a clerk at Buffett & Son, an upscale Omaha grocery store run by Ernest, where he earned $2 after working for a 12-hour shift. Many retellings of his time at the grocery store as a teenager in the 1930s point out that the young Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, who is 6 and half years his junior, did not meet at that point. Buffett had also worked there but the two never met till 1959. 

Charlie Munger, a kid during the Great Depression, was born on January 1, 1924, to Alfred and Florence Munger. The ace investor, whose net worth is estimated to be at $2.6 billion by Forbes at the time of his death, had said that people are now more discontent with the state of affairs, compared to when things were tougher, in reference to the Great Depression.

In last year’s annual meeting of the Daily Journal, where he is a director, Munger said, “People are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher.” “It’s weird for somebody my age, because I was in the middle of the Great Depression when the hardship was unbelievable,” said Munger, noting that he came of age in the 1930s, as per CNBC.

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In the same meeting, he had said that envy is a driving force for many. “I can’t change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and feel very abused after everything’s improved by about 600 per cent, because there’s still somebody else who has more,” Munger said.

In 2009, during the worst recession since the Great Depression, Munger, at the annual meeting of Wesco Financial Corp, said, "If you wait until the economy is working properly to buy stocks, it's almost certainly too late.” 

Munger was not only a rags-to-riches story but was also part of the US Army Air Corps during World War II. He had enrolled at the University of Michigan but dropped out to join the army. Despite never getting an undergraduate degree, Munger graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948, following which he practiced law in Los Angeles. He co-founded the law firm now known as Munger, Tolles & Olson before turning to investments in the mid-1960s. 

He met Buffett, who would go on to become a longtime business partner, in Omaha in 1959. They met in a private room at the Omaha Club, and struck up a conversation. More such conversations followed, before they were talking on phone for hours on end. 

According to Buffett biographer Alice Schroeder, when Munger’s wife asked him why he spends so much time talking to Buffett, Munger quipped, "You don't understand…That is no ordinary human being.”

(With agency inputs)

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