In February 2023, nine months before he died at 99, Charlie Munger was asked at the Daily Journal annual meeting how rational delayed gratification still was “for a person of your age and wealth.” As Kingswell transcribed it, he said he hadn't stopped. “I'm still doing it. Now that I'm old, I buy these apartment houses to give me something to do.”
The buildings were not the odd part. The odd part was how he said he ran them. “We're different in the way we run them from the way everybody else runs them. Everybody else is trying to show high income so they can have high distributions. We're trying to find ways to intelligently spend money, to make them better.” In other words, the rent that most owners paid out, Munger put back into the property.
