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You don’t need to win the lottery, flip houses, or build the next TikTok. The late Charlie Munger—Warren Buffett‘s longtime business partner and razor-sharp co-pilot at Berkshire Hathaway—said real wealth starts with one brutal milestone: the first $100,000.
At the 1999 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, someone asked the billionaires in the room what they’d do if they were starting over today — specifically, “Mr. Buffett, how can I make $30 billion?” Warren Buffett joked, “Start young,” and gave a thoughtful answer about building a snowball of sticky compound interest on a long hill. But when Charlie Munger took the mic, he got right to the point.
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“The hard part of the process for most people is the first $100,000,” Munger said. “If you have a standing start at zero, getting together $100,000 is a long struggle for most people.”
That number — not a million, not a billion, just $100,000 — is the threshold Munger believed separated the grinders from the coasters. And based on his decades of observation, the people who actually pulled it off early had three things in common:
“I would argue that the people who get there relatively quickly are helped if they’re passionate about being rational, very eager and opportunistic, and steadily underspend their income grossly,” he said.
That trio might not sound exciting, but it’s what actually moves the needle:
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Rational thinkers don’t get pulled into FOMO trends or bad money decisions.
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Opportunistic minds spot upside others overlook.
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Extreme savers stack cash while everyone else is upgrading their iPhones.
Trending: Warren Buffett once said, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.” Here’s how you can earn passive income with just $100.
So why is that first $100,000 such a big deal? Because it gives you momentum. Munger’s snowball doesn’t just roll—it grows. Once you’ve got $100,000 earning 7% a year, that’s $7,000 annually in passive growth. Then that $107,000 earns 7%, and so on. That’s compound interest doing its thing.
By year 10, without even adding more money, that $100,000 becomes about $197,000. Stick it out another 10 years and it’s $386,000. Add consistent saving into the mix, and you’ve got a serious wealth engine rolling downhill.
