Warren Buffett used to ask college students this question—it can help you become richer and more successful

Warren Buffett is utilized to giving advice.

For decades, the Berkshire Hathaway president has sat earlier a packed arena during his company's yearly shareholder meetings, fielding capitalist questions connected everything from artificial quality to the ins and outs of the security concern to matrimony advice.

In "Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy," which airs connected Jan. 18 astatine 3 p.m. E.T. connected CNBC, Becky Quick asks the Oracle of Omaha astir immoderate of the toughest questions and champion proposal he's ever given. Buffett yet arrives astatine a situation helium utilized to airs to assemblage students.

Buffett would inquire the students to see a script successful which, fixed a people of 300 oregon truthful of their peers, they could person 10% of the beingness net of 5 of them. Who would they take — and why? And who would they merchantability short? The radical you chose, helium says, wouldn't needfully beryllium the champion looking oregon the smartest oregon the astir athletic.

"Of course, I explained astatine the end, you tin beryllium the idiosyncratic that you would buy," Buffett says. "There is thing impossible. Because it isn't whether you tin propulsion a shot 60 yards, and it … isn't the 1 with the highest IQ. You tin beryllium 1 of the five."

So what could get you connected the database of idiosyncratic with precocious expected beingness earnings?

"It's luck, a batch of it. If you take the close parents, you're affluent erstwhile you travel out," Buffett says. "You've won the lottery — the ovarian lottery."

But Buffett told students they could inactive beryllium 1 of the radical successful the country their classmates should stake on.

"You tin bash it by being a bully person, by speechmaking a lot, by spending little than you instrumentality in," helium says. "I conscionable told them you tin walk 110% of what you gain once, and past you utilized it up. The remainder of your beingness you're underwater."

Buffett makes definite to stress the second point. While definite types of loans, specified arsenic a mortgage, whitethorn marque consciousness successful immoderate instances, you mostly privation to debar going into debt, Buffett says.

"Beyond a definite point, if you get successful a spread oregon anything, it is hard to excavation out," helium says. "It isn't that it's impossible, and I springiness recognition to radical to bash it. But bash it the casual way."

Of course, you're not going to extremity up being 1 of the apical earners among your peers if you don't enactment hard and absorption connected self-improvement, Buffett says. He recalls longtime spouse Charlie Munger's wont of "selling himself" his astir productive hr of the time — spending 1 hr each greeting focusing exclusively connected improving his caput and selling the remainder of his moving ours to clients.

"That's not crazy," Buffett says. "Your aboriginal is your future, and you can't expect anybody other to bash it."

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