The Berkshire Hathaway CEO, with business partner Charlie Munger, spent hours this weekend discussing life and career choices
3 min
The question was a philosophical one: How should you avoid major mistakes in business and life?
Warren Buffett, the 92-year-old chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, paused briefly.
“You should write your obituary and then try to figure out how to live up to it,” Mr. Buffett said. “It’s not that complicated.”
At Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday, an event that draws thousands to Omaha, Neb., each spring, Mr. Buffett and his longtime business partner, Charlie Munger, spent hours weighing in on topics as varied as the recent banking turmoil to artificial intelligence and the future of the U.S. As is typical at such gatherings, the executives also doled out plenty of advice on management practices, career choices and how to enjoy a good life.
In prior years, Mr. Munger has heaped scorn on consultants, compensation specialists and what he described as make-work activities inside U.S. companies. This weekend, he directed his ire at wealth managers.
“Having a huge proportion of the young and brilliant people all going into wealth management is a crazy development in terms of its natural consequences for American civilisation,” Mr. Munger said. “We don’t need as many wealth managers as we have.”
He added: “I don’t think a bunch of bankers, all of whom are trying to get rich, leads to good things.”
Mr. Buffett, for his part, said he wanted to see greater accountability inside banks, saying that the recent crisis in the industry illustrated why executives and board members should face consequences if a business encounters problems.
“If the CEO gets the bank in trouble, both the CEO and the directors should suffer,” Mr. Buffett said. “You’ve got to have the penalties hit the people that cause the problems, and if they took risks that they shouldn’t have, it needs to fall on them if you’re going to change how people are going to behave in the future.”
Over hours of questions from investors and others, the two billionaires often peppered their answers with recommendations on how to navigate business. Mr. Buffett advised that people pay attention to how others might try to manipulate them.
He also encouraged those in attendance to resist the temptation to criticise or vilify others.
“I’ve never known anybody that was basically kind that died without friends,” Mr. Buffett said. “And I’ve known plenty of people with money that have died without friends.”
Mr. Munger said that success comes from steering clear of toxic people.
“The great lesson of life is get them the hell out of your life—and do it fast,” Mr. Munger said.
When hiring some of his top leaders over the years, Mr. Buffett said he has tried to suss out someone’s talents and not focus on whether they attended a prestigious institution.
“I have never looked at where anybody went to school in terms of hiring,” Mr. Buffett said. “If somebody mails me a résumé or something, I don’t care where they went to school.”
One of Mr. Buffett’s top lieutenants, Ajit Jain, studied at Harvard Business School, “but he isn’t Ajit because he went to those schools,” Mr. Buffett said.
Mr. Buffett graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and later studied under the legendary value investor Benjamin Graham at Columbia University. Mr. Munger, who is 99 years old, studied mathematics at the University of Michigan and meteorology at the California Institute of Technology, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University.
On artificial intelligence, Mr. Buffett said he had been impressed at generative AI’s abilities to summarise legal opinions and potentially take on other tasks, though he said he also worried about its potential consequences. “It can do all kinds of things, and when something can do all kinds of things, I get a little bit worried because I know we won’t be able to uninvent it,” Mr. Buffett said.
Mr. Munger said he was skeptical of some of the hype around artificial intelligence. “I think old-fashioned intelligence works pretty well,” he said.
Near the end of the meeting, an audience member asked the two billionaires to weigh in on Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO who took control of the social-media platform Twitter last year.
Mr. Buffett called Mr. Musk a “brilliant, brilliant guy,” who had a much different approach in dreaming about the future than the Berkshire executives. Mr. Buffett has often said he takes a hands-off approach to managing Berkshire’s subsidiaries, which range from the insurer Geico to the restaurant chain Dairy Queen. Mr. Musk is known for weighing in on the details at his companies.
“He would not have achieved what he has in life if he hadn’t tried for unreasonably extreme objectives,” Mr. Munger said of Mr. Musk. “He likes taking on the impossible job and doing it. We’re different: Warren and I are looking for the easy job.”
Mr. Buffett said he didn’t want to compete against Mr. Musk, to which Mr. Munger added: “We don’t want that much failure.”
Mr. Musk tweeted Saturday that he appreciated the “kind words from Warren & Charlie.”
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Strong family financial planning can help reduce taxes and support younger generations. From intrafamily loans and asset gifts to inheritance disclaimers, strategic cooperation can create meaningful financial benefits—when families have the trust and structure to make it work.
4 min
Happy is the family whose members—parents, grandparents and grown children—trust each other enough to cooperate on shared goals, especially financial ones. When that is truly the case, Uncle Sam’s tax rules can help as well.
This matters especially now that mortgage rates are above 7%, and many families are looking for ways to help younger members. If the elders have resources and are confident younger ones can cooperate, a family loan could make homeownership possible while providing the elders with a useful income stream.
Other strategies can actually lower taxes, such as when funding 529 plans or Roth IRAs, or when someone inherits a traditional IRA with required withdrawals larger than they will need.
Here are three strategies useful for functional families.
It is perfectly legal for families to lend money to a relative for a down payment or even a private mortgage.
But it is important not to cut corners, says Ryan McKeown, a CPA with Modern Wealth Enhancement in Minnesota. If the loan is for a down payment, be honest with the mortgage provider and have a formal agreement. The lender owes tax on the interest payments received.
If the loan is for a private mortgage, both sides should have legal representation with a formal written agreement, including payment terms. The lender owes tax on the interest, and the borrower often can deduct it if he or she itemizes.
To avoid IRS trouble, the interest rate shouldn’t be lower than the agency’s Applicable Federal Rate at the time of the loan. Currently that is about 5% for loans longer than nine years; about 4.5% for loans three to nine years; and about 4% for loans three years or less. Currently, traditional mortgage rates are generally above 7%.
In addition, the lender could use the $19,000 annual gift-tax exemption (described below) to forgive some or all of the interest or principal annually. If both lenders and borrowers are married, that is up to $76,000 a year. There is no tax for the borrower on such forgiveness, because it is from a gift.
If you’re going this route, McKeown advises against having a fixed plan to forgive the debt. Instead, do it in one-off letters specifying the amount—and keep careful records. Otherwise the IRS might try to treat the loan as a taxable gift.
Powerful tax-saving moves for families often use gift-tax provisions. Under current law, anyone can give anyone else up to $19,000 of assets annually, free of gift tax. That means a married couple with three grandchildren could give them a total of $114,000 in 2026.
The gifts can be cash or other assets, like stock. For noncash gifts, the cost basis—which is the starting point for measuring taxable gain after a sale—“carries over” to the recipient. So if someone buys $1,000 of stock and gives it away when it is worth $5,000, the recipient’s cost basis is $1,000. If the recipient later sells the shares for $8,000, the taxable gain is $7,000.
Here’s an example showing how gifts could save a family taxes. Grandma is a widow of modest means, while her child and spouse have prospered. The couple has two children, and they want to contribute $5,000 to a 529 college-savings plan for each—but they need to sell stock to do it. Their tax rate on the sale would be 18.8%, and they would need to sell about $11,000 of stock.
However, Grandma’s federal tax rate on the stock sale is 0%. If the couple gives $10,000 of shares to Grandma, she could sell them, pay no tax, and fund the grandchildren’s 529 plans. This saves about $1,000 of tax.
These moves are legal, and they could be used in other ways, such as to help a young person fund a Roth IRA.
But trust among family members is essential: Under the law, givers can’t put conditions on a gift. Grandma could use her stock proceeds to take a cruise, but she makes 529 contributions instead.
Mark Sellner, a retired tax attorney and CPA living in Sarasota, Fla., uses this strategy. His children sell stock he gives them and fund 529 plans for his grandchildren.
The family’s tax savings aren’t huge, but he likes other benefits. The sales by his children don’t boost his adjusted gross income, which in turn could raise his Medicare Irmaa premiums or his 3.8% surtax on net investment income.
Sellner doesn’t worry about his children using the funds for another purpose.
“There can’t be any strings attached to gifts. Of course, it is up to us to decide whether to make them in the future,” he says.
Two caveats: The “kiddie tax” applies to most children under age 24, and it is levied at the parents’ rate on investment income above $2,700 in 2026. Consider this before making gifts to a young person.
Investors who give away stock also forgo the step-up, an important provision that exempts assets held at death from capital-gains tax.
Sellner knows he’s losing a step-up, but says, “The children could use a little more now. Why should they wait 20 years to get it?”
A disclaimer is a highly useful strategy in which one heir renounces an inheritance in favor of another heir. Assuming family members cooperate, this can save taxes.
Here’s one example. Dad died and had a large traditional IRA that he left to Mom. She has enough assets and income to cover her expenses, and she lives in a state with a stiff estate tax. The inherited IRA would put her estate over the threshold.
Also surviving are three young-adult children. If Mom disclaims all or part of Dad’s IRA within nine months of his death, that amount could go directly to the children. They will have 10 years to empty the account, and the family as a whole will likely save estate and income taxes.
Disclaimers have many key details, especially regarding beneficiary documents. Although heirs have great freedom in choosing what assets to disclaim, the rules about who gets disclaimed property are rigid. It is best if the original owner names tiers of heirs so that if one disclaims, the next recipient is clear.
