U.S. Bancorp Stock

By simply putting $300 extra each month into shares of U.S. Bancorp, the firm that owns his mortgage, instead of paying off principal each month, this family member should end up with an extra $535,000 net in 30 years, plus own his house outright, and be collecting approximately $33,000 annually in cash dividends.

A member of my close family has been using a technique to build substantial wealth that doesn’t require a high income or any specialized knowledge, extra work, or effort.  I was so impressed by the way he implemented this program, I thought I would share it with my other family and friends (as well as anyone else who reads my blog) without giving away who it is.

Each month, he has a house payment of approximately $1,500, payable to U.S. Bank.  He decided that instead of making an extra $300 payment along with his regular mortgage bill to lower principal and pay the debt off early, he would instead establish a direct stock purchase plan and have that same amount automatically used to buy shares of U.S. Bancorp.  He was convinced the balance sheet of the bank was strong, and the fact that the CEO earns more in cash dividends from his outright ownership of U.S. Bancorp stock made him feel confident that management would act in the best long-term interest of shareholders compared to other banks, where huge bonuses and perks rewarded failure.


The commissions charged for this service are negligible, typically $2 per transaction.  This means that every year, he is investing roughly $3,600 in U.S. Bancorp common stock, with instructions that all of the dividends should be reinvested.  The mortgage on his home loan is roughly 5.5%.  How much will he make in extra profit from this transaction? (more…)

By Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway)
Speech at Harvard Law School (1995)

Transcription of The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, comments [in brackets] by Whitney Tilson.  Note from Joshua Kennon: I’ve written a lot about Charlie Munger over the years, especially the influence he has had on my life and how we run my companies by using our own mental models.  This is one of the best speeches Munger ever gave … which may be why my family owns about a dozen copies of various editions of Poor Charlie’s Alamanack, including an autographed first edition that sits in my office.

Charles Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Charles Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Charlie Munger: Although I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment — and lord knows I’ve created a good bit of it — I don’t think I’ve created my full statistical share, and I think that o­ne of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left the Harvard Law School with.

When I saw this patterned irrationality, which was so extreme, and I had no theory or anything to deal with it, but I could see that it was extreme, and I could see that it was patterned, I just started to create my own system of psychology, partly by casual reading, but largely from personal experience, and I used that pattern to help me get through life. Fairly late in life I stumbled into this book, Influence, by a psychologist named Bob Cialdini, who became a super-tenured hotshot o­n a 2,000-person faculty at a very young age. And he wrote this book, which has now sold 300-odd thousand copies, which is remarkable for somebody. Well, it’s an academic book aimed at a popular audience that filled in a lot of holes in my crude system. In those holes it filled in, I thought I had a system that was a good-working tool, and I’d like to share that o­ne with you.

And I came here because behavioral economics. How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn’t behavioral, what the hell is it? (more…)


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