QuestionerFor my children, I would like to hear from both of you as far as the temptation to keeping up with the Joneses. And can you give them advice that they can live by with respect to frugality, debt, and work ethic?
OtherYeah, just tell them to keep up with the buffets.
WarrenWell, Charlie and I have always been big fans of living within your income, and if you do that, you'll have. have a whole lot more income later on. And, you know, I think they will, to a considerable extent, not a perfect extent, they will follow the example of their parents. I mean, if their parents are coveting, you know, every possession of their neighbor, you know, or trying to figure out ways to increase their cost of living without necessarily their standard of living, the kids are likely to pick up on it. But now you can get the reverse effect. If you get too tough with them, they go crazy later on. There are choices, and there are advantages to spending money in various forms for your family when it's young and giving them various forms of enjoyment or education or whatever it may be. So I don't advocate, I mean, practice, but I don't advocate extreme frugality. The, and I don't say that it's always better to be saving ten, percent of your income instead of 5% of your income. I think it's crazy to be spending 105% of your income, and I think that that leads to all kinds of problems, and I get letters from people every day that have experienced those problems. But I, you know, in the end, you want to have an internal scorecard. I mean, you are not a, you are not a better person or a worse person because you live a different kind of life than your neighbor. You live a life that, you know, is true to yourself.