Warren Buffett at 90: The secret to growing wealth

Warren Buffett will be 90 years old on Sunday.

His age, he tells The Wall Street Journal, has played a vital role in making him one of the six richest people on the planet.

In an email this month to the Journal's Jason Zweig, Buffett writes, "I’ve long recommended what I called 'The Methuselah Technique.'"

Specifically, either a high compound interest rate, a long life, or both.

But even a modest but stable annual interest rate, when compounded, can produce spectacular returns over the long run if you're willing to get rich slowly, which is pretty much what Buffett has done.

As the Journal puts it, Buffett "grasped the power of compounding at the age of 10. The sooner the rest of us fully understand it, the better off we'll be."

This Investopedia article explains why compounding makes it so advantageous to start investing for your retirement when you are in your 20s.

More Buffett birthday celebrations

• The Omaha World-Herald has a lengthy profile of "Omaha's megabillionaire down the street," with a very large collection of photos covering many of Buffett's nine decades.
  
  
• Yahoo Finance features a video clip with Berkshire shareholder Bill Smead discussing "Lessons from Warren Buffett on his 90th Birthday."
  
  
• Even though he is certainly not retired, the AARP looks at "What you can learn from the billionaire investor and philanthropist."

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

Some links may require a subscription

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE

For Buffett's 90th birthday, we go back to CNBC's Warren Buffett Archive to find three examples of Buffett and Charlie Munger talking about health and aging, in 1998, 2008, and 2017. 

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS - August 28, 2020

Berkshire's top stock holdings by market value, based on today's closing prices.

Holdings are as of June 30, 2020 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on August 14, 2020 and other filings, except for Bank of America, which is as of August 4, 2020.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS, AND A CORRECTION

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.

In last week's newsletter, I mistakenly wrote that Berkshire's Apple stake had a market value of $124.8 million. That "m" was a typo. The actual value, as of today, is $125.2 billion, with a "b."

Thank you to everyone who alerted me to the error.

-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch