Warren Buffett wasn't rich for most of his career
The math behind the world's most famous investor has almost nothing to do with picking stocks.
By age 30, Warren Buffett was worth roughly a million dollars — genuinely impressive, and nowhere near the story people tell about him. By his late 40s he was worth tens of millions. It's only from there that the numbers stop looking human: about 99% of his current net worth was built after his 50th birthday, and tens of billions of it arrived after he turned 65, according to figures the writer Morgan Housel has laid out from Buffett's own financial history.
Buffett's average annual return, around 22%, isn't even the best on record — a handful of hedge fund managers have posted higher. What Buffett has that almost nobody else does is duration. He started investing seriously at 10 years old and kept compounding for over 75 years without a long break.
Most people hear "compound interest" and think of a formula. Buffett's career is the reminder that it's really a bet on your own patience outlasting everyone else's.