Investing

10 Life Lessons From Warren Buffett Every Person in Their 30s Should Hear

Kristin Hitchcock

Published: June 3, 2024 10:30 am

Warren Buffett is a well-known investor and philanthropist, but his wisdom applies to a lot more than just personal finance! As you enter your 30s, you’re in a pivotal decade. It’s time to explore your career path, solidify relationships, and lay the groundwork for the future. Warren Buffett has a lot of advice that applies to this crucial period. 

We’ll delve into ten key life lessons from Buffett that everyone in their 30s should heed. From investing to long-term thinking, we’ll cover just about everything you need to make informed decisions and build a fulfilling life. 

Why Are We Covering This?

While the main goal of 24/7 Wall St. is to help you grow your financial security and wealth, there is a lot more to life than just money! Warren Buffett knew this better than anyone, even after gaining immense wealth in the stock market. By using his wisdom, we can look at what’s really important and help you make good financial choices in your 30s. 

If you feel like you’re playing catch-up in your 30s, you may want to consider looking at our article about Warren Buffett advice for those in their 20s, too.

1. Invest in Yourself

Warren Buffett famously declared, “The best education you can get is investing in yourself, and that doesn’t mean college or university.” He emphasizes that the most valuable asset you can invest in is you. 

That doesn’t necessarily have to mean college or university, though. There are tons of ways investing yourself can be done! University and college aren’t necessarily even the best way for everyone. 

Embrace Self-Education

The best way to grow, especially in your 30s, is by embracing self-education. This means actively building your skills on your own time. Expanding your knowledge is always a good thing, even if you won’t use that knowledge right away. With the internet, you can access almost any information at your fingertips. Use it!

Whether pursuing further education at a university or simply dedicating time to reading, invest in yourself in your 30s. Keep updated on your industry and take time to network with others, too. 

2. Embrace Long-Term Thinking

Warren Buffett also said, “The stock market is a device to transfer money from the impatient to the patient.” This wisdom applies to a lot more than just investing, though. Cultivating a long-term perspective is crucial for navigating your 30s with clarity. If you don’t know where you want to be in 30 years, now is the time to figure it out!

If you don’t have a goal, you don’t have a way to work towards that goal. You’re just floundering around!

Making Long-Term Decisions

In your 30s, you still have decades of life left. But how you act now will help determine how those decades are. Making healthy financial decisions and long-term investing decisions can make your life much easier down the road, but it may mean sacrificing something now!

It’s important to resist quick fixes and focus on building a solid foundation. Whether you’re saving for retirement or shifting career paths to better reach your long-term goals, be patient! Change doesn’t happen overnight, especially after a decade of going in the wrong direction. 

3. Find Your Circle of Competence

Another famous piece of Warren Buffett advice is, “Know your circle of competence, and stick within it. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.” This principle holds true in your career, but you may also find it helpful in other areas of your life, too. 

Your circle of competence is simply what you do well. If you stick to doing what you do well (instead of trying to do what you don’t do well), you’ll have a much easier time. Be honest about what you cannot do and delegate it to someone who can. There is no shame in admitting that something is out of your wheelhouse. 

Identifying Your Circle of Competence

In your 30s is the perfect time to start figuring out where that circle of competence is! This process is a bit harder than you may think. It’s easy to think that we can do anything we set our mind to, but sometimes, this strategy isn’t very efficient. 

There are just some things that you aren’t very good at! And that’s okay. No one has to be good at everything. 

Use your 30s to try new things and figure out what you just aren’t good at. In the future, you can delegate those tasks to others. 

4. Stay Disciplined

Warren Buffett was all about staying disciplined and patient, as we touched on briefly above. However, Warren Buffett believes discipline is so important that it deserves its own section. 

Warren Buffett said a lot about discipline. One famous quote is, “We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” In many cases, being disciplined is all you need to do to get ahead!

It’s a Marathon

In your 30s, it’s important to remember that life is still a marathon, not a sprint. You might be older now but have decades to prepare for retirement. There is no need to get anxious and make poor decisions. While it’s natural to desire quick results, keeping the long game at the front of your mind is important. 

Be patient with your progress, celebrate small wins, and stay disciplined in your pursuit of goals. These simple commitments can help you lay the foundation for your long-term achievements. 

5. Value Quality Over Quantity

Warren Buffett’s investment philosophy has always been about investing in a few good companies rather than running after the next big thing! He also emphasizes “quality over quantity” in relationships, too. It’s much better to have a few very good friends than tons of friends you can’t rely on in a crisis. 

Cultivate Meaningful Connections

Your 30s are a great time for forging lasting connections and building a supportive network. Prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to friends and your investments. In practically every category of life, it makes more sense to focus on quality. 

It’s important to remember the 80/20 rule. Simply put, 20% of your efforts lead to 80% of your profits. It’s your job to find that 20% that’s giving you the biggest return and look for ways to put more focus on those areas. Cut things that aren’t providing you the meaning of profit you’re looking for!

Inevitably, that means learning to say no a lot!

6. Learn from Your Mistakes

Warren Buffett is well-known for his candid approach to investing. Once, he stated, “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” This advice applies greatly to investing. However, it also applies to life in general. 

Setbacks are easily seen negatively, but you should strive to see them as learning opportunities. The more learning opportunities you have, the better! 

Embracing Challenges

Warren Buffett isn’t the only person to recognize the importance of embracing challenges. Philosophers throughout history have considered it vital to growth, including the Stoics. 

Your 30s are a great time to keep learning and experimenting. Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks and embrace challenges as part of your growth. When you make a mistake, analyze it and look for ways to improve. Don’t avoid doing anything if you’re afraid you’ll fail. 

7. Live Below Your Means

Warren Buffett, despite his immense wealth, famously advocates for living below your means. He once said, “Rule number one: Never lose money. Rule number two: Never forget rule number one.” While that makes complete sense for investing, it also applies to other parts of your financial wellness!

Building Financial Security

Your 30s are crucial to start establishing financial habits and prioritizing your future. The following decades will be much easier if you start building a great financial foundation in your 30s! This means creating a budget, tracking expenses, and avoiding unnecessary debt. You want to be gaining money, not losing it. 

Warren Buffett recommends saving and then spending, not the other way around. You don’t want to save your leftovers. You want to spend your leftovers. 

Be conscious of living below your means. Consider what you can afford, and then choose a step below that. This helps you avoid lifestyle creep, which occurs when a rise in income slowly leads to a rise in your expenses. Just because you start making more money in your 30s doesn’t mean you need to spend it!

8. Be Wary of Emotional Investing

Emotions can be helpful. They can tell us when a situation just seems off, for instance. However, emotions aren’t the most rational thing. Warren Buffett and his long-time partner, Charlie Munger, declared, “We’ve never made an emotional decision in our business lives.”

Committing to logic and research when investing and making life decisions is important. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Buffett would agree with the old advice, “Never make a decision when you’re angry.”

Taming the Fear and Greed

Of course, this is a lot easier said than done! It’s easy to say you won’t let your emotions lead you to make poor decisions, but when you’re angry or fearful, it’s easy to get carried away! Your 30s are a crucial time for making good financial decisions and navigating the stock market, so getting started on the right foot is important. 

It’s important to avoid impulsive financial choices based on fear or greed. Instead, cultivate a disciplined approach by conducting thorough research and basing decisions on logic. By prioritizing rational thinking, you’ll be well-equipped to make financial decisions. 

9. Never Stop Learning

Warren Buffett is also a huge proponent of lifelong learning. He once said that those who learn more earn more. This unwavering commitment to continuous learning is a cornerstone of Buffett’s approach to life and business. 

In your 30s, you may have thought that you were done learning. However, if you want to keep growing, you must embrace learning as a continuous, life-long commitment. Those who embrace apathy don’t tend to make it very far!

Embracing Lifelong Growth

You may be at a pretty solid point in your 30s in terms of your career and financial success. However, that doesn’t mean you can stop growing now. If you aren’t moving forward, you’ll start moving backward.

There are many ways to work on refining your skills in your 30s, and this doesn’t necessarily mean going to workshops or doing something that’s taught by a teacher (though it can, of course, mean those things). 

If you learn how to teach yourself, you can acquire any skill you need as you progress in your career. Instead of getting stuck like many others, you can use obstacles as a chance to learn a new skill. 

10. Focus on What Matters Most

While Warren Buffett is worth quite a bit of money, he also recognizes that not everything is about money! Buffett says that, at the end of the day, what’s really important is how much you’re loved. You can have all the money in the world, but your life won’t mean much if you aren’t loved!

It’s important to align your life with your values. Often, the first step is to figure out what your values are. By your 30s, you’ve probably experimented with different goals and paths. By now, you may have a good understanding of what’s important and what isn’t. 

If you don’t, now is a good time to start figuring it out! A popular way to do this is by imagining what a day in your 60s would look like. When you’re 68, what do you want to be doing? Who’s there? Where are you? Once you’ve answered those questions, you’ll know what to work towards. 

Living a Value-Led Life

Your life is always going to be led by something. In your 30s, it’s time to start being conscious of what’s leading you. If you don’t choose what to follow, you risk following something you don’t want to!

Once you identify your core values, use them as a compass to guide your decisions and actions. By consciously aligning your life with what truly matters, you’ll create a solid foundation for lasting fulfillment.