Andrew Carnegie: Aim for the highest; never enter a bar-room; do not touch liquor, or if at all only at meals;

Aim for the highest;
never enter a bar-room;
do not touch liquor, or if at all only at meals;
never speculate;
never indorse beyond your surplus cash fund;
make the firm's interest yours;
break orders always to save owners;
concentrate;
put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket;
expenditure always within revenue;
lastly, be not impatient, for, as Emerson says, "no one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourselves." 

(Andrew Carnegie. The Road To Business Success. An Address to Students of the Curry Commercial College, Pittsburgh, June 23, 1885)

Berkshire Hathaway: The Secret Sauce

Except from https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2022ltr.pdf

The Secret Sauce

In August 1994 – yes, 1994 – Berkshire completed its seven-year purchase of the 400 million shares of Coca-Cola we now own. The total cost was $1.3 billion – then a very meaningful sum at Berkshire.

The cash dividend we received from Coke in 1994 was $75 million. By 2022, the dividend had increased to $704 million. Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays. All Charlie and I were required to do was cash Coke's quarterly dividend checks. We expect that those checks are highly likely to grow.

American Express is much the same story. Berkshire's purchases of Amex were essentially completed in 1995 and, coincidentally, also cost $1.3 billion. Annual dividends received from this investment have grown from $41 million to $302 million. Those checks, too, seem highly likely to increase.

These dividend gains, though pleasing, are far from spectacular. But they bring with them important gains in stock prices. At yearend, our Coke investment was valued at $25 billion while Amex was recorded at $22 billion. Each holding now accounts for roughly 5% of Berkshire's net worth, akin to its weighting long ago.

Assume, for a moment, I had made a similarly-sized investment mistake in the 1990s, one that flat-lined and simply retained its $1.3 billion value in 2022. (An example would be a high-grade 30-year bond.) That disappointing investment would now represent an insignificant 0.3% of Berkshire's net worth and would be delivering to us an unchanged $80 million or so of annual income.

The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.

Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) | Cyber Criminals Impersonating Brands U

Cyber Criminals Impersonating Brands Using Search Engine Advertisement Services to Defraud Users

The FBI is warning the public that cyber criminals are using search engine advertisement services to impersonate brands and direct users to malicious sites that host ransomware and steal login credentials and other financial information.

Read more at

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

"Later" By Boucar Diouf

Repost from 
https://savvyraj.com/2019/01/18/slipping-sands-of-time/

Attributed to Boucar Diouf

Hardly the day started and … it is already six o'clock in the evening.

Barely arrived on Monday and it's already Friday.

… and the month is already over.

… and the year is almost up.

… and already 40, 50 … years of our lives have passed.

… and we realize that we lost our parents, friends.

and we realize that it is too late to go back …

So … Let's try, however, to take full advantage of the time we have left …

Let's not stop looking for activities that we like …

Let's put color in our greyness …

Let's smile at the little things in life that put balm in our hearts.

And yet, we must continue to enjoy serenely the time that remains.

Let's try to eliminate the "after" …

I do it after …

I will say after …

I will think about it after …

We leave everything for 'later' as if "after" was ours.

Because what we do not understand is that:

after, the coffee cools …

after, priorities change …

after, the charm is broken …

after, health passes …

after, the children grow up …

after, the parents get older …

after, the promises are forgotten …

after, the day becomes the night …

after, life ends …

And after that it's often too late ….

So … leave nothing for 'later' …

Because always waiting for later, we can lose the best moments,

the best experiences,

the best friends,

the best family …

The day is today … The moment is now …