Timeless Investing Lessons from Warren Buffett

Mr. Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting in May 2025.

What makes Warren Buffett the most successful investor of all time?

It’s not luck—it’s patience, time, perspective, and a disciplined focus on value. In this post, we explore the strategies, stories, and principles that shaped Buffett’s success and how they guide our investment approach at Wave Wealth Planning.

We believe in building wealth with discipline, patience, and a long-term focus. Few investors embody these principles better than Warren Buffett.

Often called the greatest investor of all time, Buffett’s success is the result of clear thinking, consistency, and a set of timeless principles that work in any market environment.

Over the years, his approach has not only shaped the investment world—it has deeply influenced how we manage money for our clients.

Please click here if you'd like to learn more about our style of Focus Value Investing.

Three Core Skills That Made Warren Buffett a Legendary Investor

1. Perspective

Buffett views a stock as an ownership stake in a real business—not ticker symbol bouncing around on a screen. His mentor, Benjamin Graham, instilled this mindset early in his career. By focusing on fundamentals like cash flow, return on capital employed, management quality, capital allocation, and debt, Buffett avoids being distracted by short-term market noise. "A stock is a piece of a business." -WB

2. Patience

Buffett is famous for waiting for “the fat pitch”—those rare opportunities to buy wonderful companies at attractive prices. Like a master fisherman or a disciplined baseball player, he lets hundreds of pitches go by without swinging. Once he invests, he patiently allows the company’s value to play out over time, letting capital compound again and again.

2. Time

Buffett’s results are like a snowball rolling downhill—constantly gathering more compounding snow in the form of strong businesses. He gives investments a long runway to grow, compounding both capital and knowledge. While many on Wall Street or CNBC focus on the next quarter, Buffett focuses many years ahead, aligning his time horizon with the way real businesses actually grow.

The Principle That Stands Out Most: Margin of Safety

Buffett often describes sound investing as buying $1 bills for $0.50. This concept—known as a margin of safety—is about only acting when the odds are clearly in your favor.

In today’s market, speculation and overpaying for assets are common. Buffett’s discipline is different: Berkshire Hathaway’s $300+ billion in cash reserves allow him to wait patiently for those rare opportunities to buy high-quality companies at meaningful discounts.

Buffett’s Most Important Deal: GEICO

While Buffett has made many famous investments—Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple—his purchase of GEICO may be the most impactful.

GEICO’s insurance float (premiums collected before claims are paid) has been the financial engine powering much of Berkshire’s growth. When GEICO’s underwriting is profitable, this float costs nothing, allowing Buffett to invest it into other strong businesses for decades.

His relationship with GEICO began in his 20s when he made an unplanned weekend visit to the company’s headquarters. That conversation led to a deep understanding of GEICO and the insurance business, and when the opportunity came, Buffett acted decisively.

How Buffett Has Influenced Our Approach at Wave Wealth Planning

Buffett’s investment wisdom is a daily influence here at Wave Wealth Planning. We regularly draw from his annual letters, shareholder meetings, and decades of experience to guide how we allocate capital for our clients.

Every investment decision we make passes through a disciplined checklist inspired by Buffett’s principles—helping our clients grow their wealth in a way that supports their version of the good life, whether that means a secure retirement, sending children to college, or giving back to causes they care about.

What Buffett and Munger Avoided Entirely

Buffett and his long-time business partner Charlie Munger were vocal critics of Bitcoin. Munger once referred it as “rat poison squared." Their reasoning was simple: these assets have no intrinsic value, produce no cash flow, and offer no margin of safety—making them pure speculation. For Buffett and Munger, that’s the antithesis of investing in a real business.

Final Thoughts

The principles that made Buffett successful—patience, time, perspective, and a strict margin of safety—aren’t just for billionaires. They’re timeless tools that any investor can use to make better decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and build lasting wealth. Please click here if you would like to book a complimentary meeting with me to see if we can help you on your journey to financial independence.

Mr. Buffett sitting during an epic standing ovation with Greg Abel (Berkshire's soon-to-be CEO), standing to his left.

At Wave Wealth Planning, we believe these lessons are just as important today as they were when Buffett first started investing—and they continue to guide how we serve our clients every day.

Disclaimer: This post is not and should not be taken as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. This is simply my personal opinion and observations. You should always do your own research and hire your own professionals to help you make investment decisions.