We couldn't buy Google on the IPO, but I knew I wanted to own it. I was gonna go big. It came out and went down a bit. I got distracted by something and didn't get in.
Sometimes my mistake has been hesitancy about acting on the decisions I've made. When's the best time to invest? It's today, not tomorrow.
I frankly think we in the financial service world believe we need appropriate kinds of regulations. No question about that. But when something like Dodd-Frank has been created, sort of in the mystery of night, it is a huge document. It's vast. It weighs about 10 pounds when I carry it around.
As a young analyst just out of Stanford business school in the 1960s, I got to really understand what growth was about. Back then, you had to ask a customer to pay some money. That was the most important thing in getting a company off the ground.
I remember, my first bicycle was very much a used bike. I wasn't going to Wal-Mart, buying a flashy 10-speed bike from China. Are you kidding me?
For as little as a thousand dollars, you can open an account at Schwab. I mean, it's not a big barrier to entry.
Just because a stock is down doesn't mean it's a great buy.
I grew up in an era when money was not readily available. We were into the post-Depression years and World War II.
I remember very vividly - I wrote about it in one of my books - my first IRA. I contributed $2,000 every year, and in 21 years, the funds in that IRA account grew to $260,000. Seems like sort of a miracle, but it happened.
You've got to take the road you need to take, and only you can make that calculation. Not your dad, not your friend. You have to take it if you feel it instinctively.
If there's not enough money in the bank account, you don't spend it.
I was about thirteen when I started thinking about the stock market. My dad helped me a little bit. I'd see it in the 'Santa Barbara News-Press.' These prices would change every day - what was that all about?
There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, and I always hoped I was related, but I wasn't. He was a steel magnate. He worked for J.P. Morgan; then he started Bethlehem Steel. But he had no children, unfortunately, and it turned out I wasn't a relative.
I bought all the books, but I probably knew on the first day that law school wasn't for me. I didn't give up until about ten days. I don't think I really told my father. I really didn't like my father knowing my things were not successful.
You want banks to take some risk, but intelligent risk.
I use the word 'passion' a lot when I talk to young people. In every pursuit I've been on, I've had a lot of passion behind it. It continues to motivate me every day on what I like to do and where I'm going.
I never knew the word 'billion' when I was a kid.
On the personal side, family is really important to me. I have a big family - five kids and 12 grandkids - so keeping that going is wonderful. And I do a lot of philanthropy. I'm chairman of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
When I was 14, I did all kinds of different odd jobs. I had a chicken farm, had an ice cream operation in the summertime, worked as a caddy; all things to make money and save money. Save money in order to invest - that was the first step, though I never really accumulated very much because of other demands like bicycles and things like that.
You've always got to think about having some fixed income in your portfolio as well as equities.
