If You Knew Suze Like We Know Suze
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If You Knew Suze Like We Know Suze
You wouldn’t listen to her advice.
Posted Tuesday, February 10, 2009 - 10:56am
It doesn't. And although one of Suze's mantras is how much she loves stocks—"[S]tocks, in my opinion, are the best investment vehicle for the growth of your money over time"—less than 3 percent of Suze's net worth happens to be invested in them. Instead, she's tucked away the vast majority of those royalties ($32 million-plus, after taxes) into insured, government-backed bonds. As she trilled to the New York Times Magazine a couple of years ago, "I have a million dollars in the stock market, because if I lose a million dollars, I don't personally care." (You can still read the complete interview here.)
Of course, Suze is no worse than the financial tabloids, which have been pushing no-load mutual funds as the "new" path to financial security for as long as anyone can remember despite mounting evidence to the contrary. I remember hearing a favorite Suze statistic—that stocks average 11 percent return a year—from my mother's financial adviser at Merrill Lynch just before the bottom fell out of her portfolio in 2000. I won't feign surprise that Orman recommends becoming an informed investor by watching cable financial shows such as her own; more disturbing is her ridiculing of people who don't think that financial companies are on their side as "paranoid." These days, if that isn't reason enough to dump her as your financial adviser—or as your friend—how about this whopper: The long bull market, sayeth Suze, was a result of the economy's "remarkable state of balance." All this while income inequality, the federal deficit, the imbalance of trade, foreclosures, defaults, and personal bankruptcies were skyrocketing. At least we know why she didn't see the meltdown coming.
Suze, my friends, has been lying to us, and we know she knows she's been lying because she herself tells us that she ignores her own advice. (Apparently, it's more important to brag about how many books you've sold than to hang with your peeps.) Which brings us to the awful truth: What we're supposed to love about Suze Orman is not her knowledge and certainly not her prescience, but her ability to turn circumstances to her advantage, the resilience of a waitress-turned-bank-vice-president who squandered a great gig only to make a fortune off of you and me by having the courage to be rich. We are to admire her, just as many of us secretly admire Bernie Madoff (who promised remarkably similar returns to Suze Orman's 11 percent stock market) and the equally smarmy CEOs of those crooked banks that she tells us to trust for their gumption. Despite her obvious flaws, we admire Suze so much that millions of us will fork over more of our dwindling dollars for her new FICO kit—co-branded with Fair Isaac Corp., the largest credit-scoring company in the country—because she now assures us that a high FICO score is the key to our financial future. True, her previous book promised us that we would never be a financial victim again. Not only that, but we would receive the life we deserved, which sounds suspiciously like one of those insidious credit card offers, but whatever. When was the last time an evangelist predicted anything correctly or the phone psychic told you something that you didn't already know? So what if we cannot retire because Suze has been telling us to buy stocks and trust the fat cats? Suze, my friends, possesses the courage to be rich. The rest of us are suffering from a collective emotional roadblock.
Comments
America is a free land and
America is a free land and pressing ur views is something that is rightfully urs if someone does not subscribe to one's view either do not frown over it or then be a good critic and voice your views in a proper manner. This will make for an excellent debate.
Jealousy and Envy
What's wrong with dollar cost averaging and investing in stocks? Taken in context, Mr. Scurlock, nothing. This article is weak on facts and only seems to point out how envious the author is of Suze's fame and fortune. What do you care what she does with her money? Why does that matter, because her situation is different from yours, which is different from mine? It appears she has accumulated enough money to live the lifestyle she has chosen, so I say more power to her. The quote about why people might get into debt followed by a description of her lavish lifestyle is a complete non sequiter. I think her quote is valid: some people who grow up poor end up getting into debt as adults because they want to make up for what they didn't have. I get that. But to compare that to her situation makes no sense. I agree that Suze has a large bullseye on her chest, but Mr. Scurlock has woefully missed the mark.
Dollar cost averaging
actually "Dollar Cost Averaging" usually works well. But it is NOT a guarantee of profits. The reason is that in most world stock averages, there is once or twice a century an enormous drop. So that is possible that you have a 80% drop following your retirement. So it is quite possible that stocks double from here over the next 10 years, then sell off for the next 15, as an example. There is no guarantee that you will be profitable "over the long term". If I have not explained this well, email popcycle4@gmail.com and i will send you more evidence that stocks are not SURE.
looking good in green
"bottle blonde"? What does that have to do with anything she says or does? Ouch. You're looking good in that shade of (envy) green.
God bless you and keep up the
God bless you and keep up the good work.
THANK YOU, I'm SO SICK OF SUZE
James Scurlock, I don't know very much about you, but I came across this article and it is about time someone sized up Suze. Her information is not always that great and her attitude and voice are so annoying and a drag. I swear her nose is so far up her butt you would have thought she made the word Finance. I love Oprah but Suze style is just piss-poor pathetic. Why doesn’t Suze and Oprah start doing something that will really help people with no job, no money and debt, GIVE THEM SOME MONEY. Suze really needs to tell everybody that yes, she did make money in the stocks, but she became a Millionaire selling books and tapes and if you want a get rich quick scheme, get a late night infomercial. She is two botox infections and one pant suit away from coming on right after Jack Lalanne. Some one should quiz her real finance knowledge, ask her how to hedge the financial debt in the international stock market. Maybe she can fix the enconomy!
Good and Bad
Not all advice Suze gives is bad, but not all of it is good either. In the process of accumulating examples for a book, I've watched and noted specific advice Suze has given which is just plain wrong.
One caller wanted to help a friend with bad credit obtain a car loan so they could drive to work. Suze said don't cosign, instead buy the car, provide the insurance and let the friend make payments to the caller. Any insurance person in the world will tell you this opens up an incredible can of worms in the insurance area.
On a recent segment (April 2009) she took issue with other investment professionals who criticized her, by name, for suggesting people buy municipal bonds a few years ago. At the time the stock market was hot and bonds looked kind of dowdy. As it turned out, she was actually giving good advice and people would have been better off investing as she suggested. What she did not confess is she was guilty of the same thing herself in the late 1990s, as documented in the book Bull! 144 Stupid Statements From The Market’s Fallen Prophets by Greg Eckler & L.M. MacDonald. So, if you'd followed her advice all along you'd have been right 50% of the time.
She's also told people to buy individual bonds instead of bond mutual funds and then, when a caller asked about an individual bond she had purchased Suze told her she had purchased the wrong kind of individual bond. (Everyone knows the difference between a municipal and revenue bond, right?)
As I said, some of what Suze says is ok, but some is not. Make sure you sort it out before you implement it.
Miss Suzie
Amazed. That is the only word I can think of to describe my response to your article on Suzie Orman. First, it reflects my feelings towards her self-attained status as a financial guru and even more strongly my amazement that you were willing to publish your story. I thought it was real reporting about a "sacred cow" (no pun intended) that greatly needed a little sunshine on it. I applauded not only the quality of the article but even more so your courage to print it. Well done and thank you. Sincerely, Jerald
This is just another face of
This is just another face of the Oprah machine. She and "Dr" Phil and that Best Life Bob guy and James Fry are all part of the same problem. We want a magic bullet to fix the complex issues in our lives so we turn to the people who offer the easy answer. Instead of going to a medical professional to discuss treatment options to resolve emotional issues we might have we watch "Dr" Phil for a few hours a week and listen to him yell at us with his "get confident stupid" approach. Suze Orman is no different. Rather than studying the complexities related to financial instruments and products in order to make an informed decision about how to invest our money we want someone to yell it to us from the idiot box. Then we want to hear that we are broke because we need to get beyond our emotional hang-ups that stop the wealth from pouring in. Sounds to me like a move to distract us from the fact that Orman and her corporate overlords are getting paid millions for work that doesn't really have much value. If you want to know what products you should buy you can just watch Oprah with her endless stream of "favorite product" shows and shows about how great Oprah is. Perhaps we as a culture should starve all of these fools for ratings and profit by just doing a little work of our own. I also wanted to respond to an earlier comment about sexism in the article. While it's true that the identifying comments about Orman are unrelated to the finance issues around her, they are the sort of comments often used by Orman (and Oprah) to play up the idea that she should be listened to because she used to be something like the stereotype of a lower-class American woman. Orman furthers these stereotypes in her attempts to create the illusion of empathy for her viewers.
Sick of Suze
I always had that awful feeling that something about Suze's pitching was too plastic, too smooth, too easy. They sounded like those preachers who offer to tell us about the way to heaven while they taste of the forbidden fruits here on earth. I am so sick of this awful "you've got to fight your fear of being rich" stuff that I could just upchuck right now--AND I'm a real psychologist. Isn't it wonderful how she doesn't follow her own advice about investing and how glibly she hawks her products never thinking of the damage she's doing to all those people who BELIEVE in her? Just too precious for words, Suze, too precious for words.