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
"Tell me what I need to know," people often say to me. "Here is what you need to know," I answer.
—Suze Orman, The Road to Wealth
How a bottle-blond former waitress and self-described "55-year-old virgin" with a taste for the good life became the financial messiah for millions of Americans might be a fun Lifetime original movie. Why the masses continue to invest their faith in Suze Orman in the wake of a financial meltdown she never saw coming is a more timely question. The answer is complicated.
If you've managed to avoid Orman over the past decade, you don't watch Oprah, CNBC, or PBS, and you've probably never entered an airport bookstore, where her toothy, cougarlike visage graces the covers of numerous best-sellers, the latest of which, 2009 Action Plan, has more than 1 million copies in print and has, according to her publisher, been downloaded 2.2 million times at www.suzeorman.com. There, you might also be convinced to open an Orman-sponsored TD Ameritrade brokerage account or buy one of the products that she also sells on QVC, including: the Suze Orman FICO Kit Platinum Version w/Action Planner ($47.70); the Suze Orman Identity Theft Protection Kit w/Anti-Spyware ($39.78); and Suze Orman's Organize and Protect Financial System ($66 plus S&H; Easy Pay! Installment plan available).
Orman is that most modern breed of capitalists, the human-industry, self-mythologizing. "Suze has a unique grasp of the role money plays in our lives, as well as the gift of timing: she tells us exactly what we need to know, precisely when we need to know it." So, at least, claims the jacket copy of one of her books. She addresses her fans either as "my friends" (learned from John McCain, perhaps?) or as "girlfriend." Although she published a comprehensive—and very useful—guide to personal finance in 2001, her first two best-sellers focused on the "emotional roadblocks" to financial freedom. Suze has a lot to say about emotional roadblocks, among other things: "Falling in love is simple—or so it often seems in retrospect"; "Tears are God's way of forgiving you"; "You will never achieve a sense of power over your life until you have power over your money"; and "The stock market is like a pot of soup."
She has less patience for statistics. Although study after study has shown that personal bankruptcies are caused primarily by catastrophic events like divorce, job loss, and, above all, medical bills and that most of us are struggling with a gap between our income growth and the soaring cost of necessities like housing, Suze tends toward psychological causes that invariably blame the victim. Who is struggling these days, according to Suze? "People who grew up without much money and later earn a comfortable living sometimes spend too much to make up for what they didn't get as children. ... People who feel entitled to the good life, or are unconsciously copying a mother or father who lived beyond her or his means. ... If you feel the need to impress people with what you have rather than with who you are, you are at high risk for credit card abuse." This from a woman who spends $500,000 a year chartering private jets and who sells "Cruise With Suze" packages on an Italian luxury liner. (She has also hawked for GM, claiming that leasing a luxury car—you know, the kind that people drive to impress others—is a terrific financial decision: "If you ask me, that's smart money!") No wonder she winks more than Sarah Palin, girlfriend.
But it is not Suze's hypocrisy or even her intellectual laziness that really bothers me; no, that would be something Suze "loves" called "dollar cost averaging," which involves buying the same stock over and over again as it falls. "It's a great opportunity for you when the value of the shares drops," claims Suze in the inaptly named The Road to Wealth, "because you can buy shares at ‘bargain' prices and average down your cost per share." Oh, where to begin? Maybe with the obvious: Since when does throwing good money after bad make you rich?
Comments
Personal bankruptcy causes
Not to diminish the shrill and sheer awfulness of Suze Orman to anyone with half of a cerebrum and ears, but the latest and most methodologically sound bankruptcy study suggests that catastrophic events are only the nail in the coffin for people who spend beyond their means throughout their lives: http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/what_causes_persona...
Thanks
That's a great point!
Scurlock on Orman
James Scurlock, I started reading your article today, "Stop listening to Suze Orman," on the MSN Money web page expecting to gain an informed opinion. The first paragraph told me all I needed to know about you. Your ugly attempt to belittle the lady based on her "bottle-blond" hair, a "former waitress and self described 55 year old virgin" was resprehensible! You immediately destroyed any sense of authority or respectability as a --whatever you are-- to judge anyone or to be taken seriously by discerning, informed readers. I quickly learned that I don't care what you have to say about anything based on that first paragraph! Step back and read it again. It's obvious you have a very strong dislike of anyone you find charming; you are disarmed and threatened by it. It annoys you and makes you cringe to see someone like Suze Orman so happy and in control of her destiny. Perhaps the problem is, you don't feel that way about yourself. I am not a follower but I respect this very pretty, well prepared and informed lady. She obviously is an excellent and intelligent speaker. You owe Ms Orman an apology for being so unprofessional in your personal attacks! You definitely convinced me to "Stop listening to James Scurlock".
Comonow!
The only thing that has tainted my opinion of her advice is that only recently she admitted that the stock market is NOT the way to go right now. She is right - IF you have money to risk (it's the same as gambling in Vegas) and IF you can leave it in for 10-20 years, then go ahead. Actually, probably the most knowledgable guy is that hyper screamer with the Dr. Phil hairdo on TV. He said a long time ago to liquidate and put your money somewhere SAFE. The rest of this article sounds like jealousy - of her success - or is it a suitor scorned?
suze suze
I'm not a Suze Ormon fan. I saw her by accident while surfing TV channels couple of years ago. She was telling a personal story about how she, as a child, wwould sneak in and steal money from her mothers purse. Instead expressing regret for her behavior, she portrayed it as a cute thing that all kids do, and expected her mostly female audience to giggle about it along with her. Although some in her audience did chortle along with her, I, and I'm sure many of them, were appalled. The fact that she, admittedly, was a thief as a child and still thinks that stealing from her mother is funny, tells me that she is a basically dishonest and opportunistic person. This is before the news came out about her secret life as a closeted lesbian. So as not to be overly critical, having a few little character faults probably doesn't matter when it comes to getting rich. Like the man said in the movie 'Some Like It Hot', "Nobody's perfect!" She seems to have done very well for herself financially. Maybe she's a better role model than financial maven.
i hope you have a savings for eight months of income...
because you made need to find another skill. If you wrote this just to be controversial then you succeed. Your facts are so distorted and out of context to Suze Orman's advice on so many levels, that I don't know where to begin. I will simply say that though she often say's "leasing a car is stupid" (or something to that effect) I do believe she is speaking to the millions of "keep up with the Jones" Americans who have been living beyond their means for almost three decades. Her advice is always sound, and people should apply it accordingly. I, for the first time in my adult life, leased a car this summer because 1) I can afford to do so 2) Was unsure of what car I wanted to drive and 3) Had picked a car that retains it's value to the point that if I want to buy it at the end of my lease, I may be able to sell it straight after, at a small profit that will reduce the cost for three year lease. Stop criticizing others and learn how to use your words to create awareness to real issues. Suze is not the enemy, and your just being a hater.
take a deep breath people
OK everybody, let's all just take a deep breath and remember how much bigger our own lives are than just the excited defensiveness we might feel when one of our heroes is openly criticized in public. Suze will be just fine and will continue her career of selling advice for years to come. Accusing people of not graduating from High School isn't going to persuade anyone of anything. Calling Mr Scurlock "jealous" is petty. There's plenty of other rich people in the world and like you and me I'm sure he's equally jealous of all of them, if much at all.
Mr Scurlock, I can't say your column was the most thoughtful I've ever read, but for all it's brevity it does exceed the quality of Ms Orman's books and TeeVee lecturing from my viewing and reading of them over the last seven years.
Her grand sweeping generalizations about both men and women are bold and insulting from the start. Why that's not instantly off-putting to everyone I don't know, but it certainly does not have a place in sound financial advice. Telling women—specifically—how it is they think, that they don't know what they're doing, and that they have no control over their own lives unless and until they adhere to her often vague (and typically berating) money advice is debasing and bizarre. But she does it with gleaming confidence and a wagging finger and for whatever reason, that will always attract enough people to sell colorfully wrapped recycled ideas.
Suze does steal some adequate tips from common knowledge (dollar cost averaging, for instance, is a hundred-year-old theory. Thanks, Suze), from countless other financial pros, and she always has magnificently unrealistic lighting for some reason. But it's the pitch people are buying. She sells the sizzle—not the steak, as they say. Nothing new about this. Nothing new about her "emotional insights" either. Ms. Orman doesn't make her money with financial expertise, she makes it by selling books and DVD's. Ultimately that's just not very different than infomercial real estate personalities who tell you to go to foreclosure autcions—again, common knowledge, but it's the pitch that sells their DVD's. Sure, she sells loads of 'em, but if that's the mark of quality then we should all be eating three meals a day at McDonald's.
What's really concerning to me though is that If she really so dead-on right about how her stock guidance will guarantee steady and secure returns then why on earth does she have so much in bonds? (see her recent NYT interview for her quote) Does she really think people with much more to lose on their investments should be putting their money into the market which she (in the NYT article) clearly explains isn't as safe and dependable as bonds? It just doesn't add up. Her money comes from book sales and lectures. Not from employing her own advice. It's not complicated to recognize this fact.
Maybe some people (women, Suze might have us believe) just can't listen effectively to advice from others (or perhaps just from men?) and need an infinitely self-assured personality (a suspicious character trait in any person, male or female) to tell them they're doing it all wrong because they simply can't control their lives but everything's gonna work out if they just shut up and listen and do as she tells them.
Ben Graham's Security Analysis is a better resource, but it's not a quick read and the plain truth is that successful investing takes a lifetime of patience, consulting multiple viewpoints, many difficult, boring lessons, and is far far less likely to make you rich—no matter who you are—than a good publisher and regular exposure on Oprah Winfrey's TeeVee show.
What a crock
I refuse to believe the author does not understand the concept of dollar cost averaging, so I can only conclude that he is deliberately mischaracterizing it, which I find bizarre. I am not a fan of "Suze" and I have never seen her show, so I have no idea if the advice she gives is good or bad, but dollar-cost-averaging as a concept is a poor choice of centerpiece to Scurlock's "case." Saying dca is "throwing good money after bad" and "buying the same stock over and over again as it falls" is juvenile. Diversifying with index funds is very different from buying one stock; you are betting on a market rather than a company. While the S&P has fallen dramatically over the last year, the last time I checked buying low is still a generally agreed-upon principal. If you are following a dca strategy like me then now is the absolute worst time to sit, or to sell. If on the other hand the S&P does not rise over the next several decades, I defy the author to name a better investment strategy that will work in such a devastating long term economic climate.
Suze Orman et al
Mr. Scurlock I am quite surprised at the number of negative response to your article on Suze Orman. It seems to me that most of the business media are sycophantic and never challenge the self-proclaimed experts. Is it that they are afraid that they’ll be ostracized, their editor will be afraid of losing add revenues or are they just plain lazy. It is hearting and refreshing to find a Mencken style of writing alive and kicking. But why stop with Ms. Orman’s books. Why not take a shot at Barrons and R J Shook. Mr. Shook is the author of a series of books which are published under the title “The Winner’s Circle”. These books are how-to manuals for stockbrokers, giving them instruction on how to become super salesman (check Amazon; those who purchased Mr. Shook book also purchased …). Mr. Shook also has a company, recently purchased by Barrons, which offers conferences at $1,800 a head on the same subjects. Now this might seem pretty innocuous at this point, but the catch is Mr. Shook also publishes an annual list of the top 1000 financial advisors in the country, which Barrons has published the last three years. What makes them the top are based on the criteria from Mr. Shooks books. This would certainly be appropriate if it were published in a professional journal for financial sales people. When published in Barrons it gives the impression that the criteria are based on investment acumen and certainly not skilled salesman and marketers. Of course there is never any mention of Mr. Shook’s Winner Circle Books. Those who are on the list use it as a marketing tool with the public. I have never seen any of this brought to light or come under any type of independent scrutiny.
Dude seriously....
Usually quotes have references. There were a lot of falsehoods within this article. I have watched her show on numerous occassions and what you are saying is in direct contrast to what I have heard her say with my own ears.