Yeah, a sexist rant. And I LOVE people who complain in retrospect. A great deal of what you're claiming here sounds truly terrible for someone with such an outsized public persona as she has. I've only seen about 10 episodes of Suze's show, but you and I clearly got different vibes from this woman, maybe because I was not trying to publish a few books on her favorite subjects like you were (so irresponsible to be publishing books capitalizing on the meting out financial wisdom, isn't she?). She is indeed a character, tacky, tanned and inexplicably pointy of canines. But I don't really think that's what your bitter little piece was about, was it? The episodes of Suze's show that I watched all seemed to focus on helping people get out of debt. And it was all fairly practical, if unoriginal advice. Very little of what I saw, if any was very heavy advice on what to do with viewers' extra money... they never seem to have any. Suze is, if nothing else, a very clever lady who knows her beat. She knows people aren't tuning in to find out how to invest, but to find out what course of action is best in their time of financial crisis. They want to know about predatory lending (Oh if only they'd heard of your predatory lending books first, James!), vampiric relatives and what of their many sectors of red ink should be attacked first. The only investment advice I've heard her give was on buying Index funds or sector-based ETFs that let you diversify. Her advice to purchase stocks seems always to push for buying in mildly or highly diversified funds. This is not insane advice. You of course, did not share what you feel is that perfect investment strategy that is so CLEARLY obvious. But you did go on to nail her for one of the most well-established basic strategies in long-term investing: dollar cost averaging. I don't think you meant to come out against one of the most basic long term personal finance strategies out there, but maybe you did. I hope you meant to say that this only works well in a pre-tax or deferred-tax setting like an IRA or a 401k, which would be true. If Suze suggested some other way of capitalizing off of DCA, she's probably wrong, but you didn't detail that problem in her advice. If you're just railing against DCA as a strategy, you're an idiot. And a bitter one. Sure buying post-tax shares of say, a tech stock on a regular basis for a couple of years is high-risk and doesn't really make sense. But buying the same dollar amount in shares of something like VFINX (An old Suze favorite, she says) in your IRA or 403b once every 2 weeks for 30 years is an EXCELLENT way to lower risk and increase returns, ESPECIALLY if you reinvest the dividends. At best, you're claim is poorly thought out and incompletely stated to your readers. At worst, it's just wrong. Maybe your warning is to the savvy investor, but the savvy investor isn’t going to Suze for advice. Unless I missed something, she's mostly proffering fairly solid, low-risk advice to a mostly uneducated crowd about how to keep their heads above water. How many people with an actual income/debt ratio that MIGHT allow them to be wealthy are reading "The Road to Wealth" to make their first million? Not many. Granted you're right about how inappropriate it is that she's touting luxury cars and cruises. But for the most part, she's offering mild entertainment and mildly risk-averse debt consolidation advice to an audience of mild intellects. If she wants to throw in a few higher risk suggestions, I say bully. I don't see you mentioning that magic wealth-building formula that eliminates risk, factors in taxes and counters long-term inflation averages. You're just bitching about hers. Jeez, I could have done that, and I haven't even published any tomes of financial wisdom! And you're right, she probably spends a little too much time on the merits of FICO considering how many FICO products she sells, but it's hardly bad advice. As someone who purchased a home this year, it was the single biggest factor in our mortgage rate and lender once we had our 20% to put down. If it got me .5% less on my rate (the difference in my lender's rate if I'd been 175 pts lower on FICO) that's 40k over the life of my loan. As advice goes, that's not too shabby. But again, you didn't mention what she should have been telling us instead of that. If your point is that she's a sellout and a hypocrite, I think most people could guess that just based on her level of celebrity. If your point is that she's given horrific financial advice, I'll listen to you when you can tell me what you would have done (or DID?) differently to steer a vast, unsophisticated investing public toward that path to wealth that would have weathered this storm. It would also help if you could tell me what you've discovered that beats dollar-cost averaging and diversification in an IRA structure. I'm really curious to see what these high-yield, low risk, inflation-beating new methods entail so I can start on them immediately. If you really want to go after someone that has done real damage to the collective financial intelligence of this country, pen a column on Jim Cramer.

As noted by others, this article is a bit of a personal attack.

"Former waitress"? 7/8 of all the 20 something females I knew had waitressed (including the college coeds).
So what? This is not just a personal attack, not just an unfair personal attack, it's a LIMP unfair personal attack!

Living in the Marina in San Francisco, recently married to a young woman and surrounded by her friends, I find that Suze Orman is a signficant help to them as they struggle with learning to handle credit cards and the myriads of advertising lures and fashions thrown in their faces.

Yes she missed the crash coming. So did a lot of other heavyweights.

One area where I do disagree with her (and with some other pros), is her constant advice to never close a credit card. The point about it kicking up your fraction of credit in use is valid. But she never addresses whether those cards have annual fees (the poor woman with 23 cards, on one of her shows...). Also, I find that with more cards open its easier to make a mistake and get hit with a penalty.

best rgds.,

Doug W.

I can't believe this artical is a headline. This is nothing more than an askew attempt to use sexist terminology to undermind a successful woman. I hope that MSN finds a better article other than this wasteful piece of "information".

I don't think she suggests dollar cost averaging for individual stocks, but rather for diversified mutual funds.

I got very unpleasant feeling while reading this article that its author is either very jealous of Suze's wealth or popularity or just hates her without any reason. So far there was no argument provided of why people shouldn't listen to her advice.
So what that she used to be a waitress? so what that she is rich now? Doesn't it prove the opposite, that poor people have something to learn from her?
I can't believe why this biased article was even published in the first place.