The Big Money has a bone to pick with financial guru Suze Orman — and unfortunately for her, they really did their homework. Forgive me for pasting liberally but it’s pretty juicy:
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 …
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!”) …
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.”
Marketing luxury vacation packages to her cash-strapped disciples? Shilling for GM and pushing leases on American cars as “smart money”? Invest as I say, not as I do? We’ve been looking for a stock-market scapegoat — burn the witch!
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Not really seeing the hypo here…she isn’t saying these people are bad, she is just stating a fact. People who overspend tend to be the ones hurting right now.
Unfortunately there are too many out there who will all too easily buy into Ms. Orman’s psychobabble about why people live beyond their means and declare bankruptcy. It’s more interesting (and blindly self-absorbed) than boring divorce, job loss and giant medical bills.
And Orman calls herself a “55-year-old virgin”? TMI, Suze. Way TMI.
MAN! She’s just one digit away from gun fingers!!!
Nice jacket Suze, who shot the couch?
I don’t mind getting advise from people who know and understand the eccomony. If you are that smart and give people such specific advise, you should be walking the walk. However, someone who doesn’t practice what she preaches just drives me insane. Its like having an overweight dietician. Just doesn’t work for me.
Jrod, I think the hypocrisy is that Ms. Orman, finance expert extraordinaire, is critizing overspending rubes with one hand and happily collecting their money with the other, and isn’t exactly following her own advice to buy stocks.
Run away from Suze, people! Stick with real experts – you can tell who they are because they’re really boring and not half as tan. Nor are they one digit away from gun fingers.
Not 55-year-old virgin but a 55-year-old lesbian.
Yeah, I didn’t need to know the virgin thing either. It made it too easy to rhyme “Suze” with…well, never mind. Phleh.
Remember folks, Oprah unleashed Suze on the American public too.
So that makes:
Bob Greene, exercise guru to the stars
ADHD chef Rachel Ray
Dr. Phil plus the enterprising wife and son
Sidekick Gayle King (I had to look up her name, duh.)
Money-hag Suze
anyone else I’m missing?
Geeze, It’s like Oprah is opening seals left ‘n right, and these colored horses with dark riders keep popping out. Plague, pestilence, and a bunch’a people who all talk too fast! Cripes.
Anyone that invests in the stock market and then cries when they lose money is not to be taken seriously. The Stock Market is bascially legalized gambling.
It’s kind of comparing oranges and tangerines here. The same financial advice is not necessarily applicable to millionaires and the Average Joe (3% of her networth in stocks is probably more than most people will make in several decades). While I’m sure there is some hypocrisy in her advice somewhere, like Jrod, I’m not really seeing it here.
Minnow, don’t forget Dr. Oz, who seems to have been vetted a little better than Dr. Phil, and quite frankly, every Obama cabinet member.
Rhymes with “Suze”…? ::returns an hour after first reading these two comments:: Oh! I get it. LOL!
I STILL don’t get it.
What am I Allen Einstein?
‘Splain it to Pastafarian, Rocko. Heh.
OOOOHH NOW I get it.
Yep.
But golly, she says she only owns one pair of earrings, that’s how thrifty she is! :-p
Well *I* still don’t get it. I’m gonna go cry in the corner now…
strawberry girl i was thinking the same haha
Forget it. It was crude and juvenile and I shouldn’t have said it in the first place. Sorry.
I’m crying in the corner with Katy because I don’t get it either. *sniff* Oh well.
And Minnow, I heart you more than ever with your wit and your sparkling prose and your end-times references. Yay!
I remember seeing Suze on Kathy Griffin’s “My Life on the D-List”…she gave Jessica (Kathy’s assistant) HOLY HELL for leasing a car! Couldn’t find a clip online, but here’s a recap of the episode with the leased car reference: http://www.afterelton.com/blog/snicks/kathy-griffin-my-life-on-the-d-list-408-all-this-for-a-grammy Wonder how much GM paid Ms. Orman??
As much as I support anyone giving anyone associated with Kathy Griffin HOLY HELL, that is hypocritical. I think Kathy Griffin will, in the end, be forced to yank her skirt over her head and run in circles going “WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP” to get the attention she needs to live.
Thanks, MC Mom. I’m happy not to be the only person here who doesn’t get it ^_^
I’m telling y’all, it’s not worth getting.
Beige, I think you’re right about Kathy Griffin, but I think her desperation plan will work, because that sounds like a heckuva popular YouTube video.
What were we saying earlier about end-times?
Suze Orman is not the financial guru that she believes she is. In fact, in my personal opinion, those who wish to obtain advice on financial decisions might turn to an accountant, bankruptcy lawyer, loan modification expert, or even (perish the thought) their own common sense.
What kills me about Suzan Orman is that she didn’t have any money herself until she sued her lover for money and all of a sudden she’s a finacial guru. She needs to suck on more p—–s to be revelant and then let everyone know and see her technique on how she got her next billionare lover and how she sucked on that cl*t.
Aaaannnnd NOW I’ve got pictures in my head that will never come out.
Pasta, Katy, MC Mom – It’s cooze! COOZE! I can tell some of you are nice folks because you didn’t get it. Conversely, I got it right away. Now that I’ve explained it, you have to use the word Cooze in a sentence, preferably in a post, or even better, on live TV.
Still, Beige, that was a SNOL-inducing post. Sweet.
And back to the topic – Anyone brought to popularity via Oprah should be questioned and picked apart. Oprah is a cancer on our society, and like cancer, she gets bigger and bigger.
Really why would anyone in their correct mind listen to this fool suze. This woman is the center of what is wrong with America, not only economically but also on many other levels.
She is a blight on every free thinking intelligent person that has ever lived.
She twists the truth every chance she gets to make more money at the expense of anyone gullible enough to listen to her advice (if you can call it that).
As far as the Oprah connection they both should be tied in a bag with wild animals and tossed into a river.
If you’ve actually been watching the show, she’s been advocating MUNICIPAL BONDS over stocks for years. And she has been encouraging viewers to build an eight month emergency fund, and pay down (or off) their debt, especially credit card debt – oh, the horror!! I don’t give a hoot what she does in her personal life (though I believe most of her holdings are in munis.) There is a huge lack of financial education in this country. If we spent half as much time on basics of saving and spending and the differences between saving and investing, starting in pre-K, we’d have fewer fiscal illiterates.