Putting a Price Tag on Emotions: Suze Orman Simplified

The first way I got involved in personal finance was from my grandfather, but much of his advice was what I would affectionately term “old-school”. He was big into vanguard no-load mutual funds and pay yourself first. And although much of this advice still works today, it was very hard to apply it to my life at the time. And it was also hard to convince me as a college student that I needed to save money..and save money aggressively. The problem with some of the advice that my grandfather gave me was that it did not address the emotional components of money.

Enter Suze

Many people within the personal finance world really don’t like Suze Orman, but I do. Others are big fans of Bach or Ramsey, but neither of them has really jumped out at me like Suze Orman has. I think that there are times when she can become more like a therapist and some of her advice is somewhat harsh, but there are few situations where I could say I honestly disagree with what she is saying. And more important than her advice on individual questions, in my opinion, is the fact that she is a smart, rich, woman who provides not just answers, but a philosophy when it comes to money that fills a large void in the personal finance world. No amount of “Automatic” millionaire type advice was going to work for me until I started to work on the emotional issues that Suze Orman brought up.

Her Personal Finance Empire

Suze Orman’s personal finance empire is huge. She has written several books on personal finance. She has a website. And she also hosts a call-in show on CNBC which I really like because you see real people and their questions and issues. And now she writes a regular column for Yahoo! Finance. Once you get your finances together, her information is a great reminder of where you came from and helps you stay current as well. Her advice, like most Personal Finance advice can become repetitive, so I would not read all of her books or watch every show she has, but instead I would recommend Suze’s early work, the 9 steps to financial freedom. I even gave this book to my mother as a Christmas gift this year.

This is because it was written early on in Suze’s career and addresses these real issues that I am mentioning: the emotional components to personal finance. For many people, myself included, I needed to understand why I felt the way I did about money and debt and loans before I could really tackle what was important to me—enough to make a plan and stick to it. Before I really became involved thanks to Suze Orman, I found that I was only partially able to save and I was not able to figure out whether or not it made sense to save and how, despite tons of good advice from my grandfather. He taught me the mechanics, the math. But I learned from Suze about the emotional/thought components of money and for me, those were the most important.

In part two I will talk about a few of the main themes from the book so you can get a feel for whether or not it is a book that would interest you.