Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is a best-selling author, columnist, speaker, entrepreneur, businesswoman and television host and one of the most currently well known financial advisers helping people learn how to manager their money. Today's Out Spotlight is Suze Orman.

Born Susan Orman, she made her first appearance June 5, 1951 on the working class neighborhood of South Side of Chicago, to Russian-Jewish immigrants Ann and Morry Orman. Her parent ran a deli in the Hyde Park section Chi town. Orman has said in interviews she did not "grow up with money". After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the University of Illinois to work on a degree in Social Work, supporting herself with part-time jobs. But it wasn't easy, there were some things to overcome before she got to college.

"When I was five or six I could not pronounce my R’s, S’s or T’s. So words such as beautiful came out as boobital. In fact if you listen closely to me speak to this day you can still hear it. Words such as fear and fair, bear and beer come out the same. Because I could not speak, I could not read very well. Because I could not read, I would always score one of the lowest in the class on exams. I knew I was dumb, everyone I knew thought I was dumb."

While at U of I she shared an apartment to cut costs with one her roommates Judy brought around her boyfriend John Belushi. Orman found herself hanging out with her roommates and Judy and John for the duration of her years at college .

In 1973 Orman left college without earning her degree because she had failed to fulfill the foreign language requirement. Having had--but overcome--a speech impediment of which she felt ashamed, she doubted her ability to learn another language.

Deciding that she "wanted to see America," Orman borrowed money from her brother, bought a van, and headed west with three women friends. She ended up in Berkeley, California, where for two months she worked for a tree service while living out of her van and then got a job as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery.

She ended up completing her degree in 1976 by taking Spanish classes at Hayward State University, while continuing to work at the bakery. Even after getting her B.A. in Social Work, she stayed waitressing at the Buttercup until 1980.

Her dream at that time was to open a restaurant of her own, but she did not have the money for it, she contacted her parents for the downpayment and they told her they didn't have the $20,000 to lend. When she confided her aspirations to a regular customer, Fred Hasbrook, he organized an effort to help her, donating two thousand dollars of his own to a collection of fifty thousand, which he presented to her with a note that read, "This is for people like you, so that your dreams can come true. To be paid back in ten years, if you can, without interest."

On Hasbrook's advice, Orman put the funds into a money market account at Merrill Lynch, but the less than scrupulous broker with whom she dealt put her into very risky option purchases in a aggressive portfolio. Initially her investments did quite well, but a downturn in the market only a few months later wiped out both her profits and her capital.

Knowing that she couldn't make the money back as a waitress, and having started learning more about finances and investing while watching her investments and what her advisor was doing, she went to Merrill Lynch and entered their training program to become an account executive. She discovered during the training that her stockbroker had committed an illegal act and she sued Merrill Lynch while she was still at trainee. Suze received the entire $50,000 back plus interest and was able to pay back her former customers. Suing the company also did something else, it protected her from them firing here.

After she completed the training, she was hired by the firm and remained there for three years when she left to take a position as a vice president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities. In 1987, Orman resigned and opened her own financial planning firm, the Suze Orman Financial Group, in Emeryville, California.

Orman continued her career as a vice-president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities before founding her own company, the Suze Orman Financial Group, specializing in retirement planning, in 1987.

After a rocky start, Orman's company began to prosper. In the early 1990s she started giving speeches to retiree groups. In 1994 the Pacific Gas and Electric Company engaged her to give a talk on retirement advice to some 7,000 of their employees through a satellite broadcast.

She acted as director of the firm until 1997, when she stepped down as her writing career took off with the publication of her second book.

The small-market publisher Newmarket Press picked up on the presentation and encouraged her to write it up as a book. The resulting volume, You've Earned It, Don't Lose It (1994, co-authored with Linda Mead), sold out in minutes when offered on the QVC shopping network. Since then Orman has been a publishing phenomenon.

Orman published her second book, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical & Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying, in 1997, and it topped the New York Times best-seller list for self-help books.

She has written seven consecutive New York Times Best Sellers. As well she has written, co-produced, and hosted six PBS specials based on her books; and is the most successful fundraiser in the history of public television. Two of her specials on PBS, The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life and The Money Show for the Young, Fabulous, & Broke, brought her two Daytime Emmy Awards in 2004 and 2006. Orman has done similar type of program, Suze Orman's Financial Freedom, for QVC, the leading home shopping network, making her one of their top seller.

But it is not easy street, Orman has had her detractors. While she has proven herself a wealth of information about credit and very general financial issues, her understanding of comprehensive financial planning has been questioned by many in the financial industry. Christopher Caldwell of The New Republic, who dismissively wrote that "Orman's recipe consists largely of commonsense thrift" and that she "may be America's most forthright champion of slogans--and of their thought-eradicating potential."

Senior MarketWatch columnist Chuck Jaffe, for example, said she "scores very high on the personality index, but very low on the knowledge and understanding of the complex issues that face a lot of her audience. She's giving generic, simple solutions to people's most difficult problems, and judging from her [own personal investment] portfolio she's taking them on a path she really hasn't traveled herself." And according to MSN Money's James Scurlock, "the personal-finance guru favors supersimple mantras—even when they're wrong—and psychological explanations for all your money problems.

In 1998 Forbes reported that Orman had misrepresented her credentials, and criticized some of her advice as simplistic. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a follow-up article in which a representative of Orman stated that the book's publisher, Crown, used inaccurate information without Orman's knowledge.

But millions of readers disagreed. Her books continue to become top sellers. Phoebe Connelly of The American Prospect notes that Orman's success has been due to "offering what people are actually looking for when they seek financial advice-- a basic literacy in how it all works, coupled with the reassurance that despite what past experience has shown them, it will work for them."

In addition to books, Orman also writes a syndicated newspaper column, an advice column for Oprah Winfrey's magazine, O, and has a column "Money Matters"on the finance web page of Yahoo! For many years, she has contributed on a monthly basis to Costco Connection, a magazine published by the membership wholesaler.

She also provides advice on the weekly Suze Orman Show on CNBC, which is among the highest-rated on the network, and also airs on XM and Sirius radio. Her work on the program has made her a five-time recipient of Gracie Awards, which honor America's "best radio, television, and cable programming for, by, and about women." The Suze Orman Show was named the outstanding talk show in 2003, 2007, and 2008. Orman herself won awards for individual achievement as a program host in 2005 and 2006. She has won more than anyone in the 34-year history of the awards.

She is a frequent guest on such television shows as Larry King Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today Show, and The View and has offered her expert opinions on many news broadcasts.

Her catch phrases are "Self-worth equals net worth", "People first, then money, then things", and "Truth creates money. Lies destroy it."

In February 2008, Orman appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and announced that her most book, Women and Money, would be available for free on Oprah's website for 33 hours. Over 1 million people downloaded the book.

In April 2008 online interview with the The Young Turks, Orman stated that her net worth is more than ten million USD. Orman shared her personal investment portfolio strategy. It is highly concentrated compared with traditional investment theory, which emphasizes asset diversification and a significant allocation to equities for long-term growth. Orman stated: "I have a million dollars in the stock market because if I lose a million dollars, I don't personally care. I buy zero-coupon municipal bonds, and all the bonds I buy are triple-A rated and insured so even if the city goes under, I get my money. I take a little lower interest rate to make sure my bonds are 100 percent safe and sound." She now boasts a liquid net worth of approximately $25 million (with $7 million more in real estate).

In the Feb. 25, 2007, issue of the New York Times Magazine, financial guru Suze Orman revealed that she is a lesbian and has been with her partner, Kathy Travis, since 2000.

During the interview, which covered her latest book, Women and Money, writer Deborah Solomon asked Orman if she is married, and Orman replied initially, "I'm in a relationship with life."

When asked, "Meaning what?" and Orman replied: "K.T. is my life partner. K.T. stands for Kathy Travis. We're going on seven years. I have never been with a man in my whole life. I'm still a 55-year-old virgin."

In reaction to Orman's coming-out, numerous media outlets have focused on her statements regarding her inability to legally marry her partner and the financial repercussions of that status. "Both of us have millions of dollars in our name," Orman told the New York Times Magazine. "It's killing me that upon my death, K.T. is going to lose 50 percent of everything I have to estate taxes. Or vice versa."

Her concerned with the difficulties of same-sex couples in achieving equity, particularly when one of the partners die makers her a strong supporter of same sex marriage, but until then for same sex couple to establish trusts in lieu of wills.

As she has written, "A trust gives the trustee the legal authority to distribute assets immediately to the beneficiaries based on the terms of the trust. No court is involved. No public notice of death is required as it is with a will. All that is required is a death certificate and a trust document that describes how things are to be distributed through the trust. Because a trust bypasses the court system, or probate, there are no fees, and there is no public record of the value of your estate, protecting your privacy."

She has become known for her straightforward, passionate financial advice that often is delivered with a spiritual angle. "In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential," she has said. "It's no different in the financial realm."

She received the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009.


Suze Orman Official Site

Suze's Story (Biography)



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