Suze Orman
Interview by Jeff Burger - April 1, 2009
Though Suze Orman proclaims her whole life “fabulous,” her early years bore little resemblance to the world she inhabits now. In Berkeley, Calif., when she was in her 20s, she slept in her Ford Econoline van for two months while working for a tree service. Then she spent six years as a waitress, earning about $400 a month. After that, she borrowed money with the hope of starting her own restaurant, but she quickly lost every cent of the loan by investing it in stock options.
At that point, it would have been hard to predict the career that has followed: a stint as a Merrill Lynch account executive; a vice presidential slot at Prudential Bache Securities; the launch of her own financial-planning firm; and then a rapid rise to become probably America’s best-known financial adviser–the “Money Lady,” as her fans call her.
She hosts the top-rated Suze Orman Show on CNBC-TV and Sirius XM satellite radio; appears frequently on CNN and The Oprah Winfrey Show; and has starred in six top-rated PBS specials that have won her two Emmy awards. She has written seven consecutive New York Times best-selling books, including The Road to Wealth, Women & Money and, most recently, Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan. (About a million copies of this latest volume are in print, and more than two million have been downloaded, according to her publisher.) In 2007, Business Week named her the top female motivational speaker in the U.S. and, last year, Time selected her as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
When we recently watched her tape her TV show and interviewed her at CNBC’s New Jersey studios, the reasons for her appeal were on full display. Though she had begun taping at 6:30 a.m. and had been at it for four hours by the time we met her, she smiled almost constantly, exuded energy and self-confidence and colorfully expressed strong opinions about every issue we raised, from health insurance to fractional jet ownership shares.
You may not agree with all of those opinions (and we invite those who don’t to address comments to letters(at)bjtonline.com.
You’ve said your greatest pleasure is flying privately.
It most certainly is. On a business level, time is money. Everybody made a big deal about the car executives flying private to Washington, but give me a break. We’re in the middle of a meltdown. Every second matters. Millions of jobs are on the line. Could they have gone on one private plane? Maybe. But the fact that they drove [on their second trip] was the most ridiculous waste of time and money I ever heard of.
What does flying privately do for you?
It’s efficiency, first; health, second; pleasure, third. When you take a commercial flight, it’s either late, been postponed or whatever. Years ago I had the luxury to say, “All right, I missed a plane.” I can’t afford that anymore. I have to fly in, fly out, be in another place the next day. The only way to do that is on a private plane.
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