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Summary: Hypocrite
Review: Orman made tons of money as a broker and now makes even more bashing them and their advice.
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Summary: BIG CLUNKER
Review: This book is ripping people off. The advice is utter nonsense and given by a woman who was proven to have embellished her credentials. Her biggest earth-shattering advice is: Pay down your debt. Well duh!!!! Now the cat is out of the bag and it didn't even cost you a penny for this advice.
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Summary: Personal Financial Coaching in a book
Review: Suze Orman is the premier financial author for the times. So much useful information. First, she gets you thinking right about money, then Suze shows you how to save and prosper.Suze says that the best financial planner you will ever find is the one that stares at you in the mirror and she is correct. Nobody is more concerned about your money than you are.I moved money out of my bank that was dead money sitting in savings, cd's and money market accounts and opened a money market mutual fund instead. This replaces my bank checking account as well.My investment capitol is now in mutuals (Vanguard 500 index) some blue chip stocks (GE, LRK) and I am using 5% of my portolio for buying options and write covered calls. With the market down, I recently added the Diamonds and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) exchange funds.Along with 9 Steps I also recommend Wall Street Money Machine by Wade Cook and Stock Split Secrets. Great book Suxe and congrats on your new position at CNBC. I look forward to listening to your words of wisdom.
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Summary: Correcting Costly False Beliefs!
Review: My friends who are financial planners tell me that they never meet anyone who does not know the right answer about what they should be doing with their money, but yet no one of these people acts on what they know. The author, financial planner Ms. Suze Orman, seems to be reflecting this perspective as she asks a series of probing questions about what your mental associations to money are. These questions are designed to help you free yourself from harmful associations that may be sabotaging your current thinking. For example, some people associate having money with loss of love (such as through seeing their parents divorce after one parent became much more financially successful). If you find yourself not acting on what you know that you need to do, you should buy, read, and change your thinking based on the questions in this book. This will be a five star book for you. If you already think you know lots about money and always do more or less the right thing, you need a different book (one that focuses on advanced techniques that you do not already know). This book will be a one star book for you, and I suggest that you avoid it. If you have to choose between The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and The Courage to Be Rich (Ms. Orman's newest book), I would strongly advise you to read this one because it is a much better and more helpful book. You can read my comments on The Courage to Be Rich if you are interested. In any case, if you have ideas about money that make you uncomfortable, this is a good book to start with. Then you can graduate to books that will teach you more about WHAT TO DO NEXT. I think that you will find Rich Dad, Poor Dad to be very helpful. Have fun and be more comfortable! This can be a 2,000 percent solution for you (getting 20 times the results you get now -- since almost all investors do much more poorly than the S&P 500 over any 10 year period of time). In fact, did you know that an estimated 80 percent of day traders lose money? Did you know that 95 percent of commodities traders lose money? There must be some pretty powerful false beliefs that cause people to undergo so much turmoil to befcome poorer. If you want to learn about the stock market, start with John Bogle's Common Sense on Mutual Funds.
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Summary: Awsome advice for everyone!
Review: This book contains lots of information and advice concerning how to manage your money. From 401K to trust funds, this book has it all (and I actually retained most of it from the audio book!). I found this book to be based in common sense and have tried to apply the majority of the advice in myown life. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wnats to hav the money to enjoy their retirement.
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Summary: I dumped my loaded mutual funds, thank you SUZE!
Review: I saw Suze Orman on CNBC on January 1st. Then on Larry King and then on CNBC again and the Today Show. She sold me on her knowledge and passion for helping people. So I went out and bought both 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and THE courage to Be Rich.My first course of action was to dump the loaded mutual funds that my "friendly" advisor had sold me. He forgot to tell me how much of a commission he was making on the deal. The funds I selected have outperformed the loaded funds that "professionals" had selected for me on a 1 year, 3 year and five year period. There is no evidence that loaded funds do any better than the no loads. In fact most no load funds that I have checked outperformed the loaded funds. So much for professional advice! I also redesigned my 401 (k) plan at work using SUZES techniques and followed Suze Ormans advice on CNBC to buy the CUBES-QQQ-Nasdaq Index Trust from proceeds of selling the loaded mutual funds. Had a nice run up from $54 to $68 in three weeks. Once again, thank you Suze. Great advice! I am now looking to add other ETF's to my portfolio and have set up an account with a company that only charges $2 per transaction. I like buying EFT's. You get the thrill of the stock market and buying at intraday levels plus have the safety of mutuals. You can also bypass financial advisors and other commissioned sales people and do it on your own.I noticed that Jane Bryant Quinn was mentioned in several posts reviewing Courage to Be Rich. JBQ seems to be losing popularity and notoriety. In our area and other market areas, her weekly column has been cancelled. And her book, one and only copy has been sitting on the shelf of our local bookstore for over 6 months. Nobody is buying it. I asked the sales person at the bookstore and she told me that not many people buy JBQ's books anymore. She was poplular for a short time a few years ago. Nobody asks for her material anymore. The most popular and best financial author, she said is Suze Orman. Cheers to Suze Orman! Kudos to Jane Bryant Quinn.Thank you Suze, great advice!
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Summary: Not the whole story
Review: I think this book did a decent job in explaining some aspects of finance, but didn't tell the whole story. For example, her demonization of life insurance agents simply isn't fair. Not all agents are out to rip people off. Ms. Orman may have had some bad experiences, but that doesn't mean all agents or companies are the same. If I read a poor book does that mean all authors are lousy? When I bought my life insurance my agent certainly didn't get 80 to 90% commissions. I know what he got, and it was only about half of that, and my whole life gets the highest dividend in the industry, an 8.8% dividend. The whole life vs. term issue is another area she badly missed the mark. Term has it's place, but only for temporary things. It's not the "fix-all" answer for everybody. Anyone who has accumulated a significant amount of money knows buying strictly term is baloney. Life insurance is a great place to sock money away because of the tax advantages and lack of contribution limits. A 401(k) and IRA aren't going to get it all done for people looking to accumulate a significant sum of money. Why do you think wealthy people buy whole life? Anyone who says term is the only way to go simply hasn't accumulated a significant sum of money. On the no-load mutual fund thing she also didn't tell the whole story. Contrary to all the hype, the load isn't the significant expense. The annual fund expense is where you get beat up, and no-load funds have higher fees than their front-load cousins. If you talk to a good broker you can find funds with a load that, over the long-term, will blow the pants off of a no-load fund. No-load funds have higher annual expenses. Do the math: If I pay a 4% load on money contributed, and 0.5% per year after that, or pay no load on money contributed and 1.5% per year after that, where am I better off? Well, if you do the math you're better off in the load fund. So much for the hype. If you read this book keep in mind that there's an exception to nearly everything she says, especially in the mutual fund discussion and the life insurance discussion. Just because one company pays their agents a 90% commission doesn't mean they all do. Some pay more to their policyholders than their agents. And keep in mind, not all agents are out to rip people off. If you want to talk to the exception to what Ms. Orman says, talk to an agent from the company that I bought my life insurance through, Northwestern Mutual. I'm a very happy policyholder and I think Ms. Orman would do better by recommending where people go to cut through the hype and buy a good product instead of ignorantly doling out generic advice.
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Summary: It's an OK book, but there are better ones
Review: Suze Orman's "The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom" is a decent book about personal finance, but I like "Making The Most Of Your Money" better. "Making The Most Of Your Money" is more complete in its coverage. "The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom" asks us to examine what we learned and internalized about money from our childhood. Orman is popular on the Oprah Show and on Public Television pledge drives. She's a great speaker and makes money a "touchy feelie" personal subject. For example, we read about Andy's story. As a kid, Andy was sent to buy bread from the bakery. But on his way there he lost the money he had been given. He returned home to face his grandparents and cousins, without the bread. Orman says this explains why Andy has difficulty investing aggressively. He doesn't want to be responsible for losing money (Plus, it probably explains why Andy won't go to the bakery). Orman claims that our childhood lessons affect how we view money today. She might be right, but examining our childhoods for money insights seems just a bit too much for me. I'd rather just have good practical lessons, like Suze's recommendation to buy no-load mutual funds, rather than mutual funds with loads (but isn't that obvious?). I also like her recommendation of indexing your mutual fund money to keep management expenses low. However, I also like selecting my own stocks, which Suze doesn't address. Suze Orman tells her own money story. Her dad had a fried chicken shack which was the family business. It caught on fire one day, and her dad escaped. Realizing he'd left his money behind in the cash register, he ran back into the blazing building and recovered the cash register. When he came out, his arms and hands were burned from the hot register. The young Suze said she learned that money was more important than life, and for many years she became very money focused, becoming a stock broker and, later, a personal financial advisor. Today, Orman emphasizes that money is only one small part of life. She tells us to separate our personal feelings of worth from financial wealth. In fact, she says we shouldn't be too cheap, as that restricts us most of all. She compares people being tied to their money to parrots who, for fear, cling tightly to their perches. The bigger the parrot, the tighter its talons grab the perch. Only by releasing the perch can the bird discover that it can fly. I'm not sure how giving money away helps us financially, but I do agree with her other observation that you must respect your money. For if you don't respect your money, who will? Suze points out that respect for our money means eliminating expenses which don't really contribute to our life or happiness. For example, she says avoid IRAs with $25 annual fees (isn't that obvious?). Orman tells us that if we start an IRA at age 25 and hold it until eighty-five, at 8%, the annual fee adds up to $31,330. "The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom" tells us the importance of investing early and teaches us a bit about the importance of funding a 401(k) or an IRA. This all stems from the power of financial compounding, and I strongly agree with her advice here. She points out it is not what you earn, but what you keep that matters. And, time is your friend when it comes to saving and investing (you'll get to be a fatter parrot). Suze Orman also suggests paying off your home mortgage in 15 years rather than 30 years. Further, she tells us the difference between an 8% and a 7.75% interest rate over 15 years amounts to about $7,000. So, if you are confident you can pay the mortgage in 15 years and you plan to do so, she recommends taking out the lower interest rate 15-year mortgage. This sounds reasonable enough, assuming your retirement accounts are fully funded, and you don't think you can do better just putting the money into stocks or mutual funds. However, I kind of like the flexibility of the 30-year mortgage (especially, given the low rates today). Depending upon which state you live in, Orman's advice on the importance of setting up a trust may or may not be useful to you. There is also a good discussion about long-term care insurance, which pays nursing home and other costs. It's something to be aware of and consider. But, not practical for most people. Overall, "The 9 Steps To Financial Freedom" is probably worth reading for most people. But, "Making The Most Of Your Money" by Jane Bryant Quinn is better. Not as touchy feelie however. Peter Hupalo author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur"
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Summary: This a great book for young people getting out of college
Review: The first day I started reading this book I could not put the book down. I was very excited about all the information about getting your financial house in order. When I confronted other financial professional's, Suze's book really shed the truth about others lies. I am now reading "The Courage to Be Rich" becuase I am in another stage of my life. She has really help me make a difference in my financial situation. I really feel in control over everything that happens in my financial house. RUN OUT AND GET THIS FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS.
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Summary: This book really helped a friend of mine at work.
Review: I noticed a friend of mine taking alot of vacations over the past year and also having the money to buy DVD's that I just knew he wouldn't watch more than once. That's when I knew something was up. So I asked him where he got the extra funds for his lifestyle. That's when he mentioned this book. It sure has helped him. I was going to get it, but I just didn't have the cash.
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