← Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
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Hi, everybody. Suzio here. Now, what is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure. And there is no better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account. It is essential for your financial foundation. So all of you should be participating in the Ultimate Opportunity Savings Account at Alliant Credit Union. Go to myalliant.com to find out more. And be secure. March 1st, 2026. Welcome, everybody, to the Women and Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Can you just even believe it's March? But I know when we're in March, that's our signal to. To march ahead with everything, no matter what we have to face, no matter what happens in the month of March, we just have to keep moving forward. So let's march and march and march. That's how I always think about this month, because for some reason, crazy things happen, in my opinion, in the month of March. And that was true because look at what's happening right now. We've attacked Iran, they have retaliated. And the United States joining forces with Israel. Now we have that going on. We have what's happening with Cuba and the United States going on. We still have Venezuela. That has to be decided. We have ICE that's still out of control, if you ask me. We have all of these things going on. And here we are in the month of March. So I decided that it's really, really important that we march into the independence of our own lives. How many times have I said, you can't be dependent on the government or anything else. They can't even save themselves, which I think we're seeing every day. I don't care what side of the fence you're on. Everybody is making serious mistakes, if you ask me. So what can we do as individuals? And what I realized is our main goal in life is, yes, I know the goal of money is to be secure. I get that. You get that. But our main goal in life is to live a life where we have no regrets, everybody. And if we live a life where we have no regrets, then we are secure, not only hopefully, financially, but emotionally, psychologically, every possible way. And I'm so afraid that so many of us really are living a life that's going to lead to regrets because we are afraid to stand in our own truth. We are afraid to take our own power. We're afraid to tell people that we don't want in our lives anymore to get out of our lives. We're just afraid to take actions that one day would make it so that we wouldn't have a life of regrets, but instead we live in a state of fear in most cases. So today we have a Susie School about living a life. So you have no regrets. Okay. Because I have you, by the way, taken out your little Suzy notebooks because I'm just rambling today. And that's what I'm going to do for the rest of this podcast. I'm going to ramble, hopefully right into your heart. So I just have to tell you something. After all these years and so many of them, after sitting with people who are dying, after talking to women who lost their partners, after hearing from people who had millions and people who had nothing, do you know what nobody has ever said to me? They have never said, I wish I had made 2% more on my portfolio. They just don't say those types of things. What do they say? They say, I wish I had forgiven sooner. I wish I had taken that trip. I wish I had said, I love you more. I wish I hadn't stayed so afraid. So regret is almost always about fear. It just is. It's the fear of, truthfully, everyone looking foolish, losing money, being alone, starting over, saying no, saying yes. And I have met women who have stayed in marriages they knew were wrong for 20 years because they were afraid they couldn't serve, survive financially. I've met women who had 5 million and were afraid to spend $5,000 on something that would bring them joy. So regret comes when fear runs your life instead of truth. And here is the truth. You are far more powerful than all of you think. Are you kidding me? Last night, I was talking on the phone to my really good friend who is a powerful, powerful woman. She is a CEO and she has been living in fear of telling a friend she doesn't want to be a friend anymore. She doesn't want her in her life anymore. And there were valid reasons why she didn't want her in her life anymore, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. So all of you have got to understand, you are far more powerful than you think. So this is a financial show. Usually that's what we always talk about. So let's go to Money for one second here, because when I talk about money, you know I'm talking about you. You know, you and your money are one. So if you can't do what you need to do with your money, it's because you can't do what you need to do with yourself. So let me give you the top five money regrets that I see all the time. And the first one is not investing earlier. Okay? You tell me all the time. And I know there are men that are listening, but it's mainly the women that write me and tell me these things. So I'm sure there are men out there that do the same thing. But I'm addressing this to everybody who is smart enough to listen. So women tell me all the time, Susie. I waited. I was scared. I didn't think I knew enough. All right, what you all have to understand right now, and you have to write this down. Time is the most valuable asset, everybody you will ever have and you will never, ever get time back. So your biggest regret of all is if you are wasting time because you think you don't have the knowledge, the ability, the capability or whatever it may be to invest the next one. Number two, write this down. Trusting the wrong person. How many times have I said to you, you have got to trust yourself more than you trust others? Trusting the wrong person, such as a partner, a financial advisor, a family member. If something doesn't feel right, it usually isn't. Let me give you an example of trusting the wrong person. I have a friend, a friend who is in Hollywood. She makes a lot of money. She has a lot of money. And she was using a financial advisor that many of her friends in Hollywood were using. Great. And that was a good financial advisor. He was doing fabulous, I thought, for all of them. And this woman is in her 40s and she had all the money that was with her advisor, 100% in stocks. But besides what she had with this advisor, she had a lot of money in a money market account, in CDs, in treasuries. So not all of her money, by any means, was all in stocks. And she didn't need money for a long time because she's very famous in her career and she was going to be able to write and do things forever. Okay? Now she has another financial advisor who happens to be talking to her and says, so what are you invested in? And she tells her what she is investing in. This was another woman, okay? And the financial advisor says, are you crazy? You can't have 100% of your money invested in equities. That's far too much risk for you. Well, guess what my friend did. She changed 100% of the money that she had with this financial advisor that she had been with for years and put it at the firm that her friend told her would be better for her and invest the money properly for her. Now, here's what's so sad. She was invested properly. The woman that she was talking to knew nothing about how much cash she had, how the markets work, anything. And now this woman, seriously, I can tell you, is going to have regrets simply because she trusted somebody else. When I asked her, I said, what? Why did you do that? How did that feel to you? She said, well, it didn't feel right, but it seemed to make sense that I had too much in the market. So I said, so why don't you just go and talk to your current financial advisor? And she said, well, I was afraid to tell him what I thought. Do you see how fear in this situation most likely is going to lead to. To serious regret? Next 3. Staying silent about money. When you are silent, you don't say something kind of like this woman did, in a way. But when you are silent, it creates dependency. You don't ask, what is our money doing? Where is it? You are just afraid to say anything with anybody when it comes to money. So your silence creates dependency on whoever else is dealing with your money. How do you change that? Through knowledge, through getting involved. Because knowledge creates power. And all of you know that I always say I want you all to own the power to control your own destinies. But how are you going to do that if you don't have a voice? If you stay silent, if you stay silent, I promise you, it will be one of your biggest regrets. Next, spending to impress. Do you all understand that nobody is thinking about your handbag as much as you think they are? Nobody is paying attention to really what you are wearing. Your clothes will never make you. Your handbags will never make you. The car you drive will never make you. You make your clothes. You make the impression when you walk into the room. You make everything around you look like a million dollars. You could put a million dollars of clothes on you. And yet, if you are powerless when it comes to your own money, when you don't have the strength to say what you want to say, to do all of those things, you could be dressed in every label possible and you will look and appear like a pauper because people recognize your inner power before they admire some stupid clothing that you may have on. And last but not least, of these five top money regrets that I see all the time is waiting for some day. Waiting for some day. Well, I'll get around to it. I'll do it someday. Someday has to be the most expensive word in the English language. It was someday, that word, that got me to write one of my very best books of all books. I've ever written the nine steps to Financial freedom. What keeps people from doing that which they know they should do with money? They're doctors, they're lawyers, they've raised a family. And yet when I tell them to do something, they say, okay. And then I see them again. I said, did you do it? They go, not yet. I'll do it someday. Someday. You cannot wait for someday. Your new word has to be today. I. I am doing it today. And if you do these few things, they're just five very simple things, then what is it going to mean to you? Like, what does it actually mean to live a life with no regrets, everybody? So first, I'll tell you what it doesn't mean. It does not mean that you made perfect decisions. You're going to make mistakes, okay? It does not mean that you're never going to lose money and that you never failed. I have lost money. I have failed on many things that I tried. I did not always make perfect decisions, I'll tell you that. But that doesn't mean that I regret doing those things because at least I tried. What it does mean, however, is, is that you acted from courage, everybody. Instead of fear. You told the truth when it mattered. You protected yourself. You loved fully. You really loved. You just didn't kind of stay in a relationship because you loved or what you loved fully. You filled your heart to its own capacity, and you never settled. You lived intentionally. Like a lot of times, when I do something and I get a new partner, they want to do a partnership with me, I go, what's the intention behind this? Why are we doing this? Are we doing this simply to make money? Is that the intention? And if that's the intention, I don't want to do it. If the intention is to help people, if that is the intention, okay, count the im. So every one of us has to live intentionally, knowing, why do you do that, which you do? And when you know why you do that, which you do, you will live a life that doesn't have regrets. Because one of the reasons we have regrets is we do something just because everybody else has done it. We do something because somebody else thinks we should do it. No, it's where you know what you want. You feel it in your gut. You make decisions that are good for you, not for anybody else. And you trust yourself more than you trust others. And what does it mean financially? What does it mean really financially to live a life of no regrets? It's, you know where your money is. How sick and tired am I of asking really brilliant people. Where is your Roth IRA located? At such and such a place, they tell me, well, what's it invested in? I don't know. How much do you have in there? I don't know. Well, what did you buy the house for? What did your mother buy the house for? People go, I don't know. They do not know where their money is. So you do not know where your money is. And what it is invested in is one of the biggest regrets you will have. It's almost like saying, where are your children? I don't know. Are you telling me that if you have a two year old, a five year old, a 20 year old, even a 30 or 40 year old, your children, and somebody said, well, where are your kids these days? I don't know. What are they doing? I don't know. Where are they living? I don't know. There is no difference between your children that you gave birth to or adopted and your financial children. Because it is those financial children, one, one day that are going to have to take care of you when you can no longer take care of yourself. Living a life of no regrets means that you have the must have documents, you have a will, a living revocable trust, an advance directive, a durable power, attorney for health care, as well as a financial power of attorney. And not only do you have them, but you have filled them out, you have actually funded them. You have taken the steps today to protect your tomorrows. Also, what living a life of no regrets means financially is this. You are not dependent on someone else to explain your own life to you, your own money to you. Now they can explain it to you the first time, the second time. But you have got to know where every penny is, where it's invested, why it is invested. You have to know everything. Because when you do these things that I just said, you become powerful. And power, I promise you, eliminates regrets, not false power. Not where you say you know, not where you feel like you're secure, but where you know without a shadow of a doubt where everything is, why it's there, how you feel about it and everything I just said to you. Now I have a question to ask you, and this is a hard question. If your partner, let's say you are sharing money with somebody, you are married, you live together, whatever it may be, if your partner didn't come home tomorrow, for whatever reason, they had a heart attack, they died, they just left you, who knows? But if your partner didn't come home tomorrow, would you know? And you better be honest with yourselves Right now, everybody. Would you know where everything is? Would you know how to access it? What to do next? I cannot tell you how many women I have met who were financially secure, but emotionally and really administratively, they were paralyzed. How do I know this? Because when September 11th happened, do you know the number of calls I got from women who were married to the top executives of financial firms? And they didn't know anything. They had a lot of money, but they didn't even know where their money was. They knew no passwords. They knew nothing. And this is what they all said to me during those days. And many women today still say it to me. They say these words and I should have paid attention. Are you kidding me? I'm asking you not to let that be you. So let's just do an exercise. This is something I want you to do tonight. What else are you doing tonight that could be possibly more important than this? So I don't care if you're listening to this on a Sunday, on a Monday, on a Tuesday, I don't care the day that you're listening to this. This is what I want you to do tonight. Not someday. I want you to do it tonight. Where are you not taking your power, everybody? So ask yourself the question. Where am I living smaller than I should be? Does that make sense to you? Next. Where am I staying silent? Where are you not saying something that you're thinking and you're feeling, but you just aren't saying it? Write it down. What financial decision am I postponing because I'm scared? Are you scared to put the money in your Roth ira? In these markets, you have to face your fear. You have to face what's true in your life. There's only four questions here, so here's the last one. If I only had five years left, what would I fix today? Okay? Can you write those down? Where am I living smaller than I should? Where am I staying silent? What financial decision am I postponing because I'm scared? And if I only had five years left, what would I fix today? I just want you to take one action this week. You don't have to fix all of those things. I want you to look at what you wrote down and then just take one action to reverse just one of those things so that in that little area, you no longer will have a regret. And remember, and I've said this to you before, courage. It takes courage to face yourself, to do these things. That's why courage is one of the equalities of wealth. But courage, I promise you, compounds Just like money does. You know how when you invest money and then all of a sudden the money your money invested makes money, and on and on and on. Courage does the exact same thing. Once you take some action out of courage, all of a sudden you realize, oh, I'm courageous. And then your courage starts to become more and more and then you start to do things that are stronger, more truthful, more intentful, and more freeing. You have to remember that your money is not just numbers. It is freedom. It is dignity. It is choices. So I want you to live so you have no regrets. Do you hear me? And I want you to remember, and I've said this before, many times, you are your own greatest rescuer. So until Thursday when Ms. Travis joins us for another ask Katie and Susie anything. I also want you to remember people first, then money, then things. And when I say people first, I mean you. If you put yourself first with everything I talked about in this podcast, I promise you, you will live a life with no regrets. And then you really will stay safe. Bye. Bye. We are strong we are wise we will not apologize we are here we will thrive Together we will rise we're the little bit of faith and everything it takes. We are strong, we are wise Together we will rise. Hi everybody. Suzie O here. And I have to tell all of you, there is one benefit that I know all of you need and your corporations need to offer, and it comes from a company that I helped co found over 5 years ago by the name of Secure Save. So whether you're an employee or an employer, I want you to go to securesave.com/suzie S U Z E and take a look at what I have for you there. I promise you you're gonna like it.
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All right now, neither Suze Orman Media nor Suze Orman is acting as a certified financial Planner advisor, a certified financial analyst, an economist, cpa, accountant or lawyer. Neither Suze Orman Media nor Suze Orman make any recommendations as to any specific securities or investments. All content contained in this podcast is for informational and general purposes only and does not constitute financial accounting or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, legal and financial advisors regarding your particular situation. Neither Suze Orman Media nor Suze Orman accepts any responsibility for any losses which may arise from accessing or reliance on information in this podcast and to the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all liability for loss, damage, damages, direct or indirect, arising from the use of this information. The must have documents discussed in this podcast are legal documents created by a lawyer and distributed by Hay House. Thanks for listening.