← Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
Suze School: Don’t Let Fear Make Financial Decisions For You
00:25:58
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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.
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March 16, 2025. Welcome, everybody, to the Women and Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen Susie O here and today is Susie School. Although I have been absent from Susie School, have I not? And that is because I just cannot. I cannot win this battle I'm having with my lungs and my cough and everything, El losing this battle. But eventually I will win it. But it's been a struggle, honest to God, everybody. But I really want to do this podcast because I don't want to lose touch with all of you. And really, I don't want you to lose touch with yourselves because it's markets like this, it's times like this, it's economies like this, it's the news cycle like this that a lot of you get so afraid and you're out of touch with how you really feel. What's going on for you, not what's going on for your neighbor or your family, but for you. Just for you. And I have a feeling that if I were to ask you the question, how do you feel right now? How do you feel when it comes to the economy? Do you know what I know you would say? Or at least the majority of you, because you're writing me, you would say, I feel afraid, I feel confused, I feel scared, I feel insecure, I feel anxious, I feel confused. I feel like I don't know what to do. And the list goes on and on and on. And I get that. And part of the reason that you feel that way is because you should. Seriously, you should. Not that you should feel afraid. But when it comes to confusion, when it comes to not knowing what to do, it's very difficult to know what to do when everything around you, everything keeps changing day by day. First, you have hundreds of thousands of employees that have been fired. Now all of a sudden, they have to all be hired back. They're going to take down the phone system of the Social Security so that 76 million of you that need to call in to use the phone won't be there. And now they're putting it back. Tariffs are on, tariffs are off. All of these things really cause tremendous confusion, and rightfully so. But, you know, I was thinking about, what is the Women and Money podcast? What do we do here? Really? What do we do here? And I realized that we actually have a podcast that tackles Your fears and puts you in control of your financial future. Not the government, not anybody else, not a financial advisor but you. One of the greatest emails that I got this week was from a woman, I'm very sorry to say who recently lost her husband and he's left her a considerable sum of money. And she was getting advice from a financial advisor and she asked me about it and I said, no, I don't think I would do that if I were you. And I simply said to her, do you need help? Do you need a financial advisor? Like, what is it that you need at this point in time? And she wrote me back and she said, oh, no, Susie, I've been listening to you for years and I know to find the best financial advisor, I just simply need to look in the mirror. And I have to tell you, everybody, I was so sick that day, I can't even tell you. And that made me feel like a million dollars or maybe a billion. I don't know what it made me feel like, but it really made me feel good. So I get that a lot of you are confused, but what you have to do is you have to have a game plan. You have to know that all of these things that are going on, right? Whether you see the stock market bouncing around or you hear these talks about tariffs and inflation and jobs and everything else you know that you're asking yourself about, you need to ask yourself the question, what does this mean for me? Did you hear that? Everything that is going on right now, you have to ask yourself, what does this mean for me? You need to ask yourself the question then, am I going to. To be okay? You need to ask yourself that question now. I can tell you something right now. If you've been listening to the Women in Money podcast, if you have been doing the things that I've been asking you to do and talking about all of these things, making sure that you have an 8 to 12 month emergency fund and you're being smart with investments and things like that. And maybe in a little bit I'll give you a list of everything I want you to do. I promise you, you are going to be okay. You'll probably be more than okay as long as you stay focused and you don't let fear make financial decisions for you. What's happening in the stock market right now, in my opinion, is many of you are falling into the hands of the professional traders that are manipulating a whole lot of ups and downs on these markets and these stocks. And every time it goes up a little bit, you decide Oh, I have to sell, I have to get out. At least I'm getting my money out. And then it goes all the way back down again. And then a lot of you go, oh, I should have sold, why didn't I sell? And then it goes back up again and again. You now get out. And eventually after they've done that enough, it's going to go up and then it's going to take off and skyrocket again. The absolute worst thing that you can be doing right now is panic and make decisions that hurt your long term security. Because when you do that, when you make decisions out of fear, when does it affect you, it affects you long term. So here's what I really, really everybody needs you to remember that short term news just, you know, things that are short term news should not dictate long term decisions, especially if you have a well diversified portfolio, especially if you have a plan, especially if you're doing the right things and you just are staying the course in your dollar cost averaging or value cost averaging. And you're just doing that. Now. I get that. The new thing that's on the mind of everybody is, Susie, are we going to have a recession? All of a sudden the R word has come back and all of you are absolutely freaked again about that. And my answer to that is maybe, but maybe not. Let me just ask you this. Let's say we did have a recession and let's pretend like we're going to have a recession. Then the question becomes, are you personally prepared? Are you? Because this isn't just about the stock market. This is about what you do with your money every day. It's what you are buying now. It is everything. So the question again is, are you personally prepared? Because whether or not a recession happens, everybody, your financial security depends on you and you alone. And you know that because I've been saying that to you over and over again. So what do you need to have in place right now for you to be financially secure? Get out your little Suzy notebooks. It is more important than ever, especially at this point in time, and I am very serious about this, that you have got to have an emergency fund of at least 8 to 12 months of must pay expenses. And if you don't, your number one priority is to absolutely build that up. Next, you have to really be smart with your investments. Everybody don't get scared and cash out of your investments, especially in your retirement accounts. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. If anything, you know, as the market Continues down. If you dollar cost average or value cost average, eventually it will be okay. Now put a pin in that for a second before I go on. A lot of you, especially on the board, I see you writing, I'm value cost averaging every day into XYZ stock, whatever stock it is. You're doing this and it goes down a few dollars and you buy a little and whatever. Listen, stop it. It's going to go down, it's going to go up. Give yourself a good period of time. The last thing you want to do is run out of money. So you are to designate an amount of money that is to go into any stock or ETF that you want to purchase. And you want to make sure that you have enough in there so that as these markets continue on, because they could absolutely go down big time still that you have enough to buy it. And so you don't buy one or two shares every day. Give yourself a little breather and see how it goes. All right, everybody, don't worry about catching it at the bottom. You will never buy at the bottom. You will never sell at the top. So just take it easy when it comes to investing. Okay, next, let's go back to your list. You have got to not take on any unnecessary debt. So what does that mean? It means no new credit card debt, no new car loans unless it's absolutely necessary. And if you have high interest debt, you are to pay it down now or do a balance transfer to a low interest rate card or a zero interest rate card. But you have got to not take on any more new debt. Recently, somebody in my sphere who happens to be somebody that I like very much, he has a car, his husband has a car. Beautiful cars, no problem. Everything's good about it. And one of his clients offered him a car that had only 4,500 miles on it. And it was his dream car and he had to have that car. So guess what? He bought that car. And when he was telling me about it, he was telling me that he financed it over six years and everything and that now they have three cars and on and on. And I didn't say anything because he already did it, but are you kidding me? This is not the time. This is not the time or the place for you to be buying anything that is not a necessity just because a good deal came along and you got to buy this car and it's just beautiful and you like how it looks. And I said to him, do people look at you when you're in this car? He said, oh, yes. I'm like, mm, are you kidding? Stop spending money you don't have to impress people you don't even know or like, this is not the time. And I don't care how wealthy you are. I don't care. Like, I even said to KT this morning, you know what, kt, I don't know, maybe one of these trips that we have planned in the next few months, maybe we just shouldn't take it. Even though we could spend the money and we can afford it, it's not a necessity. It's not something that we should or shouldn't. It's maybe we just shouldn't do it, kt and we should really conserve everything because it's in our nature. Doesn't matter how rich you are, it's in our nature to not do things, especially when the economy and the stock market is going down, to take on things that are unnecessary. Even if it's not creating unnecessary debt, it's an unnecessary waste of money, in my opinion. So again, I am telling you, do not take on unnecessary debt. And that includes right now, believe it or not, I would not be buying a new home if I were you, if you didn't have to. If it is a want, and you're just thinking, you know what, maybe I want a bigger house, maybe this or that and everything, this is not the time that I would be doing it. I think real estate is seriously going to be affected by a lot of things that are happening out there. And I don't think it's impossible that you could see real estate prices start to come down. For those of you who are selling homes, you might find that you don't want to stick so much on the price as what you set. We're no longer, in my opinion, in a seller's market. And therefore, you should just maybe be willing to negotiate and go a little bit softer. Inventory is increasing. The time on list for a house to be sold is increasing. I'm just telling you, I don't have a great feeling about it all right now. I know it seems like inflation was going down, but now it seems like inflation is going up. So what do you do when inflation is going up again? Kind of what I just said. I want you to cut any unnecessary expenses. I want you to look at what you're spending and the things that you don't need, whether the subscription services or eating out too much. Can you just cut back right now? Can you find ways to increase your income? Can you pick up extra hours, maybe a side gig or rent out a room or whatever it is that you can do. You know, even an extra $500 a month can make a huge difference. And that's enough for you to fund monthly a Roth ira. That's a great thing for you to think about. Most importantly, you need to stay calm because you need to remember that inflation doesn't last forever. It goes in cycles. You can adapt, you can adjust, you can just keep moving forward. Everything is changing very rapidly now. So it's really important that you do this before a recession happens. You have to prepare for tomorrow. You do, you know, you always prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. And I'm not exactly sure what's on the horizon here, but I have to tell you, too many things, in my opinion, are really unsettled. Ukraine is unsettled. Russia is unsettled. Gaza and Israel and China and Iraq, everything right now is teetering. Europe, Canada, everything is changing. So because everything is changing, you need to change too. You need to change to a stance of making sure that you count every penny and you make every penny count, that you really stay involved with your investments. You look at what you have, you make decisions and you stay calm with it. And if you're invested in good quality etf, individual stocks, mutual funds, bonds, whatever, great, then just stick with it. For those of you who are retired or close to retiring more than ever before, it is really important that you have that three to five years in your retirement accounts in cash. Do you remember me telling you that I do not want 100% of your money in your retirement accounts? If you are near to retirement or are retired in the stock market, I want it in cash, which means in money market funds, high Yield savings accounts, CDs, things like that. So that if you need the money, it's there. And you don't find yourself having to sell stock when the stock is down, just simply to do What? Meet your RMDs or whatever it may be? Okay, that's so important I can't even tell you. So therefore, look at your portfolios and make a decision. What should you liquidate right now? What should you not. Things like that. I'm going to repeat this rule of thumb again, which is money that you need within five years, preferably longer, but at least within five years is not money that belongs in the stock market. It can take anywhere from, from three to five years, sometimes longer, but normally it takes three to five years from the top of the market down to the bottom to go back up to the top again. And during that Time if you have to access your money for RMDs or to live off of or whatever that is, money that you want in a money market fund within your retirement accounts or, or a Treasury bill or whatever it may be. So that's really, really important. So these are all things that you really need to know. In terms of the stocks and the ETFs that I have recommended in the past, I'm absolutely sticking by them. Some of them have been obliterated. Absolutely true. But if you had a diversified portfolio, because I own all of those stocks that I've mentioned to you, plus many, many more, when I look at my entire portfolio, I'm only down this year, 2%. I'm not down 50% or 40% because I own more than just those stocks. So you can never put yourself in a situation where that's all you own. You only own Palantir, you only own whatever it may be. You have to be diversified. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for big time losses. Do you hear me? So when you write me and say, do I still like such and such a stock or whatever I do, or I would have told you like I told you a while ago when I thought you should get out of Whirlpool. Whirlpool. I had a feeling things were going to happen. I had a feeling like, you know what? This isn't going to go great with the terrace, with everything. My plan for Whirlpool had totally changed. And did you get out? I don't know. Same thing I told you about Devin. Did you get out? Because here's also the problem. When I tell you about a stock and then you don't listen to the Women in Money podcast every single week, then when I do mention I would sell it and I would buy this instead, you don't know and you still own it. And then you're wondering what you should do. So unless you plan to follow along with one of my suggestions every single week, then I wouldn't be buying anything that I tell you to buy. Because if you're solely depending on my opinion and you're not listening, then you can find yourself where you get hurt. All right, that's what I wanted to tell you. We are in one of the more volatile times I have ever seen. And volatility comes with uncertainty. There's enough uncertainty around oh to fill the Grand Canyon. So therefore, your job now is to be certain about absolutely every move that you make or every move that you decide not to make. But the last thing I want you to do is to come from a place of fear. Because what is the one internal obstacle to wealth that I always talk about? Fear is the main internal obstacle to wealth. And the best way to conquer your fear is to look at your statements, make a plan to get out of debt. Have a plan. Everybody have a plan. All right, so until Thursday hopefully, right. I will be back with Ms. Travis for another Ask KT and Susie, anything. But until then, there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money and it is this. People first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe, strong and healthy. And Susie, you need to take your own advice. Bye bye now.
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We are strong, we are wise we will not apologize we are here we will thrive Together we will rise we're the man of faith and everything it takes we are strong we have our Together we will rise.