My Monday Morning: Suze Orman

Hey, it's Jess. We're trying something new in the journal feed for a few Sundays this summer and fall. It's called My Monday Morning, a series where the Wall Street Journal's Lane Floreshime talks to fascinating people about how they start their week. First up, Financial Advisor Suzie Orman. Here it is. Hey, I'm Lane Floreshime. I'm a reporter here at the Wall Street Journal, and for years I've written a column where I talk to people who are great at what they do, about the routines and rituals that keep them going. And now I'm bringing it to you as a podcast. For this first episode, I'm going back to the person behind one of our most popular My Monday Morning columns, Suzie Orman. She's one of America's most famous financial advisors. She's a best-selling author and host of the podcast Women in Money. And she lives in Florida with her wife, KT. For her Monday morning, Suzie told me about what she does and doesn't use AI for. The right age to retire, and the key to a happy marriage. We'll get into it right after the break. So Suzie, is there anything you do on a Monday to set yourself up for success or prevent yourself from having a bad week? No, because every day to me is an important day. So you know how sometimes people are like, "Oh, thank God, it's the weekend." And, "Oh, now I have to go back to work on Monday." And then they get happy again on a Friday. That's not how I live my life. Every single day is a new beginning for me. And I believe you and KT manage almost everything you do without the help of an assistant or a manager or a team. So I was curious if and how AI has started playing a role. Do you use an AI assistant? I don't use an AI assistant at all, but in terms of my work or things that need to get done. I'll use AI sometimes for, "Give me the history of this stock." Give me this, give me that, and put them together. But what's interesting about my field, which is finance, all the artificial intelligence sites, whether it's clawed, perplexity, and all of them. Colpilot, chat GPT, they will make serious mistakes when it comes to money. And so I can ask them questions. I play with them. And I try to trick them. And then I correct them. And then I ask the question again and again, they give me the wrong answer. So it's very dangerous for somebody like me to rely on an AI to give me the information that I really, really need. But I like it. I think it's fabulous. I hope it improves as time goes on. It scares me for many reasons in terms of what it might do to jobs and other things. But I don't use it to be better at what I do. I use it just for fun little things right now. Well, I was going to ask you, what would you say to people who want to use AI to help organize their finances? I think they need to be very, very careful. And it depends what you mean by organized as well. It may be, I hear all the things I spent money on this month, this year. What do you think about it? Put it into categories. I think that would be fine. I don't have a problem with things like that. But I think when you're asking AI to pick the stocks you should buy to decide when should you sell? When should you buy? What should you do? I think it could be a little bit dangerous because what do they really know about you? Good stock may be a good stock for everybody, but it might not be the right stock for you. Maybe it's too speculative. Maybe it's too short term. So how are they judging emotionally? Are you able to handle the investments that they are telling you to do? Do they know what state you live in? Are you in a high income tax bracket? Do you have credit card debt? Do you need to refinance? They don't know enough about you to be able to tell you, in my opinion, what you should and should not be investing in on the whole. Could they analyze an individual stock? Maybe. But then you're going to have to decide, do you agree with it or do you not? Right. So it's not really a shortcut. Is what you're saying. You know, when it comes to money, I don't think there are any shortcuts. And if you're counting on somebody else to tell you something, where are they getting their information from? What are they basing it on? I mean, look at all the AI hype and everything around SpaceX. Buy it. Buy it. You got to get in. You should do this. You can get in this way. Oh, SpaceX is going to be part of every single ETF and the indexes and this and that. And if you had listened to it and bought it when it first came out, not that you shouldn't be owning it. But if you had jumped on it with all the hype that was around it, you would have probably bought it at 180, 195. Watch it to go all the way down to 108. Maybe got back in. But I don't think you would have been very pleased with the results. Well, right now America's economic anxiety is rising even among the wealthiest. Like earlier this year, a journal poll found that over 40% of Americans who call themselves upper class or upper middle class say they haven't saved enough money to retire comfortably. How can people take care of their financial futures when they feel like they're being squeezed? If you feel like you're being squeezed, then you need to squeeze yourself out of the things you can control such as your house payment, your car payment, your credit card debts, the payments that you can actually retire. Now, you know, it's no secret. KT and I are very, very, very wealthy women. We are self-made. Nobody did it for us on any level. And there was a time when we owned five homes and lived on a private island in the Bahamas for the last 14 years. I decided, even though we're wealthier today than we've ever been, we have cut all the real estate sold the island. We now live in a condo that I bought all the way back in 2004. And we could, if we needed to, live on our social security checks here. So even though we have more money to make more money, we still need to cut expenses. And so we don't have any expenses now. And so if you feel like you're being squeezed, I want you all to ask yourself the question, what is squeezing you? Right. Well, you mentioned social security and there's been some talk lately around social security and retirement age that you recently weighed in on on your blog. Where do you stand right now? What's the right age to retire? Listen, I'm going to say if you can work the longer you can work the better off you are. If you, it depends whether you are married, if you are single, if you are single, if you could work till you are 70, I'm going to tell you to work till at least 70 or retire when you want to retire, but don't take social security then until you're 70. So I would tell you if you were single, that's what you should do now, if you're married. And maybe your older spouse is the higher earner versus you, then maybe the higher earner waits until they're 70. Maybe you take it earlier, if you need to knowing that if they were to pass away before you, you get to take over theirs, it's, you know, it's so different. Are you divorced? Are you a widow? What's going on in your life? And then do you even have the luxury of waiting? Because a lot of people don't have that luxury right now. So what I would tell some of you, if you have to take social security, because you don't know where you're going to be a year from now, you just need a little help. All of you remember, you can take social security for one year. And if you want, you can repay it back with no interest after, you know, 12 months. Don't let it go further than 12 months. Then you've paid it back. Maybe your situation has changed. And then you can postpone taking social security. Well, what you were saying about not having any expenses reminded me of something from our last interview, which is, which caused the story to go a little viral. You talked about how you'll splurge on private air travel, but never eating out. And you called it eating out one of the biggest waste of money out there. Still true? I did, did I? I couldn't agree with that more if I tried. You know the difference. But let me tell you, well, how it's even gotten worse. Okay. Look up McDonald's, look up Taco Bell. Are you kidding me? $23, $30, just to go to McDonald's for whatever you eat there. We still to this day, eat at home. Katie has made it like a turkey meatloaf, love for dinner today. For lunch, she made congee rice and all these things. We go to the grocery, store and we still do that. Now, do we eat out every once in a while? We do. But not because we want to. We've been invited to eat out, right? Because, and you know, your friends want to see you. And it's like, okay, all right. And what, but if we go out to eat, the, the deal is we have to pay. Because I am not going to let people who I know don't have the kind of money that we have waste their money on food eating out. And especially today, look at around. Is the salad good? Are you going to get sick? What? It's, I don't know. I just think you want to save money eat at home. After the break, Suzy Orman on her routines and her vases. What time do you usually get up on a Monday? And what's the first thing you do after waking up? So, whether it's a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Saturday or Sunday, I always get up around five o'clock. I have a theory that one should always see the sunrise and the sunset. And because it's important not to take that for granted. So every morning like clockwork, even if I go to bed at two, whatever, I will wake at about five o'clock in the morning. Wow. So how much sleep are you trying to get every night? I assume more than three hours, typically. I have to tell you, I'm very bad at this. Everybody yells at me. Mr. Suzy, you need eight hours to sleep. Everybody needs it. Forever, I've never really gotten more than five hours a night ever. And that would be a lot for me. Okay. So after you wake up, how do you like your coffee and breakfast? Well, the first thing, I have a motto, which is people first, then money, then things, which everybody knows me by. So the first thing I do when I wake up is I say hi to KT. And I like that. And then I do exercises in bed. I do three exercises, leg exercises that take about maybe five or ten minutes. And then by then, when I'm done with that, KT has made coffee. And I meet her again on the front terrace, where we're now watching the sun that I was already risen at this point. And we kind of just talk, but I like it black with milk or something like that, no sugar or anything like that. But a wonderful way to start the morning and the week. Well, switching years kind of completely, I was listening to a recent episode of your podcast where you talked about eating a hot dog for the first time in 10 years or so. I was wondering, I know, yeah, well, I know you're a very healthy eater in person. I was wondering, is there anything you like to indulge in more regularly or anything you consider a vice? You know, years ago, I would have told you Taco Bell. I loved Taco Bell more than life itself. And then it was like, I don't think so. Do I have any vices? I don't drink. I don't smoke. I have only one cup of coffee a day. Everything I eat is very clean. I stay away from salt altogether. I have to tell you, I don't. It sounds like your vice might be one hot dog every 10 years. If that, you know, it's funny, we went to Costco, right, earlier. And I was hungry and KT saw how much I loved the hot dogs when she brought them back before. And I looked at, I said, don't you dare. Don't you dare bring a hot dog into this car, right? And so, and then I came home and what I ate was an apple with walnuts. And I was so happy. You know, I just have to say this to everybody, when you get older, and I'm older now, and I've been through medical problems, your health is so important. I can't even tell you. And the reason that I don't have vices today like that is boy, did I have them when I was younger. That's why everybody, I'm so strict today. I wasn't always this strict. But as you get older, I promise you, if you're not now, you're going to wish you had been. Do you have something you consider the secret to a happy marriage? A secret to a happy marriage. Yeah. I think it's really easy to say, I love you. I love you. I love you. We say it all the time. But it's not the key to a healthy marriage. Like is far harder than love. And I can look back on all the relationships that I were in. Remember, I didn't meet KT tell I was 50. And I can tell you, I said to them all the time, I love you. I love you. I did not like them. I did not like them at all. But you stay because you're like, I love you. But you have to really like them. And from the second I met KT boy, did I like her? And I can tell you this, I like her more today than I did yesterday than I did the day before. There isn't a greater person in this world than KT. So that's a big key. The other one just briefly is money. We don't have joint accounts. We have separate accounts. And whenever we've done a project together, which is almost everything we've done, KT has a contract with the publisher with whatever along with me. So when they pay out royalties or whatever they pay out, it goes directly to her account, not to me and then to her. So she doesn't have to ask for money. She never did. She was also a multi-millionaire when I first met her. But it's our money is very, it's just so separate and everything is so equal and so great. Well, it sounds like you're both very lucky. On a different note, what is some new small-scale financial advice you'd give to someone listening, like something they can put into practice as soon as they finish listening to this podcast? Listen, if you're putting money away in a retirement account, I don't care if it's an IRA, a 401K, a 403B, what I care about is that it's a Roth. I would tell you that if you're going to invest, I think you're almost better off just doing it yourself. Like go to some discount brokerage firm where you can go online and buy stock online with no commissions, ETFs with no commissions. I think you need to be very, very simple and watch the fees that you are paying. I like exchange traded funds over mutual funds. So there's little things like that, but here's the key. If you have credit card debt, you are never going to be able to not feel squeezed because debt is bondage and it squeezes you. So a little thing you could do right now is just start paying off your credit cards. Stop buying things that you don't need today. Simply to impress people. You don't even know or like. Stop it, everybody. So that's what I would tell you. Well, thank you so much for your interview. It was so much fun talking to you for my Monday morning. All right, darling, so take care of yourselves. My Monday morning is part of the journal, which is a co-production of Spotify Studios and the Wall Street Journal. I'm Lane Floreshime, and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of My Monday Morning. Follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on Instagram @LaneFloreshime for more behind-the-scenes stuff from My Monday Morning. And let me know what you think of the show. This episode was produced by Jivika Verma and edited by Katherine Brewer and Sarah Platt. Editing by Nathan Singapak. Original music by Nathan Singapak. Thanks so much for joining us.