She does us all a disservice by owning 5 homes. Her carbon footprint is Godzilla-sized.

Likewise, her aversion to playing the stock market might not best serve her fans.

an economist? I don't know that to be the case. I enjoy her show since she, generally, gives solid and common sense advice to people about money management. As the sole brother among seven sisters I support her efforts to help women increase their awareness of financial issues.

The things she says about taking control of your life and making sure you have an estate plan are good.

But my own financial planner thinks her advice to people to take their money out of the market and essentially hide it under the mattress is very poor...and will make her viewers very poor as well. For sure everyone's situation is different and depending on your time horizons you should do different things. But selling low and putting the money in a place where it gains no interest or a less than inflation level percentage interest is not good advice. If you have 20 years until retirement it makes more sense to invest now on a regular basis in a balanced portfolio. Historically the stock market makes these dips every so often. And eventually it rises some more before dipping again. If you have pressing needs for the money then you do what you have to do and if that means taking a loss by selling low after buying high then that's what you have to do. But if you have an emergency fund in place and a good budget and don't need your investment money right away it makes more sense to leave it alone. Invest for the long term.

So, your argument is that although she's a snake oil salesthing, at least she's a she!

Good luck with that.

I love her Can You Afford It? segment, where she really helps people to clarify their financial status, and remove the emotions from their purchase considerations. I think a lot of her advice is practical and easy to implement. I am not so up on the no stock market thing, but hey, if you follow the rest of her advice, you will have money leftover to put in the stock market without worrying so much about it.

but she says don't put more money into the market than you can afford to lose. It is not the panacea some make it out to be.

I take care of the money in our household (and I am a woman) because I am the one that cares the most about security. I watched Suze about 10 or 15 years ago discussing Roth IRA's versus traditional IRA's and thus gained the confidences to convert our traditional IRA's into Roths and to continue to invest to the limit in Roth's every year. Where I am sitting now I can tell you this was great advice.

Another take away from Suze - just because you paid a lot for something - if you are not using it or never will use it - it is of no value. Give it away. And don't bother waiting for a garage sale. You know you won't have one and if you do you just aren't going to make all that much money. My house is by far a lot less cluttered and more pleasant to live in by taking that advice.

I don't remember her recommending putting your money under the mattresss as another letter writer suggests. Her advice seemed to be much more practical than that. I do believe she was a believer in paying off your home particularly for older women which is very conservative advice and in the case of my mother-in-law was the thing to do.

My advice is to read or watch Orman and also read a couple other books on personal finance. One of my other favorites is _The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need_ by Andrew Tobias.

I don't think there's anything wrong with listening to Suze Orman unless you're listening to *only* Suze Orman, the same way there's nothing wrong with Dave Ramsey or anybody else giving advice in personal finance as long as you're getting information and opinions from as many places as possible. None of them are going to be right all the time.

And most of them are, in my experience, very equal-opportunity about money. Dave Ramsey *is* a conservative Christian... but his personal finance advice has never advised wives to just let their husbands handle things, and in fact he says that both parties should be involved in all major decisions, and that household budgets should be put together by whichever spouse is more of a money nerd, which I rather appreciated. He's also got some good advice about singles finding an accountability partner to do things like discuss budgets and major purchases with; you don't need to go it alone if you aren't married. I'm quite sure that he thinks marriage + kids is the only "right way" morally, but his advice generally holds up reasonably well no matter what your situation. So, I disagree with his politics, but I like his financial advice.

But he's also wrong sometimes. He's got a screed in his Total Money Makeover book about how students living off-campus are spoiled and spending too much, while dorms and campus food plans are almost always more expensive than a shared apartment. So you can't just turn your brain off and do whatever he says. The same, I presume, with Suze Orman.

I've still got my free PDF of Women and Money sitting someplace... I should get around to reading it sometime. I have YFB, but I admit I found most of the advice in it to be generally correct but also uninspiring.

...her portfolio is barely in the market. She made her money by having people give her money by talking about money, rather than investing in more reproducible ways. In this way, Ms. Orman runs a pyramid scheme and guess who has the good view, from her five homes?

Ms. Hepola might have noted that, but she was likely distracted by her saucy slant.

But hey, I want a red star: How about if I echo what Ms. Hepola said and then some intern who was given 1.2 minutes of instruction can slap a red star on this post:

Heck, yes, I love Suze Orman