Suze Orman. Genius or clown?

[WinWin]

In fact, Suze Orman has gotten rich because she recognizes the needs and desires of her customers, and she satisfies those needs very successfully.

I have to completely agree with this. Unlike many others posted in this thread, I do watch her show. Mostly for entertainment purpose. I am not her fan and I am not in her target audience.

However, I think Suze Orman understands her audience very well. She delivers what her audience might need. I don't think her goal is to make her audience to become fastlaners. Instead she focuses on helping them becoming debt free, learning good financial habits etc. And her advice pretty much serves that audience quite well.

I read somewhere that she doesn't practice what she preaches.

I read that article too. I cannot agree with the author's negative connotation about she not practicing what she preaches.

She has publicly announced that most of her monies (worth several millions) are in Treasuries and tax-free Municipal bonds. Which I think is the correct thing to do for her level of wealth. Once you attain such a level and you are happy with what you have (and if you are not that young too), the objective would be wealth preservation and tax planning, not wealth building. She need not go through the gyrations of the stock market if she is not looking for growth.

Can she give the same advice to lower middle class people in their 30’s and 40’s? Can she advice them to invest their 401K money in tax-free municipal bonds so that they can retire at the age of 65?

In fact, lately, she seems to really be railing against the loan companies for bad loans with NO responsibility given to the people who signed and guaranteed the "liar loan" information (ie, the homeowner).

I generally agree with Diane's comment. To be fair to Suze Orman, I remember her advising people against taking interest only loans and ARMs a few years before our current sub-prime mess. At that time even Mr. Greenspan was saying that most homeowners should take only ARMs since they will be moving in 7 years anyway.

Just my 2 cents.
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Edit:
I posted this after reading only the first page of the thread. After posting my reply, I saw several very interesting and detailed posts discussing in much more detail what I mentioned in this reply.
Note to Self::smx4:
Read the entire thread before replying.

 

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