Suze Orman: Felix’s Defense
James Scurlock had some (bizarre) criticism of financial guru and TV personality Suze Orman a few days ago. It’s quite critical:
How a bottle-blond former waitress and self-described “55-year-old virgin” with a taste for the good life became the financial messiah for millions of Americans might be a fun Lifetime original movie. Why the masses continue to invest their faith in Suze Orman in the wake of a financial meltdown she never saw coming is a more timely question.
There are without a doubt plenty of people to blame for our current mess. Yet someone who dispenses plain-vanilla financial advice in a way that is easy to understand is not one of them. Blame Madoff. Blame Bush. Blame Pelosi. You can make a case for each of these. But Suze Orman? Seriously?
Felix Salmon has it exactly right in his defense of her. Felix notes that at a basic level, “financial wellness is about spending less than you earn, being happy with where you are financially, and not being greedy.” That is, in a single phrase, her message. (And the namesake of this blog). He continues:
In this debt-addled country with its lapses into the unsustainable world of negative savings rates, the pressing problem facing most Americans is not the fact that the stock market has fallen 40% from its highs, but rather the fact that they owe more money than they can realistically repay. That’s why Orman spends so much time on credit cards, and credit scores, and other aspects of the world of debt-peddlers. There are millions of Americans out there who fail to pay their credit card in full each month despite the fact that they have money in the bank to do so. There are tens of millions who have stock-market investments in taxable accounts alongside large consumer debts. And there are probably a hundred million or more Americans who are simply having a huge amount of difficulty living within their means, especially after taking into account their financial burdens.
That is one of the best justifications I’ve read of the pressing need for sound financial advice for most Americans. We do not need more stock pickers, more investment bankers, more wealth managers. Those are in oversupply. We do need the basic precepts of financial literacy to be taught and incorporated into our daily lives. If that comes from people like Suze Orman, that’s fine. Like Felix said, she is delivering a message we should all listen to.
