How Did I Get Here?

Suze Orman

Personal finance expert
  • Education
  • South Shore High School, Chicago, class of 1969
  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, class of 1976
  • Work Experience
  • 1973–80
    Waitress, Buttercup Bakery, San Francisco
  • 1980–83
    Account executive, Merrill Lynch
  • 1983–87
    Vice president for investments, Prudential-Bache Securities
  • 1987–97
    Principal, Suze Orman Financial Group
  • 1995–Present
    Author
  • 1997–2015
    Contributor, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, QVC, Larry King Live, O magazine, Self
  • 2002–15
    Host, producer, The Suze Orman Show
  • 2015–Present
    Host, executive producer, Suze Orman’s Money Wars
  • Life Lessons
  • “Money teaches you what you need to learn about yourself.”
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  • “You’ll never be as wealthy as you are meant to be until you are totally powerful over your own money.”
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  • “Spend only new money. Never touch investments—ever, ever.”
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  • School picture, 1956
    “I didn’t complete my language requirement, so I didn’t graduate from Illinois until I took Spanish at Hayward State in 1976.”
  • “My bakery customers gave me $50,000 to open up my own restaurant. My broker put all the money in the options market, and it was lost in three months, but my bedroom was plastered with Wall Street Journal pages. I got totally hooked. So I interviewed.”
  • Orman on tour—in a personalized bus—for her 2003 book, The Laws of Money
  • “Newmarket Press gave me $10,000 for You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It. I thought I had hit the jackpot.”
  • “The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom came out in March 1997. In October the phone rings, and it’s a producer on The Oprah Winfrey Show. We sold 3 million copies in hardback.”
  • With her partner, KT, on their boat
  • “I was also a short-order cook. I was as fast as they came and loved serving people.”
  • As a stockbroker in Oakland, Calif., 1980
  • “I was the No. 1 salesperson in the U.S. for single-premium whole life insurance policies. I was constantly interviewed—that’s how I got used to TV.”
  • “CNBC allowed me to be on iTunes for free, then they took me off because I was telling everybody to cancel cable.”
  • “It’s like Judge Judy meets Dr. Phil. If you watch Judge Judy, it’s all about money. We solve the relationship, and the money solves itself. It debuts in 2016.”
  • With her “fave” hairdresser, Kim Robinson