new rules
Personal finance guru
Suze Orman is changing her tune about credit card debt. Before unemployment reached a 26-year high — nearly every expert advised people to pay down their credit card debt
before starting an emergency fund. Now it seems that the advice has changed.
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suze orman
Women's Wear Daily has published a short biography of
Suze Orman, 57-year-old CNBC personality, Oprah repeat-guester, and aggressive promoter of
financial advice and self. Her father's poultry shop burned down when she was a child ("Daddy was a failed man."). At age 30, she lost $50,000 of borrowed money in oil futures, which led her to give up her dream of opening a restaurant and instead enter a training program at Merrill Lynch to pay back the money. Her second book agent—the one who helped shoot her to the top—told her she had to lose 30 pounds to be marketable. And so on: seeing how someone aggressively pursues media stardom is a sausage-making experience. (That same agent says, "I just thought, 'Great. Finally an author who knows she can't write.'")
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personal finance
In
Suze Orman's most recent book, "2009 Action Plan," she urges people with credit card debt to pay off their balances as quickly as possible using the
high interest first method. "The fact that you pay just the minimum is a huge warning signal to your credit card company," she writes, "that you may already be on shaky ground." Now she's changed her mind and says you should
just pay the monthly minimum and put the rest of your money toward building an emergency cash stash. Based on the way credit card companies have been behaving, we think she has a point.
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takedown
Slate's James Scurlock has some harsh words for
Suze Orman. He says she's a liar who is more interested in shilling cruises and luxury car leases than anything else.
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free
"
Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan" is
free to download from Oprah.com for the next week. Unlike last year's "Women & Money," this book is intended for pretty much everyone. We haven't read it, so here's a line from the Amazon editorial review: "There are safeguards to put in place, actions to take, costly mistakes to avoid, and even opportunities to be had, so that you are protected during the bad times and prepared to prosper when things take a turn for the better."
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Consumerist
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