Suze Orman’s 5 best insights on saving and spending wisely

Curiously enough, personal finance expert Suze Orman believes your most valuable possession isn’t money. Through the years, the charismatic advisor, author, and host of the Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough to Listen) podcast has reiterated that the most important things a person can have are simply time and love.

But even Orman herself knows that warm fuzzies don’t pay the bills, and so she’s built a career demystifying personal finance for millions of people—while amassing her own fortune in the process.

Her direct, no-nonsense wisdom spans budgeting, investing, retirement, and living life in accordance with one’s values. She focuses on empowering individuals—especially women—to take control of their finances and make decisions that lead to financial well-being by emphasizing the importance of avoiding debt and saving wisely.

This simple advice resonates as much today as it did nearly 30 years ago when Orman first appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she has written 10 New York Times bestselling books, hosted multiple TV shows, and amassed a major digital following to explain her approach.

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Who is Suze Orman & how does she help people?

An unlikely leader in the pop finance sphere, Orman began her financial career deeply mired in debt. She graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in social work, but until age 29 worked as a waitress at Berkeley’s Buttercup Bakery, making just $400 a month.

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Orman dreamt of owning her own restaurant, and her likable personality inspired her regulars to lend her $50,000 to get it off the ground; they offered her 10 years’ repayment terms with no interest to do it.

She was advised to deposit the loan into a money market account at Merrill Lynch, but an unethical broker there convinced her to invest in more speculative strategies: buying options.

Tragically, due to market gyrations, Orman went on to lose the entire amount within the span of just three months.

But Orman was undeterred. She took the incident as an opportunity to learn from her mistakes, and incredibly, she applied for—and was hired—to become a stockbroker at the very firm that had lost her money.

Orman passed her Series 7 exam, and in the process learned that the persuasive tactics her broker had used were in violation of a key customer rule. Orman successfully sued Merrill Lynch, and the firm settled by paying her $50,000 back, plus interest, which she used to pay back all the people who had loaned her money.

In 1983, Orman left Lynch and became VP of investments at Prudential Securities before starting her own firm—the Suze Orman Financial Group—in 1987.

Today, Suze Orman has an estimated net worth of $75 million (as of September 2025), and she has monetized her expertise across multiple platforms:

Books and publications: She’s written numerous bestsellers, including You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It (1995), and The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom (1997), which topped the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. She also wrote a financial advice column for O, The Oprah Magazine that ran for 16 years.
Television and new media: Orman’s eponymous CNBC show reached a national audience for more than a decade. Today, she continues to provide guidance on financial literacy through her free Women & Money podcast, which is available on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and Amazon Music. In addition, Orman counts more than a million devoted followers on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Workshops & online courses: Orman taught viewers about the fundamentals of personal finance and retirement saving through several popular PBS workshops as well as courses on her website, including a “must-have” list of documents for basic estate planning.
Apps: In 2020, Orman co-founded and launched SecureSave, a financial app designed to help people save for emergencies.

Suze Orman and her wife of 15 years, Kathy “K.T.” Travis, embrace a frugal lifestyle to espouse their financial principles: They rarely eat out and make coffee at home each morning.

Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Orman’s extensive advice—she’s produced over 600 episodes of “Women & Money” alone—can be distilled into five key themes:

1. Get out of (and avoid) debt

Orman is famous for urging people to eliminate unnecessary debt, especially high-interest credit cards. She believes it’s actually more important than accumulating savings, since the interest you will save from reducing your debt outweighs what you would earn through a savings account.

In an interview with TheStreet, Orman encouraged people not to hide their negative cash flow but rather to “tell everyone you know” about their debt, because that way, they’ll stop asking you to do things you can’t afford.

2. Create an emergency fund

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Orman asked readers of her blog to “rethink their crisis expectations” in the age we live in, stating that “a crisis is not a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

According to Orman, planning for the unexpected has now become as important as saving for the future. This rings especially true for workers who are nearing retirement, simply because the “unexpected” might happen sooner than they think.

In 2024, a Transamerica survey revealed that 58% of retirees had to exit the workforce sooner than they originally anticipated.

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“What would your retirement look like if you retired at 62?” Orman asked in another post. “Could you find part-time work to bring in some income? Could you continue with your plan to delay claiming Social Security? Would you have the mortgage paid off?”

Orman’s solution? Save, save, save (of course). She suggests stashing away 8–12 months of living expenses in case the unforeseeable happens.

3. Start saving for retirement early

Orman strongly encourages people to take advantage of their employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, and to contribute enough to receive their full company match.

By starting young, an investor can enjoy the benefits of compounding growth, Orman writes, adding that “A dollar saved today is going to be worth a lot more than a dollar saved 10, or 20 years from now.”

Orman advises investors allocate 10% to 15% of their income into their retirement accounts, depending on their age and financial capacity.

She’s a big fan of Roth 401(k)s and Roth IRAs, because taxes on those accounts are paid before contributions, which allows investors to enjoy tax-free withdrawals in their retirement.

4. Adopt a consistent long-term investment approach

Orman also champions taking the “long view” when investing and either dollar cost averaging, or buying a fixed amount of shares on a consistent basis, or value cost averaging, which adjusts your buying to maintain a target portfolio value.

She also revealed one easy move that can automatically (pun intended) improve your financial life: Automating your investments.

This is one of the main ways to build wealth steadily while avoiding short-term market fluctuations, thus guaranteeing “money for tomorrows,” as Orman puts it.

She also suggests opening an account with a discount brokerage, like TD Ameritrade or Schwab, so you can have your money sent from your checking account into your IRA or other investment account at regular intervals.

5. Align your financial IQ with your EQ

Orman devoted an entire book, The Courage to Be Rich (1999), to examining the psychological drivers behind financial decisions. In it, she asked us to “look within,” because when we achieve a state of emotional clarity, financial clarity will “always follow.”

In 2025, Orman revisited the subject by launching a self-assessment tool that calculates a person’s “Emotional Money Score.” It ranks responses from being “emotionally overwhelmed” all the way up to being “emotionally empowered.”

Orman emphasizes that most financial mistakes are not due to ignorance; rather, they are driven by emotions like fear and shame. These feelings can lead to impulsive spending, panic-selling during market volatility, or resisting financial matters altogether, and have led to the emergence of the field of psychology known as financial trauma.