Podcast Episode - Suze School: The Actions You Need To Take Now, With Your Money

In this Suze School, Suze asks, “What should you be doing with your money in your situation?”  She goes through several categories that you need to examine and take action on, in order to protect your money and make sure you feel safe and secure.

Listen to Podcast Episode:

Podcast Transcript:

May 4th, 2025. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast, and everybody smart enough to listen. Suze O here, and today is Suze School.

Now I know, I know on Thursday I told you what I thought I was going to be doing today. And then I realized I'm never going to do that again. Why should any of you ever believe me? Because the truth of the matter is I sit down and I don't know what I'm going to say. You all do know that I have never planned a talk in my life.

It can be 100,000 people, 50,000 people. It does not matter. I walk on stage and then whatever comes out of my mouth is what comes out of my mouth, and the same is true on these podcasts, even all the TV shows that I've ever done, the almost 9 or 10 I've lost count now of the PBS specials I did.

Two of which I won Emmy Awards for. I walked on that stage and I just spoke. And when you do that, it's almost as if the truth of what you really want to say comes out, you know, I'll never forget on this one really big talk, huge audience, so many great speakers, and there was Leslie Stahl.

And Leslie has always been an idol of mine. She's on 60 Minutes. What a fabulous woman! And I'm like, OK, here is my chance. I can say hi to her and how much I love her. And she was sitting on a chair with this piece of paper in her hands, and it was almost like she was shaking.

And she was reading it and reading it. I said, Excuse me, Miss Stahl, I just wanted to say hi to you. I love you so much. And she said, Thank you, but I'm studying my talk. I, I, I, I, I have to do this, so I'm studying it, and I just went, OK, and I left.

But when your words have already been written and you then are reiterating them in most cases not all.

It's just so boring.

They are just words, and when I sit down in a mic or I walk on stage or I do anything on television.

I speak in truths. I don't speak in words, which is why, in my opinion, I think all of you really can understand what I'm saying because the truth is the truth for everybody. Sometimes words are just words for some. So with that said, I do want you to get out paper and pencil cause you never know what I will say. And today I'm kind of excited to see what I am going to say.

Since I don't know, so we'll find out together, but I do know one thing before I begin. Today, like I said, is May 4th, and for me, May 4th is a very, very special day.

Because May 4th happens to be the birthday of one of my most dearest, special, precious, and cherished friends, and her name is Lisa Halliday, and Lisa used to run all of the PR and everything for Oprah.

And over the years when I was doing the Oprah Winfrey show, Lisa and I got very, very close, especially after the show ended, you know, sometimes when you're doing a show and there are producers and everything, you don't get too close to them.

Because their job is to produce and make sure that the people on there are the best people for that show, but when a show ends, then you can kind of go, oh well, now we can be real friends. So what was interesting is obviously that was a long time ago and I just love this woman.

So Lisa, from my heart to yours, I wish you a happy birthday. I know that this is a day that you should be given gifts, but for me you have been one of the greatest gifts that I've ever received. All right, there's that.

Lately I've been more aggravated than I know what to do.

And why is that? Because every single night starting at 6 o'clock, sometimes even earlier, just depending, I make sure that I am watching every single news show.

And most of the news shows have financial pundits on theories as to why what's happening is happening, and I've noticed that every single night now for over a month, the same thing is being repeated and repeated and repeated again.

And what's being repeated is why this is happening, why the markets, why the tariffs are going to do what they're going to do, and over and over and over again the exact same thing.

So it's getting to me because why doesn't even matter any more. We kind of know why I want them to be talking about what you should all be doing.

But given that that's not what's happening, you have to be asking yourself the question, what should I be doing in my personal situation? How many times have I said to you, and I'm going to repeat this forever and a day.

That the government cannot save you.

They can't even save themselves. Who can save you? You.

How many times have I said to you, if you want to find the best financial adviser in the world, look in the mirror, cause nobody, nobody is going to care about your money more than you do, and what happens to your money directly affects the quality of your life, not my life, not a financial adviser's life, an insurance agent's life, anybody's life but your own.

How many times have you heard me say that?

So the truth of the matter is the question at hand today.

That I want each and every one of you to be asking yourself, so write it down, is what should I be doing in my situation.

What actions should I be taking?

I want you to write that down. Did you write it down?

Maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but OK, you get where I'm going here. Now there are 2 or 3 different categories when it comes to your money that require actions.

The first category that we need to look at that most likely every one of you needs to take action on, and that is the category of debt. Now there are two different kinds of debt. There is good debt and there is bad debt. Bad debt, listen to me closely.

It is where you are paying for your present day desires, but your costs are going to be your future day needs, and normally bad debt is credit card debt.

Good debt happens to be debt such as a mortgage, possibly student loan, even possibly a car loan since you may need a car to get to work. So just depending on how much debt that is, those kinds of debt can be good debt.

When it comes to car loans, I just have to say this. Remember, if you buy a new car, the second you drive it off the lot, it goes down a good 20% or more in value.

How do you know how much of a car you can afford? Simple.

If you have to finance it. If you can't afford the payments in a 3 year period of time, in my opinion, you are buying too expensive of a car.

Maybe you need a new car for you. But maybe that new car could be a used car.

But I'm telling you, if you have to finance it for 5, 6 or 7 years. That is seriously bad debt.

So let's just say you do have credit card debt. How do you deal with this debt?

Well, depending on your FICO score, as you know, FICO scores run anywhere from 300 all the way up to 850. Anything below 500, let me just say you are FICO'd. So if you have a low FICO score, chances are you're not going to be able to do a balance transfer to a low interest rate.

Chances are you're already paying a very high interest rate on your credit cards.

If, however, you have a good FICO score 680 to 720, even if you had a FICO score of 760, which is a pretty excellent FICO score, all of you should be looking into doing a balance transfer if you have an interest rate on your current credit card.

Cards of anywhere of 8, 9, 10% or more. There are 0% credit cards out there for like 21 months that you could be doing a balance transfer. Take a look at it and ask yourself, hmm, is this an action that I should be taking?

Let's go back though to those of you who have credit card debt, low FICO scores, you can't do any balance transfers and you just wanna handle this and you wanna get a handle on it right now. What I want all of you to do is to line up your credit cards from the highest interest rate all the way down to the lowest.

Next, I want you to write down next to each one of those credit cards the minimum payment due that is due this month. Now this minimum payment due is extremely important because this is going to be the minimum payment that you are always going to make on these credit cards, all of them, regardless of what they're asking for.

Because I can tell you they want to keep lowering your minimum payment due so you never get out of credit card debt. So whatever it happens to be this month, for example, this is the amount that you are going to pay as your minimum payment due. It is fixed now until all credit cards are paid off.

You are going to total the minimum payment due.

And let's just say the minimum payment due on all your credit cards happens to be $300. OK? You're going to add 20% to that figure, which would be $60.

What you're going to do next is you are going to pay the minimum payment due on every credit card, but you're going to add $60 to the credit card that has the highest interest rate.

When that credit card and you're gonna do this every month when that credit card is paid off, you are going to roll the total amount that you were paying on the highest interest rate credit card to the next highest interest rate credit card.

Plus the minimum payment due that you are already paying on that card, and you're going to continue to roll it down until you are totally out of credit card debt. Once you're out of credit card debt, be very careful about closing down your credit cards, cause when you close down your credit cards, you're also closing down your credit limit. And therefore that could absolutely keep your FICO score lower.

Now I've done podcasts on this before, so you might want to look that up, but that is your action.

The second category is income and expenses. The question is what actions, if any, should you be taking when it comes to your income and expenses.

Now for me, I will always tell you that I think it's a great idea to spend less and save more.

People, I hate this when this happens. Suze Orman, how much money do you really think you need, or Oprah or whatever? That's not the point.

The point isn't about you get to a specific amount of money and then you stop. The point is how you feel about money. And how you value money.

Because when you value money, you are also valuing yourself.

Because what you and your money are one, that is what we have learned on the Women and Money podcast, on the Suze Orman Show, on every PBS special I did. That is the truth.

Now, obviously it's always a good idea in my opinion to spend less and save more. You already know that, so it's important that the first action you take in terms of the income and expenses category is, can you just do me this one favor?

Go back 12 months from now. And what did you spend the entire year? Whatever that figure is divide it by 12, and that in essence is how much you need per month after taxes to live on.

Then I want you to look at your after-tax income. And does your after-tax income after tax and actually after retirement account contributions, does it equal what your monthly expenses average to be, is it more than what your average monthly expenses happen to be, or is it less if it is equal to or if it is less, you have actions to take.

And those actions are: you either have to earn more. Or you have to spend less, or you can do both.

So that's the first thing that you have to get under control to answer the question what should you be doing? And the truth of the matter is, everybody, it does not matter what's happening in the economy.

What matters is what's happening in your financial household.

Don't you want to see everything go up? Don't you want to know as time goes on you have more? You don't want to live a life where you just are status quo, and what you have coming in is what you have going out. You want to build and build for the day that you can't work anymore or you don't want to work anymore.

Or you're one of those federal workers who thought they were going to be working for a long time and now they don't have any income at all.

So it is essential that that category you have control over, you've now been given your instructions of what you should do, I want you to do it.

Next category: investments, whether they are inside or outside of a retirement account.

Let's deal with money that is invested in the stock market, so to speak, in a retirement account.

As long as you have 5, 10, or 15 years or longer till you need the money that's within a retirement account and especially if it's coming from a 401K, 403B TSP, whatever it may be, and hopefully it's in a rough retirement account if you don't want to make the biggest mistake of your life, but that's just besides the point.

Because the money that's being invested is coming from a paycheck. It's automatically coming out of your money.

Then you can continue to dollar cost average, which is what that is, every single month for the rest of your life does not matter. You just keep doing it and doing it and doing it.

Just that simple.

And this includes Roth IRAs as well or traditionals if you want to make a mistake, where you know every single year there is a defined amount of money that you can put into that account, $7000 this year if you're under 50 $8000 if you're 50 or older, because the amounts in retirement accounts every single year are defined for you.

You just keep doing it till you have reached the max in most cases, so that's simple. That's not a big deal. It's outside of retirement accounts where the money happens to be coming from.

Your excess cash, savings wherever it's coming from, which is where you have to make a decision.

And the action that you have to take is how much money do you want to have in a particular stock in a particular investment.

Because that is not money that's automatically always going to be there, so you have to make a decision and decide how much am I going to buy of X Y Z. When is enough there? Now what's interesting is that April 2nd, when all of a sudden everything changed and the market started to go down and down and down.

Especially with money outside of a retirement account, a lot of you froze. You stopped dollar cost averaging. Many of you sold. Many of you felt so great that you sold because you saw it go down and down and down. And again last week I gave you an example of Palantir, our favorite stock, was at 125, and many of you sold at 125, and you watched it go all the way down to like 65 or 70 and you know as of Friday, the close, it was at 1:24 again.

And I keep repeating this because do you see what a mistake it is? Do you know, as of Friday close of business, Palantir was up 61% from a month ago. Apple was up 13% from a month ago. Microsoft 21%. Walmart 17%, even if all you did was by VOO, VTI or SPY, the spiders, they were each up about 12% from a month ago. If you had done nothing, if the action was nothing, even if you didn't dollar cost average into it.

Do you see how much money you would have made? The mistake would have been if you sold cause you didn't need to sell good quality stocks, good quality ETFs, even if you had purchased dividend paying stocks like Care Trust. It's up 7% since a month ago, and it paid you a 4.7% dividend. Pfizer, where so many of you are so freaked about.

Right? Paying a 7 or 8% dividend is up 11% from a month ago, and I know a lot of you are like, oh, but Suze, what if they cut the dividend? So what if they cut the dividend from 8% to 6%, just 5%.

Don't you still think that's a great dividend? I told you I personally still like Pfizer, and I would just be keeping Pfizer. You could dollar cost average into it up to you, but I don't have a problem with that same with Verizon.

But it's up to you. Remember, when you make an investment in anything, you have to feel good about it. You have to do it not because I told you to do it. You have to do it because when you hear the idea you go, I like that idea. All right, that makes sense to me. I'm going to buy it.

So you have to be an active participant in your investment decisions, otherwise you're just a bystander and you're going to see lots of money just pass you by, because you are not owning the power to control your destiny.

So what is the action that I want you to take with your investments? I just want you to look at them.

I want you to make decisions about them. I do not want you to be selling out, no matter what if you have a lot of time on your side, and again they're good quality investments. What is very important though for all of you to be doing is when you take a recommendation from me on this podcast and I say, oh, let's buy Whirlpool, which I did a while ago.

And then I came back and I said let's sell Whirlpool. Something is wrong. I'm not liking it. As soon as I heard there were gonna be tariffs, I came on this podcast and I said sell, and it was up in the hundreds at that time.

I don't know. I don't even want to look at where it's at now. I'm sure in the 70s, but you have to, if you're gonna take a recommendation.

Then you have to listen every single podcast to make sure when am I going to say sell Whirlpool, when am I going to say sell Devon, which I did. And the reason that I'm talking about this is somebody recently wrote and said, Should I still be keeping Devon? And I'm like, Didn't you hear me on the podcast many months ago saying I would be getting out of Devon and I would probably be putting that money into Pfizer or something like that.

So you have to take responsibility and what is the action that I want you to take when it comes to investing? It is the responsibility of at least if you're gonna take a recommendation listening to the podcast to know if that recommendation changes or not.That's all.

But I need you to think a little bit differently about your investments because this can be such a very, very lucrative time for you.

Let's talk about retirement accounts right now.

I get that a lot of you are afraid and a lot of you are older.

And what are you doing?

You are taking money out of your retirement accounts before you need to take money out of your retirement accounts, and you simply want the money safe and sound.

One of the biggest mistakes you will make is if you withdraw money from a traditional retirement account that's pre-tax just to get it out of there so that you could put it in a certificate of deposit or money market account or whatever that may be. Why would you do that?

You're going to pay tax on that money. Therefore, if you're freaked out, just take the money within your retirement accounts and put it in a place that's safe and sound that doesn't fluctuate, OK.

If you have money at a place of employment like a 401k or whatever it is, and they allow you or you no longer work there and you just want your money being safe, OK, transfer it to an IRA rollover at Schwab or wherever you want to, up to you. I don't care, and buy treasuries, short term treasuries or certificates of deposit and just keep it safe and sound.

But don't withdraw it, pay taxes on it, and then feel like the money's safer because you have access to the actual cash.

Many of you, and I get many of you are afraid and insecure, and I understand very well that the goal of money is for you to be secure. But when you make a financial decision based in fear, then it's an internal obstacle to wealth.

So don't let your fear guide you if you are afraid and whatever before you take action, just think about it rationally why you are doing this.

Next category really is Social Security.

Now, I couldn't be more upset about this if I tried.

Obviously, half the Social Security offices have been shut down. It's gonna be more difficult for you to get Social Security, make corrections on Social Security. OK.

But that doesn't mean Social Security is going to collapse. And so what many of you are starting to do right now is the wrong action.

And what action is that? It's you are taking your Social Security payments at 62.

Which for most of you is 5 years before your full retirement age you are taking a serious hit on it, but that makes you feel secure.

And do you all understand that is exactly what they want you all to be doing.

The more of you that take it at 62, the less they have to pay you later on, and the less they have to pay you, the more they get to save, and you think you've just done the smartest thing.

Now, obviously there are situations where taking it at 62 may make sense. You're ill. You have a terminal illness, and whatever it may be, there are situations, but most of the time it absolutely makes no sense at all taking Social Security before your full retirement age, and I will still say in most cases if you can wait till you are 70 and it makes sense to do so.

And you have figured it out, especially if you are married. Is that the best thing to do? Should you wait till you're 70? Should one of you take it earlier? All kinds of things you need to figure out, but you need to take action with your Social Security. And what is that action? It's really figuring out when is the best time for you to take Social Security, when is the worst time for you to take Social Security financially speaking, not from a fear-based decision.

All right, everybody, these are all very, very important actions that I want you to be taking with your money.

All right, that's your Suze School for today, I think that's enough, don't you?

But there are actions that you need to take in these main financial categories of your life, and if you just did that right now.

You would feel a whole lot more secure.

So until Thursday when Miss Travis joins us again, there's really only one thing that I want you all to remember when it comes to your money, and it is this people first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe. Bye bye now.