Podcast Episode - Broke No More: Part 2

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For Part Two of Broke No More, Suze takes her signature, straight-forward approach to answer questions and unpacks the bag on what it takes to stop being broken and start getting right with yourself, so you can get right with your money.

Podcast Transcript:

Theme song Together We’ll Survive is by Effie. Go to Spotify and download it. Alright, Sarah, today is Thursday, what happens on Thursday girlfriend, we raid the inbox, we find out what everybody wants to know and because last, last, just a few days ago, I guess it wasn't last week, it was just last Sunday. The theme was and is for this week, broke no more. Did we get a lot of response from that? We got a lot of stuff. I mean, Suze, you didn't tell people that they were broke, you told them that they were broken. You took it to a totally different level. You gave the examples and really unpacked the bag that you're broken. If you feel broke, your broken. I have an example about being broken, that's about humpty dumpty. Like I love my example because I was thinking about this when people feel broken then how do they put themselves back together? And I was thinking about oh my God humpty dumpty sat on the wall, you know that one, he had a great fall and all the king's men and of course is whatever they are, they couldn't put him back together again. I was thinking how sad for humpty dumpty, but the truth is we don't have to be humpty dumpty. We don't have to live a broken life where we feel like we can never be put back together again. Of course we can be put back together again and we can do it if we just recognize the ways that we have little cracks before we really get totally broken. Does that make sense? Suze, that is what this is all about. This episode is about being broke no more. And you said something pretty heavy and you said that being broke no more. Really? It means you're broken. If you feel broke, your broken, that's really, really heavy. How, how do you fix yourself? I don't even know what to do. I mean that's a heavy thing to say, that's like humpty dumpty sat on the wall, humpty dumpty had a great fall. So how did humpty dumpty get put back together again and here's what you need to understand. You start to fix broken when you look inside yourself and you realize the ways that you are broken and broken means you're unattached. I want you to literally think of humpty dumpty and he breaks or she breaks or who cares what he or she is right, but breaks and the pieces are here and there and not together. So in what way if you are listening to me right now, in what way are you not together? In what way are you not one with who you are, are you a woman who feels one thing yet does another? If that's true, there's a disconnect and you're broken. Are you a woman who thinks one thing yet says another? That means you are broken. You are not attached because you're not one. So the first exercise is you have to go within and when you go within, you'll realize why you are doing without. Now. That's easy for me to just sit here and say and again you are and you are wherever you are. I need you to just take two seconds here and think and go inside and just recall just any time that you feel like you wanted to say something. You thought something, but what came out was not what you said, your sister wanted to borrow $5,000 from you and you didn't want to lend it to her, and yet you did. Your spouse is talking to you about what he or she wants to do and you don't want to do it. And yet you're saying okay. Or your children, you don't want to cosign a loan for your kid's car. But you're afraid. You're a single mother and you're afraid that if you don't cosigned that loan, your kid won't love you. So where are you broken in terms of your communication with yourself? Because all we have in life if you think about it is communication, communicating with ourselves, knowing our own thoughts, communicating with others, letting others know our own thoughts and our feelings. So where are you broken? Where is it broken down in your communication with who you are? Because if you can't communicate about what you're thinking and what you're feeling, you can't do that which you know you should be doing with your money. Now, when I say that to you, Sarah, where, where does that take you? Where do you go with that? I well, I was thinking about you actually, you've told me in the past that you've had relationships that weren't great. You have this strong, you're a strong powerful woman. Now you're in an incredible relationship with KT, who you know I love and you have really communicated effectively about your money and you have a plan and you're open. But I tell you my own household, when you said earlier, it's not how much you make, it's what you do with what you make. You know, Kevin, but this is a conversation we're having in our household and I gotta tell you it's hard and it takes a lot of courage to be really honest and really raw and really truthful and make really great decisions and why, why is it so scary? That's what I think about when you talk about this, when you talk about some of the women were meeting the courage it takes because here's the thing you just leapfrogged on me. I asked you about how did it make you feel about you. And you immediately took it to Kevin. You immediately took about took it to why is it so hard for you Sarah to communicate with your husband. You cannot communicate with your husband if you cannot communicate with yourself. If you do not have the power within to be able to identify with your own words, your own thoughts and your own actions then you cannot communicate it to another. But it's far easier to say, oh it's so hard to communicate with somebody else. No. It's your broken when you cannot communicate with yourself. And that was the question that I asked everybody, the listeners to answer. How are they broken and how they feel and how they think and what they say? How is that broken within them? Not that it's so hard because somebody else is going to respond to me. But how are they, how are you broken within your own communication with yourself? So it is essential it is essential for us to solve this problem. For you to take out paper and pen and to write down in the past three days. How have you been broken with your own communication? When were you thinking something, yet you said another. When were you feeling something yet you did another. And then you have to answer the question why, why didn't I say what I was thinking? Why didn't I do what I was feeling? And the answer to that, I could give it to you but I don't want to give it to you until you come up with your own answer. Because it is in that answer that you then start to stop being broken. You now are the one putting all the pieces back together again because in the humpty dumpty example that I gave right all the king's men and all the horses or whatever it is, couldn't put humpty dumpty back together. True, but could humpty dumpty put him or herself back together? Others can never put you back together from being broken. Only you can put yourself back together. Only you, only you, only you. So that's why when you hear me and a podcast and I say people first, then money then things. When I say people first I'm meaning you. You have to put yourself back together. You have to know your own thoughts. You have to be one with who you are and what you have. You have to be in harmony with your words, your actions and your thoughts. They all have to be one. And if they are not, you are out of balance and when you're out of balance, you end up broken. And that's something that I think needs to be where where people just think about this right now Sarah because we could go on and on with this one thing and this saying me saying this over and over again for eight hours, 10 hours. So I would love to hear from everybody. In terms of how are you broken in what ways are you broken in what ways aren't you communicating with yourself? You can write in to asksuzepodcast@gmail.com or you can call in to the phone 877-545-7893. And you can call in and tell me in what ways are you broken? And then Sarah in a few podcasts from here, we can pick this up in terms of what people have said. But the thing that I want you all to do right now because listen, I am not a magician. I cannot take 30 years or 40 years or 50 years of you being broken and put a piece of Scotch tape on it. And so now you do this silly little exercise where you think you're not broken, now you're fixed. This is a process. This podcast is a process. This is a process of you moving through one block after another block after another block until you are financially independent. Now, I know in the past I've talked about financial freedom, Sarah. I'm not talking about financial freedom anymore. I know you're not. I've come to a realization that financial freedom doesn't matter. What matters is financial independence and financial independence is even more important than financial freedom. So I will talk about that with you in another podcast. But for all of those of you who have copied me, all the pundits, everybody and financial freedom after I wrote Nine Steps to Financial Freedom in 1998 which became the number one selling nonfiction hardback books of all books in 1998. Everybody started talking about financial freedom. I'm off financial freedom. Financial freedom is not the goal anymore. The goal is financial independence. We have to do a whole podcast on this Sarah. Maybe it'll be next week's. Maybe that's what we should do next week. I think so, to financial independence because I want you to explain the difference between independence and freedom and what independence? Freedom? Yeah. But at first, before you can be financially independent, you have to not be broken. So the thing right now is their exercise of your exercise of how in the past three days if you look inside yourselves, were you broken Sarah? I know sometimes we put out there questions that people write about the topics that we're going to have. Has anybody written in with any questions? Let me yeah, we do. So Carla. And actually, Carla is an old friend of the show and she was visiting you live at the Apollo when you were there last September um, and she says this finally, Suze, we have savings from an inheritance we got and we're not living paycheck to paycheck. But how do I stop my overspending habit. Even though I'm not living paycheck to paycheck anymore, I simply can't stop spending. I feel broke all the time. How do I take my first step? Well, this is a perfect example Carla and what I'm saying to you in that money will never make you feel like you are not broken. You just got an inheritance. You just got all of this money and yet you can't stop feeling broke. Well, how is that possible? Most people would think, oh if I just won the lottery, if I just had money I would feel good again. No, no, no. The reason Carla that you still feel broke is because you're broken. You're broken inside with some connection. The connection most likely being you keep spending and buying things because you think things define who you are versus you defining the things that you are buying. So you're looking for your own self connection. You're looking to put yourself back together again by spending money on this and spending money on that and doing this and doing that with money when none of those things will ever make you feel whole. So this is Sarah is the perfect example of somebody getting money, an inheritance. And it didn't solve the problem of her feeling broke. So Carla, you really need to do this exercise. How did you feel right before you went out to spend that money. Where was that communication with yourself broken? You know, it doesn't help you, yet you still do it and it's not about being addicted to spending money and addicted to shopping and addicted? It's you being in search of how do you become one with who you are. And the only way you think you know how to do that is by shopping and showing people who you are by the things that you're buying. Again Carla, the things that you buy will never define who you are, you will always define the things that you buy and that Sarah, if you look back on it, that's what I'm talking about. People first, then money, then things. That is the correct order. If you put things before money because you think things will define you, you'll never have money and you'll never have who you are. The people first then money then things is an essential law of money. What other questions do you have? So I've got Darlene. Darlene says I've never felt financially secure and always feel broke. I don't have debt, my house is paid off and I have a small retirement but we don't have anything extra. How can I start making better choices that will help me feel more secure? Here's someone who has no debt which many people would love to have, they have their house fully paid off which is a dream for so many people and yet she doesn't feel secure. Darlene, here's our example once again that money you're out of debt, as Sarah just said you have your house paid off, are you kidding me and yet you still feel insecure and the reason that I think that's true, Darlene is that you may be able to pay off your debt, you may be able to own your home outright. But what you didn't say in this question was I have a retirement account where I have power over my money and I'm investing it in XY and Z. I have an investment account. You didn't say anything about you having power over the money that you have to make decisions with. That aren't easy decisions such as paying down credit card debt. That's easy. Or paying off your mortgage. That's easy. You just send in a check. You don't have to think about it. But if you are investing in a retirement account you have to decide which retirement should I have a Roth? Should I have an IRA? Should I have a 401k? Should I have a 403 B? Should I have a simple IRA, a SEP IRA? What should I do? Where should I open them up? At what firm? Then when when I've opened them up how much money should I pay into them every single month? And then what should I invest with with the money that I'm putting in? Those are a whole lot of decisions that are self-empowered because you're the one who has to make those decisions because nobody is telling you, nobody's sending you a bill every single month that says pay $1,000 a month on your mortgage and send it to this company. So I think that you're still feeling insecure because your relationship over your power over your money is broken because you don't feel powerful enough to make decisions about money, how to invest money, how to save money, what to do with money. And you should have plenty of money given that you don't have to send in money every single month to your credit card, money every single month to your mortgage. You should have a few $1,000 every single month that you should be putting in the stock market, that you should be putting in a retirement account. Um that those are the things that you should be doing. So that Sarah is what I think is going on on with Darlene. She hasn't taken the time to own the power to control her own destiny with her money. And that's why she doesn't feel secure because now she doesn't know what to do. Listen, I agree with you. But the thing is you just spit off all of these words and you're the money lady. You know what they all mean? And I know if you're listening to the podcast, you'll learn these things too, but it reminds me of a woman who wrote in called Dana and she says she's totally overwhelmed with all the things she heard on your Super Soul Sunday, which was the the run the full run of the Apollo show in September and she says she just has no idea where to begin with all that information. And frankly she feels paralyzed and so she has a similar question, I feel broke all the time. They don't know what to do, how to invest the money there. She's like excited and terrified at the same time after having listened to your show. So for those of you who are listening right now, you might want to, I did do a two hour one woman show last year at the Apollo Theater and the Oprah Winfrey network taped it and they aired it on the Oprah Winfrey network and Oprah was also kind enough however, to put it on her Super Soul Sunday Facebook watch page, the whole two hours of that show. So you might want to go there and you might want to watch it and you'll see all kinds of things that we're talking about. Um this podcast now, that show was called Women & Money and everybody who came to that show that night got a free copy of my book Women & Money and I have to say, and I'm not just saying this because it's self-serving. If you don't know where to begin, I would tell you that you need to pick up a copy of Women & Money and read it, number one, especially the financial empowerment plan, which tells you exactly step by step what you should do. Stop for a second. I know what you're thinking. You just go to the library and rent it right? You know I know what you're thinking. You're just also I don't even know the word. Oh Suze is just being self-promoting. Oh she there she is selling her book. So this is all about money. Oh please don't be so spiteful or I don't what is the word Sarah? There's some word there because here's the point everybody, nothing is stopping you from going to the library and picking up a copy of that book. I'm not telling you to buy the book. You did not hear me say go by the book. You heard me say you should pick up a copy and read the book. There are millions and millions of copies out there. It's a number one New York Times bestseller. But it is a book every single woman should read and the men who are smart enough again to care about the women that are in their lives. But it is a place that you should start. So if that woman just simply picked up a copy at the library of Women & Money and read it cover to cover, she will know exactly where to start, exactly what to do and all her questions will be answered in that one book. You know one of the things I just thought of is you could post, you could post a note on your Facebook page, your Facebook. But Dana could post a note on her Facebook page asking any of her friends if they have the book they can she can borrow. I am sure one of her friends has a copy of it. That's what I would do. Yeah we're here to help each other. Everybody has to help each other. That's what I would do. It's like listen it's you know like I said it's a number one New York Times bestseller, millions and millions of copies are out there just for those of you who are doubters out there. I gave away over 1.2 million copies of that book on the Oprah Winfrey show for free. For free because that's how much I believed in that book and I wanted every single one of you to read them and to read it because I wanted every single one of you to read it. And I still do Sarah again. You don't have to buy it. Go to the library enough on this stupid book. Alright what else you got for me? I'm gonna ask you one more question and it comes from Christina and she's recently divorced. She's gonna get $80,000 in the settlement. She has no retirement, no emergency fund. She has a ton of debt. She's struggling to make ends meet and she wants to know how she should use that money to get herself on solid footing. She's terrified of being broke and alone all the time. Interesting that this woman Christina, you just inherited, so to speak, even though it was with a breakup, $80,000. And yet you feel terrified, you feel alone and you feel broke. There are women listening right now who would give their teeth to have $80,000. So again, I'm going to say money can never make you feel not broke. I know people who have $100 million, who have $50 million who have $10,000. It doesn't matter depending on their situation. I know it sounds crazy, but they can say to me, they feel broke and I'm like, how do you feel broke when you have $500 million? How is that possible? It is a feeling that they have inside because again, their relationship with who they are is broken and that's what's happening here with the $80,000 when you get money. And it comes from a place of hurt. It comes from a place of loss. It's an inheritance of death. It comes from a place of divorce which is actually worse than death believe it or not because there are emotions that just still, in most cases aren't being dealt with. That is money that not only can represent freedom, but it also represents hurt. It represents everything that you had to go through and lose, you have to lose love in this situation to get it. So you tend to push that money away and not do anything with it or do something with it, that makes absolutely no sense so that you eventually lose it. So Christina what I want you to do is I want you first to look at your financial situation and any credit card debt or debts, forget the mortgage on your home. If you have a home right now, I want you to pay off those debts right? And because that is what will make you start to feel better. And then I want you to do absolutely nothing with that money other than keeping it safe and sound in a savings account until at least six months to one year has passed from the time that you got this money. Just keep it safe and sound. That is all you have to do. Savings accounts now have a 3% interest rate on them. They're around look at a place that you can get a nice interest rate on your savings account and after you've paid off your debt, your credit card debt, or debts like that. If you have any just sit um the money as Sarah, she has to fix her broken relationship with how she feels about how she got this money. You know is her ex-spouse, what, what is he or she doing? There's so many emotions that she still has to deal with that don't add the burden of what to do with money when you're having to figure out what to do with your life first and her life right now is broken. So if she makes a move from a broken place she will end up also broke. So separate the money out. Keep the money safe and sound and just deal with how she feels about who she is and what she needs to do so that she no longer feels broken. This is what I'm talking about. These are the moves that you know Carla and Darlene and Christina, and everybody has to make where you just take the time and you go within to see in what way are you broken in your own communication with how you feel about who you are, and how you feel about the things that surround you and the people that surround you. So Suze, on that note we have an assignment. First. Everybody I want you to email us because we're gonna come back, we're gonna do a little mini episode on what people came back to us with. So it's asksuzepodcast@gmail.com. Or you can call us on our voicemail 877-545-SUZE. That's Suze with an E. Not an I. E. S-U-Z-E. That's 7893. 877-54545-SUZE. Suze would you remind us of our homework assignment? The homework assignment, and it's interesting to call it a homework assignment because we need to work in order to come home to who we really are. The home of our heart, the home of our soul, the home of our mind, the home of, of our lives, of our lives. And that's not an easy assignment. And the only way that you can come home to who you are is you have to know who you are. You have to know your own thoughts. You have to know your own feelings. You have to know in what, in which ways are you not being true to who you are? Because you are afraid of what others will think about you or you're afraid that you will hurt other people's feelings. So the home work is very simple. It's I want you to write down in the past three days, maybe the past week. In what ways have you not been true to who you are? Has your communication been broken? Have you thought something yet said another? Have you felt something yet done another? Just do that. And then in a few weeks from now we will pick it up from there. Okay, Suze, I'm totally getting this. I've actually never thought about it like this. That we are broken, if we feel broke. This is not ordinary financial talk. Why do you think you look at money any different than the way anyone else looks at money? That's an interesting question. Um here's the thing that you need to understand as I talk to you right now. I'm 67 years of age and with age comes a perspective of years and years of doing something and I am approaching almost 40 years of dealing with people and their money. And unlike many financial pundits that talk on podcasts and say this and say that I'm not sure how many of them actually sat behind a desk and dealt with clients one on one and started to realize over all of those years because remember I have, you know, I was licensed at one time in every possible way to deal with options, commodities, everything. So here I'm sitting across the desk from people. And the question that I had to ask and answer, why was why aren't people who are really, really smart doctors, lawyers, waitresses, that were brilliant. Doesn't matter what they did. But they were smart. Why didn't really intelligent people do that which they know they should do with their money. I would sit there Sarah and I would tell them do this, do that, do that, do this. Six months later they would come back and I would say, did you do it? And they’d say no. So what was preventing them? What was preventing them from being rational and doing that which you know, you should do with money. An example is you know, you need a will, you know, you need a living revocable trust. You know, you need the must-have documents, but yet you have not done them. You have not done them. Not that Sarah hasn't done them, but you, you haven't done them most likely. Why not? Why not? What prevents you from that? And that's when I started to realize, oh my God, that fear, shame and anger were the three internal obstacles to wealth. People were afraid to do something. They didn't know what they were doing. They were just emotionally, they couldn't do what they needed to do. And from years and years and years of studying this and doing this, that's how I learned that who you are determines ultimately what you have and what you get to keep. And that's the answer to that question. Did that make sense to you? Yeah, I mean, you've been saying this over and over that if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, you can't possibly have a good relationship with your money. And that's where we have to start. That's where we all have to start. Where we do have to start. And I get that it's not an easy place to go. And I get, you know, for years, Sarah, when I first started this many years ago, especially with the book, The Nine Steps To Financial Freedom, which was probably in my opinion, the best book I've ever written. And it was written in 1997. And the subtitle to that book was practical and spiritual steps so you can stop worrying. Interesting, interesting. And everybody in that book in one month, I think it sold a million copies in hardback and that book was in 1998 the number one nonfiction um hardback selling book of all nonfiction, hardback books, not just finance books. Of all. And so once I started to make it, that's when all the men in the industry started to attack me. Suze the floozy Suze, this what do emotions have to do with money? And then we started to see all types of things like behavioral economics and how emotions do have an effect start to emerge. But I really was the first one, whoever made that connection all those years ago and spoke about it in terms for every single woman and man to start to relate to it. And I will forever believe that that's what made me different. All the research and the one-on-one contact that I had with telling people exactly what they should do with their money, which many financial pundits today have never done because most financial pundits today really are just columnists or reporters or people who are talking about it and repeating things, but they've never really invested and made money and lost money for people. So, Suze, I want to tell you something. So Sarah. So, so wait, wait. So, so right, Sarah, you know, every time you say. So what I think about Suze Orman and Sarah Overseas, which was your maiden name before you married Kevin and now you’re Pool. But we used to call ourselves everybody, so, so, so because we're so, so good. We're so, so good. We're so, so crazy. What were you gonna say to me, girlfriend? I was gonna say financial freedom was as a multi-million dollars or multimillion copy and multimillion dollar, multimillion, millions of dollars. But I feel like you had an epiphany recently and our next episode, can you tell everybody what it's going to be about? Because it's that time of the show where we give people a little bit of a, a little nugget on what they're going to get uh in just a few days. So here is what I realized. As years progress, you learn more and more about your topic and I just have realized something that really blew me away. And it's this. That financial freedom is passe. People financial freedom is no longer the goal. If I was going to write that book again, it would be The Nine Steps to Financial Independence. So next week we are going to talk about how you don't want to judge must be financially free. That's not the goal anymore. Uh the goal now is financial independence. So you've got to tune in to find out why Suze Orman has changed her mind. See you next week. Bye bye.

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