Podcast Episode - Protect Your Tomorrows Today

Suze reflects on what she and KT were doing on September 11, 2001 and how she helped families in the aftermath of the national tragedy.  This Suze story remind us of why we absolutely need to prepare today to protect ourselves and insure our families are taken care of, should something happen to us.

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Podcast Transcript:

September 15th, 2024. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast. As well as everybody smart enough to listen. Today is usually not always Suze School, but today I want to do a Suze School via a Suze story.

Now, as you may be aware today September 15th, I'm in Majorca Spain with KT. So I have recorded this podcast before we left just the other day. So, just be aware of that.

Obviously, September 11th was a few days ago and as I was watching the ceremonies of September 11th, I couldn't help but remember what KT and I were both doing on September 11th and then what happened after September 11th because it really shaped a lot about my financial advice from that point on September 11th the morning of we were in Westchester Pennsylvania and I had just finished at 2 a.m. that morning, a QVC show and I happened to be doing what, telling everybody about the must have documents and why they were needed necessary, just like I've told all of you for so many years now.

And therefore, when we got up that morning, we were supposed to go meet the helicopter and it was going to fly us over the World Trade Center at the exact time that the planes hit. Not knowing that that was gonna happen because I wanted to show KT that view from a helicopter.

But because we had been up so late the night before I said to KT, let's call the helicopter and tell him we'll come at about 10 or 11 and we'll go back then. Well, obviously we're watching television and we see the planes hit and there you go.

And then there was no way for the helicopter to fly back. So we actually had a driver come later that afternoon or that night. I can't remember now and drove us back to Manhattan. And as we were driving into Manhattan, you could see all the smoke coming from all of the towers over the next few days because I was considered press, we got to go down there, we got to see certain things that were just unbelievable. Also, a few days after that, we also got to go to the Pentagon and we were looking at the hole that it left in the Pentagon and the little altars that were set up inside the Pentagon and all of those things.

When I went to CNBC, everybody. And this is now still just a few days later, everybody, all the anchors, in my opinion, their faces were just, oh my God. It was really horrific. And one reason it was horrific for a lot of us is that, remember we are in the financial industry and a lot of the financial people that we interviewed or that we knew were in that building and they did not make it out.

So that was bad enough in itself.

Then maybe a week or two later, some time period. It's fuzzy to me right now. My phone started to ring and it was the spouses, usually the wife of her husband that was killed in the World Trade Center.

And essentially what they were saying to me was the following, Suze. I need your help. I don't know if we had a trust. I don't know what we had. I don't know where any of the money happened to be. My husband took care of everything, all the paperwork was in his office. Now, the paperwork is gone. I don't even know where to start.

And that wasnt just one person that was one spouse after another spouse, after another spouse all in the exact same situation.

And when I would ask them questions very gently because they had just lost the love of their life. They were mothers, normally of their Children that were at home. It was just such a chaotic mess. Do you have any records? Do you have anything she said no, everything was kept in his office. We have nothing here at the house. Do you know the name of the banks or whatever? No, Suze, he took care of everything.

And I think about that over and over again when I get emails like I did last Thursday where KT and I answered about this woman who's been married and her husband just doesn't want to get involved with the money and what can she do to get him involved?

And it's not until something happens that is dramatic in your life. And you realize how unprepared you were for it. You don't know where the money is. You have no idea what documents you have. You have no idea who the beneficiaries are on anything. Where's the retirement account? How much was in it? Where does the money gonna come from? Now, how are you gonna do anything when you are finally in that situation?

And you realize that you are not prepared for it than the loss of your loved one isn't the only thing that you have lost. It's the loss of everything in your life and you don't even know where to start to put it back together.

All the mothers that called me saying, Suze, I don't know. Do we have an insurance policy? When will we get money? How am I gonna do this? How am I gonna do that? They had absolutely no idea. And for those women, and I just want to say this for those women who have gotten married and they have kept their own name, but their children's name, the last name of the Children are the name of the spouse. Usually the man.

Don't think if something like this happens, there isn't problems because in those cases, in this situation, when the insurance did wanna pay out, the spouse had to prove that she was the legal mother of these Children because their names were not the same. Don't think that won't happen to you. It could even happen to you.

If you're traveling in the airport, they're checking, you're with minors and the minors have the name of the father, not your last name. Don't think that you won't get stopped for that.

So maybe you name your Children a joint last name, but I need you to think about all of these things, which is why when I talk again, not only about owning the power to control your destiny, I'm talking about not just getting involved with little things with your money, but really owning it, knowing everything you need to know about your financial affairs, having control over.

Where are the documents kept? Who are the beneficiaries? How much Life insurance? You should absolutely have the passwords to every single account. You should know where every single penny that both of you have happens to be located.

You should have the original trust paperwork and will paperwork, not necessarily at an office or even in your house, but maybe in a place that's fireproof safe deposit box. But somewhere that it is protected because why copies of those documents are not valid if the original trust was destroyed in the World Trade Center.

Now, there is no trust and even if you have a copy of it, it's not valid. So I need all of you. And I know I'm passionate right now, but I'm passionate about it because I remember the tears. I remember the fear. I remember the utter terror that these spouses call me with.

And honestly, I couldn't really help them. I couldn't help them. And do you know what that must feel like for somebody like me not to be able to do anything? It's like, all right, let's get your past tax returns. Well, the tax returns, Suze were at the office too. Well, who is your CPA? Well, Suze, they happen to be in the World Trade Center too.

So all the records are gone. So now, all right now let's contact the IRS. Let's do all this. But it was a long process before any of that could be straightened out. So the reason that you hear the passion in my voice is that I never want to not be able to help any of you ever again. I never want any of you to need help in those situations. I want you to be somebody who can mourn the loss of a loved one without you having to worry about. Where's the money? Where's this? Where's that? How's it all supposed to work?

That is why I wanted to tell the Suze story today because watching the ceremonies on September 11th brought it all back to me.

It also brought back to me what happened six months after September 11th and it brought back and I know that I've told this story before, but I want to tell it again that I said I would meet with the spouses of the deceased firefighters, with the Children of the deceased firefighters, with the parents of the deceased firefighters. All of them had gotten a payout. They were all still in shock. And I said, ok, I'll meet with all of them.

We didn't tell the press about it. It wasn't a publicity stunt to say, oh, look how great Suze Orman is meeting with these firefighter survivors. No, it was done simply to help them.

And what I found so fascinating. We were in the basement in some meeting room of some hotel. I don't even remember. And there were all these people there, some standing in the back of the room holding a child that was born after the father died. A lot of them parents, Children and so forth. And I'll never forget this one woman coming up to the little table that I was behind emptying out her purse of $800,000 worth of checks saying to me, Suze and they were all crumpled. What good is this money going to do for me? I want my husband back now.

Why am I telling you this story again?

Because you cannot blame the money, the insurance policy, the settlement, you cannot be mad at money because you have lost a loved one. You need to look at that money as what your deceased spouse, son, father, mother would have wanted you to have to be able to carry on your lifestyle that they can no longer provide for you.

So many times, I have found not when it's this dramatic where it was in September 11th, but where your spouse, somebody is killed in a car crash, whatever it may be and you get a life insurance settlement or now you get all the money that they have saved or whatever it may be and you don't want to touch it. You don't want to look at it. You're actually like, uh you don't care about it. What you care about is you're just so lonely and you're so miserable.

I need you not to be angry at money to be rejecting of the money. I need you to be able to at least keep it safe and sound and be grateful for it, but not mad at it.

Because when you are mad, you are angry and anger is one of the main internal obstacles to wealth and it is in that anger period because I saw this happen that you go out and you buy a house, you don't even want, you go out and you give it to the kids, you go out and you just do things with it that you normally never would have done with it because on some level, you want to get rid of it as if that will bring your spouse back.

So, as I have told you over all these years, you are to do nothing other than keeping the money safe and sound. Obviously, you can use it to get out of debt if you want. But to keep it safe and sound for at least six months to two years after you have suffered the loss of a loved one, especially when it's in a dramatic fashion, it could be a shooting at a school. It can be a terrorist attack like that. It can be so many things and in life, we don't really have an understanding of why things happen. We really don't.

But somehow you have to have faith, you have to have faith in yourself, faith in a belief higher than you that you will get through this and that you just have to take it day by day.

So that's what I wanted the Suze story to be about today. That's why the must have documents are so essential for all of you. That's why getting your affairs in order is so essential for all of you. Even though I know, you think that nothing will ever ever happen to you. And I pray, I pray to God that that's true.

But I also pray that all of you have what it takes to make sure that if something does happen, you have protected your tomorrow's day.

So with that, this was a relatively short Suze school story, but maybe one of the most important ones I could ever give.

So there's really only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money and it's this people first, everybody take care of yourselves, take care of the things that protect you and your family members.

People first. You what is it going to take to really make you feel secure no matter what happens. Then money then make sure that the money is taken care of and invested properly. You're safe and sound. But you also know about all of the money that you have and then things, things like your home, things like your car, all of those things that money can buy.

And when you put that all together and you stay healthy and you stay safe, then you will be unstoppable.