Podcast Episode - Suze School: Family Secrets Revealed

For this special edition of Suze School, KT’s sister Barbara sits down to talk about what money and life lessons her family learned by having “Aunt Suze” in their lives.

Listen to Podcast Episode:

Podcast Transcript:

Suze: December 8th, 2024. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast. As well as everybody is smart enough to listen. Today is supposedly always Suze School, but instead today is going to be sisters school, what a family learns from one another when they grow up with Suze Orman. So KT take it away.

KT: Ok. So we have here in the studio, Barbara Travis Race, my youngest sister and the mother of Travis and Sophia. And you've heard Suze and I talk forever about our niece and nephew Travis and Sophia who grew up with us and we had many, many life lessons with them.

KT: But Barbara, the mommy's here and we're gonna have a little Suze School to answer the big question that I read over and over again on the email, which is if only I had a Suze Orman, if only I knew Suze 20 years ago, if only Suze was in my life to help me with my money when I didn't know anything. So here we are.

Suze: and I always say, be careful what you wish for may be true. And so as easy as it may seem to have me there because I simply tell you what to do in everything. Barbara, first of all, we love you so much. We're so happy you're here. But out of the 20 some odd years now, almost 24, 25 years that we've been together, love is something that every single person can give to a family member if they want to. 

Suze: But financially speaking, right. And the, the financial lessons, truly, everybody started with Sophia when she was three, playing with her little doll with a cash register in her bedroom. So as you think back on the 20 some odd years that we've been together, what is the hardest thing that you've had to face financially in your life because of me?

Barbara: I think that you have to stand in your own truth. When we ask for your advice, you better be ready to receive it. That's that. And the other thing too is I say if you follow your advice, it works, but you really have to be ready to receive it. And the other thing too is your aunt, you know, you're Suze Orman. But to my kids, your Aunt Suze.

Barbara: And you, when you met um, Travis and Sophia, they were very, very young. You treated them with respect as adults and you gave them life lessons right off the bat. I'm not saying that they received it..

Suze: But financial life lessons.

Barbara: Yes. And I'll tell you the very first one and I'll tell you how it translates with a little three year old need versus want... need versus want. And how that sometimes in the beginning would translate is that, you know, it was a repetition, repetition, repetition. And I remember Sophia when she was in preschool said mommy and daddy, I don't need ice cream, but I really want ice cream.

Barbara: Another one that Kathy had mentioned, which is true. And this is where you just think it's kind of funny with kids. Is that remember when Sophia swallowed the penny,

Suze: Tell the story. Barb,

KT: She was, she was little. She could hardly,

Suze: she was like five or six.

Barbara: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She was like three or four. She was in preschool. She was very young and she Sophia swallowed a penny. She was so little. We were in the kitchen and she said, Mommy, I swallowed a penny and she said, can we call Aunt Suze? She knows a lot about money. And so we said, ok, so we picked up the phone, we call then Aunt Suze and Aunt Kathy always answer too by the way.

Barbara: And she told them the story about how she swallowed a penny, which was, you were very, very cute about it. But that's a classic.

Suze: Yeah. But what I said to Sophia, I said, so you do realize you just wasted a penny. I wasn't freaked about it. I said, don't worry, it'll come out. Everything will be ok. But you just wasted a penny and she said something to the effect of, but Aunt Suze, it's just a penny. So, yeah. So, like, it's not a big deal. Do you remember what I made you do after that?

Suze: You had to go and pay for everything in pennies. Sophia, they'd go to the store, they'd pay everything in pennies. Barbara would have to count it out. Finally. Sophia said, ok, I get it. I get it. All right.

Barbara: Do you remember this one? This is a big one. This is a big one. When Travis was five. He was either in, he was in kindergarten and, um, Don, my husband was out of town and Sophia was, they were really, really young and I ordered pizza, I told Suze this and she's like, oh, I got schooled so hard on this one.

Barbara: So I ordered a pizza and I didn't have any cash to pay. So I went into Travis's little safe that he has.

Suze: Piggy bank.

Barbara: Yeah, his piggy bank. It was. No, it's like a little metal box. And I bought, I said, Travis, I'm gonna borrow money. Oh my gosh. It set off sirens with Suze. And we, I used that and I said, I'll pay you back. Well, I went back into Travis's room and he had taken rope and remember, that at five, and he was really good at tying, and he roped his

KT: He tied the side, the box around the leg...

Barbara: The leg of his bed. And Suze said, don't you don't ever do that because he lose trust.

Suze: Did you ever pay him back?

Barbara: Of course,

Suze: at least you paid him back.

KT: I love that Travis absolutely took ownership of that money. It was his money and it was in his safe. And I remember seeing that leg of the bed tied with all this string and rope, like knots everywhere and he felt this is the only way to keep it secure. Then there was another lesson after that. But Aunt Suze at one point said Travis to keep your money really safe, we need to bring it to the bank. Do you remember that?

Suze: He didn't want to.

Barbara: He wanted to keep it in the box.

Suze: He didn't understand that. So what's important about that lesson? Everybody is until a child is ready to relinquish their money and they understand handing it over to a bank. Don't, right. But it's eventually he was ready and he understood that. What I loved mainly my favorite story about Travis was he was really into Power Rangers. Do you remember that? And that was driving me crazy because Power Rangers were expensive back then, right? So eventually he got to the point where he wasn't playing with those power rangers. He got older and they were just there.

Suze: So I said Travis, go get me all of your Power Rangers and I had cash and I think the Power Rangers, he had four of them were $25 a piece. So I said, I put out $100 on the table. I said, so Travis tell me, now, would you rather have the Power Rangers that you have, or the $100 in cash? And he said, oh, no, Aunt Suze, I want the $100. And I swooped up the $100. And I said, well, that's too bad because you have the Power Rangers.

Barbara: Between you and Kathy. And just our families, we really talk, we learned to talk through things before we would go to a store. For example, like, remember the restaurant when we went to the restaurant? That was so funny. So was it 20? It

Suze: It was, $50 a card. Nobody was allowed to bring any.

KT: I need to explain things. We were in Florida every summer, Barbara and Don, who lived in California and the kids would come to Florida and spend a good portion of the summer and spend in July with us. They lived with us in a little condo - two bedroom condo. And many lessons were learned and I mean, life went on every morning and every morning there'd be, you know, lessons with Aunt Suze and Aunt Kathy in any event, um, Suze had this idea.

Barbara: No - We wanted to take as a thank you. We wanted to take Kathy and Suze to dinner and Suze. So remember the summer we're with you, we always cooked. We cooked all. We make our snacks, our breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Suze: Because we don't go out to eat.

Barbara: I mean, we wanted to thank you and take you out to dinner. And I mean, I'm being perfectly honest, you got so mad. You were like, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna do it this way. But then you come up with this idea is we're gonna take $50 and we're gonna go to that restaurant. I forget the name of it at the end of the street in Florida

KT: JB'S

Barbara: JB'S. It was the funniest thing.

Suze: And we bought a gift card.

Barbara: Yeah, but remember we're sitting around the table and this is Suze, so patient as a Saint, we had, we, we, you know,

Suze: None of us had any cash on us. Just one card. Wait, listen, it doesn't matter just one card for $50. So if we went over that amount, we couldn't have paid for it.

Barbara: And there were six of us.

Suze: And Travis had to decide because he was older. The math of it. Who's gonna order what everybody had to decide? So that we didn't go over $50 but that had to include the tip to go on.

Barbara: He was probably like in second grade. So imagine a second grader doing the math. So what that meant is we had to have a meeting like a pre-production meeting. What are we gonna drink? So we all remember we all ordered water. We ordered water.

Suze: Right. But at the end, guess what? We all ate, we split meals.

KT: We ate very little.

Barbara: No, that was good. That was a good one.

Suze: Right. But, um, all right. So the kids now fast forward how old?

Barbara: Travis's 27? And Sophia is 25.

Suze: So now let's fast forward to your, and Don's life, Barbara. As an adult living with Aunt Suze and you going through financial ups and financial downs. But as you got older and then you would come and visit and the kids now are in their twenties or whatever you and Don would sit down with me and remember the day I gave you an F?

Barbara: Ah my God.

KT: Wait, let's, let's go back and explain to you.

Barbara: She gave me an F and I was on the, I was on the plane, you know, double fisting tie rolls and I was like, I got an F I've never, you know,

Suze: Explain, what that is.

KT: Let me explain. Ok, so Barbara received the lowest grade from Aunt Suze. The financial advice...

Barbara: And she physically gave me an F.

KT: Because Barbara didn't know or have a clue about their family's finances

Suze: And what they were doing with money. It was not correct.

KT: Don would come and sit every summer we get together and Don and Suze would be around the kitchen table towards the end of the trip. And he would say, well, you know, Aunt Suze, you think we can sit down and go through a few numbers and, and Suze would advise and says, well, Barbara, do you know this? Do you know? She said no, and she'd be in the kitchen cooking her, she had no interest or no clue. And Suze let her have it, so that was the first big Suze Smackdown to Barbara.

Barbara: So now she gives me an F which is beyond devastating, as it's like she's Suze Orman. But also it's like, oh my God, I'm never gonna see my sisters again. I got an F That's it. But then we were just talking about this this morning, Suze's like, I will always, you know, I always love you and the kids would watch this and listen, we never sheltered them from anything.

Suze: That's your life changed now, not about the kids, but your life changed at that moment in time where you got involved with the money, you started to learn about the money and we started to be very talking about what was true, what you could do, what you couldn't do and you had to make some tough decisions, but they were honest decisions, right?

Barbara: They're honest decisions. But also I think for you is that you push yourself, you push us to be in a way like more creative and also to be very realistic and keep us on our toes. For sure.

KT: The biggest life lesson Suze was that both Barbara and Don had to be equally engaged and aware because of the what ifs in life and what if something happened... And Barbara, do you know anything? And the answer was always no, now it's yes.

Suze: Tell them about the time you were in San Francisco visiting us.

Barbara: This is no exaggeration, no exaggeration. We lived in the most, the perfect house that I love. My dream house in Pacific Palisades. And um, I'm sitting with Suze and Kathy in San Francisco at their dining room table and Kathy said, or Suze said, pretend you're on the Suze Orman show. I'm like, I'm not, I'm with my sisters eating breakfast. You're like, pretend you're on the Suze Orman Show. And I said, Suze, should we sell our house? And you said, I want you to go home right now and sell, put your house up for sale because the market...

Suze: This was 2006, or 2007. And I knew the markets were gonna crash.

Barbara: But we, I didn't.

Suze: Right.

Barbara: I literally stood up. I, I went home. I, I literally that minute stood up. We got a plane, went home, we put our house up for sale.

Suze: So that one week later, right?

Barbara: Well, I mean, I don't know if you

Suze: One week, two weeks, whatever it was,

Barbara: two weeks later, we sold it and the profit was...

Suze: At the top of the market. They sold it, right?

Barbara: But you did some funny things. She kind of like, I don't want to say stalked us but helicoptered us. She would be like, because maybe we were still, you know, we're going through,

KT: They were on the fence about whether to do it or not.

Barbara: I'll never forget you called us. You said, what are you doing? What's that noise? I said, oh, we're on our way to Home Depot. And you're like, why? And I said, we're putting up a fence in front of the house and she said, put the supplies down, go turn around and go home. Do not put one penny. We said, ok, so we didn't do that. Then another phone call. I don't know if you remember this. She said, what are you doing? He said, well, we think we're gonna spruce up the kitchen. You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. So we followed it and I think literally within two weeks we sold it.

Suze: At a really great profit and money. And then here they are with two kids. And what did you do? Do you remember this? Where did you move?

Barbara: Oh, this was funny. We sold it and we moved to a two bedroom apartment...

KT: In LA.

Barbara: In LA. Um, we put the piano in Travis's bedroom where the piano teacher had to sit. The kids took piano lessons. They still did and sit in the, on the bed, which was also a rock climbing wall, which was also the garage.

Suze: And they stayed in this tiny two bedroom apartment until the kids were finished with that year with school,

KT: Travis cried and begged his mommy.

Suze: He called me because then the decision was, the decision was they were going to take that money and move to Denver where they could get more for their money. And it would just made sense because they weren't going to pay California taxes and all these things. When Travis heard that, every day, Barbara, I don't know if you know that.

Barbara: I don't.

Suze: He called me every single night crying. Please, Aunt Suze. I beg you don't make us move to Denver. I'm begging you, Aunt Suze. And I said, Travis, I will be here every single night for you. You can call me every night and you can cry for hours to me. But I am telling you you are moving and one day you're gonna thank me for this. So you're just gonna have to get that and until you get it, you can cry. But you're moving. Boyfriend.

Barbara: Travis looked at me and he said he was so little and he said mom, I have a pain in my heart that I've never felt before. Oh my God. As a mother, you're like, oh

Suze: And now Travis

Barbara: Loves, doesn't wanna leave

Suze: Will never ever leave. So if you had a sum up the lessons that you've learned because you were with Aunt Suze, that people listening to the podcast could get because you don't have to have an Aunt Suze living with you and on you all the time, you just need to listen to the podcast, read the books. Think about what I'm saying to you. Standing in your truth, being ethical. Don't have shame. Don't be afraid to tell people you're broke, live in the moment and be proud of everything.

Suze: If you were to sum up the greatest lessons that you learned, not because I'm Aunt Suze, but because Suze's advice has been in your life, what would you say that was?

Barbara: I would say to um have integrity, I would say to really, really, really be purposeful with what you're doing. Your decision making um Being scared is ok. I mean, that's part of it. And you should, Suze's always taught us almost to celebrate that. You know, you have to celebrate all the parts, you have to be really happy with all the parts and grateful for that. It's easier said than done, but you have to do it right.

Suze: KT what do you want to say? You've been quiet this time?

KT: I know I love listening because I'm, I'm, it's like yesterday that the memories come back and the images and the experiences. It's like yesterday and it makes me emotional.

Suze: Oh, no, they're both crying.

KT: It makes me emotional that through time. So many things have, Suze's helped so many.

Barbara: Amazing.

Suze: Now don't make me cry.

Barbara: Look at that. She's getting teary too.

KT: I wish Suze... that Aunt Suze would never end.

Suze: No. Thank you. Right. But the main thing that I hope all of you really take away from this in my own way. I hope you consider me your own Aunt Suze. I hope you truly consider me and all the love that I've given throughout this podcast, KT has given throughout this podcast that in my own way, in our own way, we are there for all of you. 

Suze: This is not just a financial podcast, this is a podcast filled with love with sharing, with desire that all of you grow and can benefit from our knowledge and our experiences and that you never ever, ever forget that you mean just as much, especially to me as Barbara, as KT does as Sophia, Travis, Don Lynn, our other sister, all our relatives, Tom everybody that you mean as much to me and to KT because you really are family.

Suze: So with that, there's only one thing we want you to remember when it comes to your money. And that's this. If you can be a family with your money, if you can be honest with your money, if you can walk towards your money rather than away from it, if you can just simply know that every, every problem can be solved and that there is always a way up. It's not always just down. And if you can do it with strength and faith that everything happens for the best, we all promise you, you are unstoppable.