Podcast Episode – Don’t Be Afraid of The Future

In this Suze School, Suze talks about how uncertainty and confusion, from volatile markets, questions about interest rates and general unease about what’s happening around us, may lead to making bad decisions with our money.

Suze breaks down why AI and semiconductors are not a bubble, and why it’s important to stay calm, invest with intention, and not let fear derail our financial foundation.

Listen to Podcast Episode:

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Podcast Transcript:

Suze: February 1st, 2026. Welcome everybody to the Women in Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen. And today is, I guess it’s Suze School. Maybe it’s Suze Story.

Maybe it’s just Suze, who knows? But hopefully you’ll listen and get something out of it. But I just want to tell you a little thing.

Yesterday, I was in my studio, and as you know, we moved from the island, we sold the island and we moved back to Florida. And by the way, I keep having to tell all of you, Colo is great. He’s doing fine. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it on this podcast, it’s like you don’t believe me, so you keep writing it in. I’m telling you, he’s listening. Colo, I know you listen every single podcast.

Tell everybody, you and Annie are doing great. OK. However, because we’ve moved back here, I’ve been so trying to get my studio together here in Florida, and it’s very different than it was on the island because on the island I had this little room and I turned it into a soundproof room and it was just so easy to go in there and do TV and everything, the lights were set up perfect.

Here, we don’t have a little space like that, and the only place I can do it is we turn the second bedroom into the podcast studio and the TV studio, but it has windows and sun pours in, and it becomes very difficult to do cameras or anything. So, every day I’ve been trying to figure it out.

And so yesterday, KT came in as I was trying to figure out what I was going to do today for all of you, and she kind of sat down and I had the camera going just to see what it looked like and could it be arranged that maybe we could ever do a podcast with both of us on the video. And so we pushed the button and we just recorded something.

We don’t have makeup on. We weren’t ready to do this, nothing like that, and it was cute. So I’m gonna post it today. Do not tell KT cause she will absolutely kill me. But anyway, take a look at it. I think you’ll enjoy it. We’re gonna post it, by the way, on the Women and Money Community app on the wall there. I don’t think it’s quite ready for real prime time yet, but I think all the community members, I think you’ll enjoy it.

And you’ll see what we really look like. OK, now, anyway.

Today’s podcast.

You know, I want to say we live in a time and a place, where everything just seems so uncertain.

So upside down. So going back to the past when so many things were just not equal. Women have been losing their rights. We’ve gone backwards there now. We have all kinds of discrimination throughout the United States and honest to God, it feels like we are going back to the days before really the United States experienced freedom for all.

And I just can’t even begin to tell you how much that upsets me, and I know it upsets all of you. There is no way that any of you can look and watch on television and see everything that’s happening out there. You just can’t. There’s gotta be a different way to do it.

And when uncertainty happens like that, and you add to that uncertainty… Are we going to have tariffs or are we not?

Are interest rates going to go down, or are they not? Is the stock market going to go up, or is it gonna go down?

And everybody is absolutely freaked out. Bitcoin, is Bitcoin gonna continue to go down, or is it gonna go back up? What are these things going to do?

And what’s interesting about all of that is that if you think about everything I just talked about.

Stocks, even real estate, Bitcoin, all these things are controlled by people, people who are buying, people who are selling.

And right now the fear barometer is so high, it’s not even funny. It’s like everything that’s going on in the world, Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, all this stuff, Israel still.

All this stuff has seeped into the fabric of who we are as human beings, and it’s very, very difficult to make a rational decision when you are coming from a place of fear.

Which is why just a little bit ago I did a podcast on that. But it’s even more than fear. It’s, it’s confusion. It’s not knowing how do you solve these problems, especially when you’re not even the one in most cases that are creating them, even though there’s all this confusion out there and this, all these messages that don’t make any sense if you ask me.

The truth of the matter is you can’t afford to be confused.

You can’t afford not to do what you need to do with your money and just block out all the noise that’s out there. And I’m starting to want to just throw things at the TV when I hear some of these pundits go on CNBC and everything and say:

“Gonna be an AI bubble. Yeah, everything’s gonna go down considerably…” And they keep saying it, and they keep saying it, and they keep saying it, and yeah, a lot of these stocks have taken a serious hit.

But aren’t all of you that are invested in the stock market, aren’t all of you invested with money that you are not going to need for at least five or 10 years or longer? Wasn’t that the deal that we made for money that is in the stock market? And why did we make that deal?

It’s because of course things go up and up and up and then of course things go down and down and down and then they go right back up again but you need time for that to happen and if you just are investing and you’re simply doing this thing where

Oh, I was doing so great. Everything was up so much. Oh my God, I can’t believe it, and now it’s down, and now you’re depressed or you don’t know what to do.

You are probably making serious mistakes, and what are the serious mistakes that you’re making is you don’t continue to dollar cost average into the stocks that you know are strong, you know they have a future, you know it.

But yet you now have been scared to make any moves. Do you know that over the past 40 years, and I’m going to give you these numbers because I really want you to understand them.

Because history has now proven that it does repeat itself and so many of you, even though you’ve been purchasing individual stocks, the advice really was purchase individual stocks to get a little bit more of a return. But there’s nothing wrong with having 50% of your money in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index. Do you remember us talking about that? Can you get out your little Suze notebooks? Can you do that for me?

Do you know that out of the past 40 years since 1985, so we’ll just go through 2025…

That there were only seven years out of the past 40 years, OK.

So, 33 of those years, the S&P 500 went up, seven of those years, the S&P 500 went down. Now, do you think that the odds are with you or not?

You know, and I’m just gonna read these figures for you. In fact, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna put a little picture on the Women and Money Community app

and I will show you the returns of 1985 all the way through 2025 per year.

And when you look at those, and you look at the 33 years that went up, and the seven years that went down,

and you know that you have at least five years or longer till you need this money, because when I look at these numbers, so rather than giving you the numbers, I’m just gonna go up and down, all right? Starting in 1985, up, up, up, up, up, down.

Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, down, down, down, see why you need five or 10 years or longer then up, up, up, up, up, down, up up up up up up up up up down up up up down up up up.

Do you see that?

So, let’s just say that it is a down year this year. I don’t think it’s gonna be, but let’s just say it is, and maybe next year. These are the years that you continue to invest in the things that you wanna own, and if you don’t know what you want to own, all right, just buy the Standard and Poor’s 500 index ETF. Fine.

But over the long run you’re going to have, if history does repeat itself, more up years taking away the down years, and you’ve got to have that in mind now. One of the reasons that I’m so aggravated about people thinking that AI is in a bubble, have you not also heard me say to you?

You have to invest in the future.

You have to have the ability at least to kind of look and see where we are going and how AI semiconductors, all kinds of things are going to rule as time goes on. So you have to not be afraid of the future.

And I was trying to think to myself, how do I really get it across how AI and semiconductors and everything that’s going on is so far beyond truthfully, chat GPT and this and that and all those things that it’s going to change everything in our lives.

And the one way that I thought I could talk about it in terms of how it’s going to change your life, every one of our lives, is by talking about AVs. Do you happen to know what an AV is? An AV is an autonomous vehicle.

A vehicle that will absolutely drive itself.

The level 5, it’s called, the robotaxi, you see them sometimes in San Francisco or wherever, and you get in and it takes you to where you wanna go, no driver at all.

So just put a pin in that for a second, and let’s go back to the year 1910.

And do you know in 1910 when the car was first being developed that there were 130,000 horses in New York City. Do you know that? And do you know that by 1920 there were only 56,000 horses.

And do you know that a lot of the people that rode those horses and everything, I’m sure, thought that it was going to always be the only mode of transportation to get from A to Z or wherever you wanted to go.

And then all of a sudden, everything started to change, seriously. You know, there were like stables and carriage houses and all kinds of things, and they totally disappeared.

And they were replaced with gas stations and dealerships and everything started to spring up everywhere and then we were able to travel and everybody drove themselves and in the same way, believe it or not, we’ve gone from horses to driving cars ourselves. The next step is we’re gonna have cars that really will drive themselves.

So, what does this have to do with the future and investing in AI? Well, I’ll tell you what it has to do.

The amount of technology for a level 5 car to absolutely drive itself and do everything is so much grander and greater than what a car today that will park itself and do all those things it takes. It will take seven times more of all the technology, the brain power, the GPS, all of that.

Than what’s called a level 2 car today, which is a car that will park itself and with you in it, drive around.

That’s why there will be such an extraordinary need for semiconductors, AI, and all the things that everybody’s telling you is in a bubble, because it’s not just cars, everybody, it’s going to be all kinds of things. I want you to think about this.

It’s gonna be farming equipment, mining equipment, the long haul truckers. You’re gonna see trucks going down the road all by themselves, all these military applications, everything. Obviously it’s gonna reduce the need for labor and all of that, OK, but it’s going to require so much AI it’s not going to be funny.

And therefore, this is not an area that by any level that you can turn your back on.

So, semiconductors and software and AI all of that is the foundation of the future.

So, it is impossible for it to be in a bubble. Now, it is not impossible that some of those stocks are going to go down dramatically. A lot of those stocks are investing billions of dollars to do things. So, all right, they may go down, they may go up, they may go all over the place, but in the long run,

the reason that I’m telling you all this is I can sense that you are freaked when you see certain stocks going down dramatically 30%, 40%, and the more they go down rather than you dollar cost averaging into them, rather than you being smart, rather than you taking control over the confusion that is in this world right now.

You are becoming part of that confusion, and you are selling. You are selling because you have lost faith in the picture and the future and the long run of what is probable, not what is possible, but what is probable.

So, I am asking all of you, as long as you have five, 10, 15 years or longer to have your money invested.

To just stay calm.

To continue to dollar cost average, to be in the areas of the market along with the overall market, the Standard and Poor’s 500, and just continue to participate in what’s going on out there now. All right, everybody.

Now with that said, I get it. I get it. Believe me, I have many stocks, serious positions in many of these stocks.

And, OK, they go down.

And either I dollar cost average into them, or I’m just holding them.

I want you to remember, given that tax season is just around the corner, that a lot of you purchased these stocks as they were going up and up and up. You have not held them for at least a year. So for those of you that do have gains and you’re selling now, that’s going to be taxed to you as ordinary income, that will be an absolute loss to you at that point in time.

So, if you have gains, and you have held longer than a year, and you wanna reduce your position cause you have a lot or whatever, and you just wanna do that, and it allows you to sleep at night. The goal of money is for you to be secure and sleep, OK, do that.

But, if they’re good quality stocks, if there’s stocks that participate in the future, you have the S&P 500.

If I were you, I would be holding on. However, there’s more to investing than just the futuristic things of AI and semiconductors and so on.

There are things that all of you really are putting a lot of money in, and I do just want to caution you from doing so.

Thursday’s podcast, one of the questions was about Barrick Gold and how I recommended it back in, I think it was June of 2022 at 18, went up to 53 or 54, came back down on Friday, 4 or 5 points, quite a bit, but still, you write me and you say, why aren’t you talking and telling people to invest in gold more?

Can’t you see, Suze, what’s happening to the dollar, ’cause it’s true. The dollar is getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

But I just want to say something about gold here.

Gold has had a tremendous run.

And when gold runs as fast as it has run,

I would be very skeptical at this point in time in terms of adding a whole lot of gold to my portfolio. You know, I don’t necessarily believe in owning the actual commodity itself, and I mentioned on Thursday, as I’ve mentioned for a long time now, if you want to buy gold and participate, OK, buy the ETF GLD.

But I am just saying to you, just be careful here because I think more is at play with gold than you have any idea. All right. In terms of the weak dollar, concerns me a little bit, concerns me because I always thought the United States wanted a strong dollar policy, but I don’t think the United States has any clue what they’re doing one way or the other right now because nobody can agree on anything.

So again, we don’t want to be part of that confusion. Just understand how a weak dollar will affect you only truthfully.

On a personal level right now, if you are traveling, like if you’re going over to Europe, if you’re doing things like that, it will be far more expensive for you right now because of the exchange rates. So just keep that in mind, but I wouldn’t be too worried about it if I were you. Bitcoin, yes, it has come down quite a bit, hasn’t it?

However, I’m still saying, all right, I don’t care. I still have faith in Bitcoin long run. I’m not putting any more money into it. I have very little. I have it via the ETF, by the way, IBIT, and another one that pays a nice little dividend, but I still want to just stick with IBIT for all of you. A little exposure, great, but you might have to wait years or a while now. Know that if it doesn’t hold right around this 88,000 area and close there over the next few days or whatever, it’s very probable you’ll see it go down to 69,000 or whatever, which is actually what it was around two years ago for the Super Bowl, and then it went all the way up, and now it’s all the way back down again. See, we have a trend here.

But don’t freak about it. None of you should have all of your money in Bitcoin. None of you should have all of your money in gold. None of you should have those types of investments being a large part of your portfolio. I would not have it be more than 5% of a portfolio, and even that may be a lot for many of you. So it too has to go through its cycle.

I think that it’s very probable that the last half of February we’ll see these markets rally, but who knows.

And the reason that nobody can know anymore is because of the confusion out there. So we’re now back to where I started the podcast.

We have to get a handle on what’s happening in Minnesota, what’s happening throughout the United States. We have to get a handle and have our stories be right and not have one politician say something and then another politician say something else. We have to be on the same train going in the same direction so that we all get there.

Confusion causes disruption. Disruption in your own stability causes you to do things like selling when you should be buying and buying when you should be selling, and therefore, the markets can be crazy for a while here.

So, don’t be one of those investors where you want how it was last year. It went up and up and up and up and up and up and up. Be one of those investors, where you have the understanding that when something goes up, something goes down, something goes up, it’s building a foundation.

A foundation under it to make it stronger for its next leg up in whatever those good stocks may happen to be.

All right.

Don’t forget to go to the Women and Money app. You can get it on Google Play or Apple Apps to see the little video, the little video I’m gonna put up. It’s only like maybe a minute long.

But you’ll see KT is so dang cute I can’t even stand it. This afternoon, February 1st, we’re all going to my brother-in-law Tom Stender’s 75th birthday. His birthday really isn’t until February 11th, but we’re all going today. His kids came in. They surprised him, so the whole family is here.

And what’s funny is we’re going to a little restaurant called Mai Kai, which is this like tropical Hawaiian place, and it’s like 35 degrees here in Florida. So, Tom, happy, happy birthday, my dear brother-in-law.

I hope you know what an extraordinary human being you are, and I hope you never ever forget that. But until Thursday when Miss Travis does join us for another Ask KT and Suze Anything.

There’s really only one thing that I want you to remember, and it’s this people first, then money, then things, and you stay autonomous with your money and stay safe. Bye-bye now.