Podcast Episode - No Excuses

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The main message of this podcast features Suze explaining that, even though times are especially hard right now, we need to stay strong and not make excuses for poor financial decisions.

Podcast Transcript:

December 13th, 2020 Suze O. Here and Welcome to the Women and Money Podcast, as well as those men who are smart enough to listen. I'm so happy to say there are so many thousands and thousands of you. It gives me hope. It gives me hope. And it's an interesting day today, isn't it? Because why, why is it interesting? Well, almost every date is interesting truthfully, but today we are exactly 12 days away from Christmas, and we are also about to be tonight anyway, into our fourth night of Hanukkah. And we are celebrating and we are giving gifts or were about to give gifts. And for some that will be easy for others. That will be hard for the majority of people. Truthfully, at this point in time, it's absolutely impossible, and I just don't understand. I don't understand with these holidays that are coming up right here and right now all of them why the United States of America is not being given the biggest gift of all, which is a stimulus package. It has gone on far enough. I really thought, honest to God that when it got to this crisis point again, where the virus started to ramp up again, that Congress would step up and put away their, their views or whatever and just pass a true gift for the United States of America. For its people, it's people that are so seriously suffering right now. It's not even funny. And what's so sad is at the end of this month, all of those people that have been allowed million's of them that have been allowed to stay in their homes because they weren't able to pay their rent. That is going to go away. And we're going to have million's and million's of people that are actually homeless people that by no fault of their own on any level, are going to suffer the consequences of something that truthfully, if just acknowledged, could have, in my opinion, been avoided to the extent that we are all experiencing it now. You know what I know. I know. I tell you all the time. You have got to do what you have to do today to protect your tomorrows. And in some circumstances, you absolutely have to do that. You need a will, you need to trust, you need the right amount of life insurance. You need the right amount of hurricane insurance, earthquake insurance, whatever type of insurance you can buy to protect that which you value. That which you've worked so hard for. But one know what's so sad? There was no way, No way, for any of you to be able to protect yourselves truthfully against what has happened right now. And sure you could have had your emergency fund. You could have had this. You could have had that. But many of you had businesses, businesses that you worked so hard for. And we're helping other people employing other people, feeding other people, manicuring other people, giving other people haircuts, giving them massages, giving them a place to stay whatever it may be. And again, through no fault of your own that was taken away from you. And nobody wants to help. Nobody wants to help. And in the past, when I look at some of the podcast that I've done and, and I always hear myself saying on some of them Nobody is going to save you but yourself you know your employees isn't going to save you. Your employers aren't going to save you. Your relatives aren't going to save you. And the government isn't going to save you. Well, isn't that true? The government refuses to save you, at least for now. They refused to save the entire economy. I don't get it. I just don't get it. And that makes me again sad. So I get emails from so many of you that say, Suze, I had a great job. I had a great business. I had rental income. I had this. I had that. And now, Suze, I can't even afford to feed my kids. I can't do anything. I just can't. And again I find that so sad. So a few days ago, on one of my social media things, I don't know if it was Twitter, Instagram or Facebook or even on the community app. I don't know where I did it right, but I put up some saying about that There are no more excuses, that all of you have to be strong right now. You have to be. What other choice do you have? And then there's just no more excuses. We can't come up with any excuse for anything anymore other than we just have to tackle it head on, and I read one of the responses that somebody posted and they said to me, Oh, just how insensitive to the fact that covid is here. And I thought, Is this person saying to me that I'm insensitive? Because I'm simply saying no more excuses? and that's exactly what this person was saying. But that's not what I meant. Everybody I understand and, you know, I understand the ramifications of what's going on out there because of this virus. And how many times have I said to you that the economy is not the stock market, because I truly think that the stock market's going to catch up to the economy here shortly, probably April or May of next year. But for now everything is still rosy, and like I've said to you, I will address that either before the end of this year or the beginning of next, and it makes me just go. Really? Don't you all see what's happening out there? They're gonna be millions of people that are going to be evicted. And is that finally going to be what happens to actually affect the real estate market and the tumbles that go on from there. I can only pray that our government gets its act together and passes a stimulus for the people who really need it. But I want to talk about excuses because it's the excuses that we give ourselves, we allow ourselves to use to be able to be okay. It's an excuse that we feel sad. It's an excuse that whatever that I'm so afraid is going to do us in. And so sometimes just little things, little things when you are struggling for money and there are those of you out there who absolutely have no money left, there are those of you out there who are still just making it paycheck to paycheck if you even want to call it that. And then there are those of you who are absolutely thriving out there and the truth is great I'm happy for you, but you never know what can happen to you as well. So you just have to have a new mindset where excuses no longer are part of your being. You know, I wanna tell you a story, all right? And this story takes place back in 2009 in January, to be exact. And I'm on The Oprah Winfrey Show. And I've just written a new book called The 2009 Action Plan. And it was the action plan for the United States of America to simply follow. Given that we were in the midst off a serious, I still think, depression where people have lost their homes. They had lost 50 some odd percent of their money in the stock market. Everything was going wrong. So I created an action plan, and I went on the Oprah Winfrey Show to give that book away for free so everybody could follow the action plan and be OK. And in just one hour after the show was over, we gave away over 2.2 million copies of that book. It also was out in paperback, and for those who didn't wanted downloaded via the show or whatever, they could go to the store and buy it, but I think it was only like $3,4,5 at most. It was not for me to make money. It was for me to give you an action plan for you to follow Step by step. And one of the steps in that action plan was I asked you to simply commit to not eating out at a restaurant for 21 days. Well, okay. After that show aired, when I tell you that the entire restaurant industry came after me, that's putting it mildly. I was standing outside of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, I'll never forget this, in New York, pretty much after I had done this show I then went to New York for something and I was just standing there waiting to get a taxi or something and this guy came up and spit at the right in the face. Maybe I've told you this story before, I don't know. And it was a restaurant here that was so angry at me for having said that, and because it was the Oprah Winfrey Show and all these people wrote in Oprah wanted to do a follow up a week later, which was on this Internet thing that she was doing and just something that we did at night to follow up on shows. And this one restaurant person who was the most angry of all was the person that was invited to come on and meet me face to face. And when he did, what was interesting is that when I did my background search on him and his restaurant, so to speak is he had credit card debt. He couldn't pay his bills. He had a lot of financial problems. Yet he wanted me to continue to tell people. Yes, he they have to go and they have to eat in his restaurant. Yes, they have to spend money. Yes, He didn't care if they had to go into debt to do so. That's what he wanted. Now, just before I go on with this, the reason that I made that one of the request was to just stop eating out for 21 days is number one. If you could do something or stop doing something for 21 days, then you could break the habit. So that's where I got the 21 days Dr. Oz taught me that. The reason that I chose restaurants is that I had gone at the time to mint.com, and this was before they had been taken over and they had done a white paper and they were able to tell me what is the biggest expense for people on their credit cards that are late, they have bad FICO scores, but what is their biggest expense per month for those who aren't doing well, financially speaking, And you know what they told me? They said, going out to eat at a restaurant. So I just didn't get this out of the clear blue sky. I did some research on it. I understood what I was saying when I was writing the book and what I said on the Oprah Winfrey Show. That's why I did that. Everybody and it came to pass that eventually everything went okay. Everybody started to eat at restaurants again, and everybody had calmed down. Okay, let's fast forward now to right here. And right now, now doesn't make sense for me to tell you, stop eating out at restaurants, save your money, because why there no restaurants that are open? You don't have that problem anymore. Now the restaurants are trying to do anything and everything to stay open and just stay in business. And again, I hope somebody helps them out because they deserve to stay in business. They deserve to stay in business. So this isn't about restaurants, but this is about eating. And what restaurants have been replaced by are these services Now that will send you meals to your home three times a day, whatever you want and that all you have to do is put it right into the oven. That's all you have to do put it in the microwave. And I'm seeing commercial upon commercial about how good it looks and that you're never gonna have to cook again and everything is great and you're just probably giving yourself excuses of I'm going through such a hard time. Oh, my God. I have to be a teacher. I have to be a mom. I have to do all these things. Please. I just I don't want to cook dinner. I'm just going to order in. I'm going to take advantage of one of those services. It's just so easy. Okay, I hear that. But now if I were going to write an action plan for 2021. One of the first things that I would tell you would be stop ordering in from these companies. And I know I'm going to get all kinds of letters and everything again. But stop ordering in from these companies that are bringing to your home prepared foods for you to simply just put on the table. Now, if you're one of those people who keep giving yourself the excuse of I'm doing more than I could possibly do, I'm going to order in from one of those services that absolutely delivered to your home. They deliver fabulous food. You just pop it in and you can eat it. I want you to listen to me right now. If I were to tell you that I could guarantee you a 240% return on your money at times. But just let's say today, would you be interested in that? Wouldn't you care to know what type of investment I'm talking about? Well, I'll tell you, it's an investment in cooking at home. Now let me give you an example. I am to love chicken teriyaki. I just love it and, you know, I think Okay, I see it on TV. It's on the menu of one of these companies, and I order it and it costs me $13 that's all. Now, if we were in restaurant times, it would be $22. So maybe I'm thinking in my head, Hey, I get to have the same thing I have at a restaurant that would cost me $22 it's only gonna cost me $13. No big deal. Well, let me just tell you how big a deal that is, especially if it's more than one of you. But just let's assume it's you, okay? Just you Do you know that if you cooked that exact same chicken teriyaki, just the chicken teriyaki for yourself. I know because I've tried this. It would cost you approximately a dollar 50. That's $11.50 difference. That is a lot of money. Exactly 240% difference. So if you had taken that dollar 50 and invested it, you would have to get about 240% on that for you to get $13. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? but you do this day in and day out and you give yourself excuses to make it be okay. It's not okay. It's not. We're now at a time where this could go either way. I get that the vaccine is here. You listen to my podcast in the past, you would hear that I knew the vaccine was kind of going to be here in December, Of course. But just because we have the vaccine doesn't mean that we are all vaccinated and we are all safe and everything's going to get back to how it was. So I need you not to have any excuses in your life for anything anymore. I need you to take on everything with the most sensible approach possible right now. And it's not sensible to spend $13 when you could spend a dollar 50. And I get that but I don't have time. I can't do this. Everything's okay. You know, just remember that if you get into a situation one day where you're one of those people that are standing in the food line, but you might not ever be one of the people that stand in the food line because all the food banks, they're going broke. They're going broke because of all the people that are standing in them. So this holiday season, the greatest gift that you could give yourself is a gift of no excuses for anything. No excuses for failing. No excuses for spending money when you don't have to spend it. No excuses for buying gifts just because you're guilty. No more excuses. We're out of time. Time is up. So that's the podcast today and that you really have to be strong right now. All of you should be writing your senators and your congressmen and giving them hell if you ask me. Call them. Do whatever you know we all should be protesting about. Where's the stimulus to save the country? Somehow that voice seems to not be out there. That's not the voice that people are hearing. So 12 days, 12 days to Christmas, fourth night tonight of Hanukkah. So I would like to give all of you a little gift, and I'm giving you this gift because I think it's something that you really, really need. As you know, I'm on this health thing, which is under no circumstances should you put off your health. Without your health, wealth is absolutely, absolutely nothing. And what's important about that is that your health? A lot of times starts within your teeth, and you have got to keep your teeth healthy. Teeth are the easiest thing simply to just not pay attention to, but a lot of disease a lot of illness starts within year teeth. And I get now that because a lot of you have been laid off, you no longer have dental insurance at your place of employment. I hate dental insurance. I just have to tell you, I just don't think it's worth it. In most cases, I've told you many times before about a plan from dentalplans.com, which will give you absolutely 10 to 60% off dental procedures if you simply sign up. And it's like 100 and something dollars a year for entire family to save 10 or 60% on dental procedures. So the gift is, and I think it's good till the end of the year, at least I hope it is. Is that if you go to dentalplans.com and you just read about it, you'll see my picture there and everything. If you just simply put in the code. If you decide to purchase it Suze 2020, SUZE 2020, then you will get a 25% discount. That's a bigger discount then they're offering anywhere because I asked them to do so. Now you might be cynical like many of you are. I know it. And you're thinking Suze Orman, how much are you getting paid if we sign up? I don't make a penny off of that. Do you hear me, people? I just simply want you to be able to save money. That's all on something that you seriously need to do. So you can take me up on it, you don't have to take me up on it. But I thought it would be a great thing for you to do, because if you do that this year, the next year you can go and get your teeth clean. You can go and do certain things and make sure that you stay healthy because in my book, that is your number one priority. And there are no excuses because of plans like this for you not to go and see a dentist, You and your entire family. All right, that's our podcast for today, you know. Wanna wanna hear something so funny, Everybody. This wasn't the podcast that I was going to do today. I was going to do a podcast today on an entirely different topic, which was Don't get sidetracked. Be one pointed, had it all planned out. And I don't know what the heck happened. I don't know. Maybe one day I'll figure that out. But until then, happy Hanukkah, everybody. Until next time you stay safe.

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