Suze Orman is an American financial advisor, author, television host, and motivational speaker. Born in 1951 in Chicago, she studied social work and worked as a waitress before losing $50,000 to unethical financial advice. This experience led her to become a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch and later start her own firm. Orman gained recognition for her best-selling books, including “The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom.” Her CNBC show “The Suze Orman Show” launched in 2002, and she has since won two Daytime Emmy Awards. Orman has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People” by TIME magazine and one of the “World’s Most Powerful Women” by Forbes.

Suze Orman Quotes

1. “A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.”
— Suze Orman

2. “Cleanliness is a state of purity, clarity, and precision.”
— Suze Orman

3. “Live below your means but within your needs.”
— Suze Orman

4. “Owning a home is a keystone of wealth – both financial affluence and emotional security.”
— Suze Orman

5. “I’d rather make 50 percent of something than 100 percent of nothing.”
— Suze Orman

6. “If a child, a spouse, a life partner, or a parent depends on you and your income, you need life insurance.”
— Suze Orman

7. “Stop buying things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t even like.”
— Suze Orman

8. “It’s impossible to map out a route to your destination if you don’t know where you’re starting from.”
— Suze Orman

9. “People first, then money, then things.”
— Suze Orman

10. “The things that matter most in this world are those that carry no price tag, for they can neither be bought nor sold at any price.”
— Suze Orman

11. “Recast your current problems into proactive goals.”
— Suze Orman

12. “When you are grateful – when you can see what you have – you unlock blessings to flow in your life.”
— Suze Orman

13. “The happiest moment of my life happens once a day.”
— Suze Orman

14. “Financial freedom is our birthright, rather than the “slave walk” of the Monday through Friday grind.”
— Suze Orman

15. “You can have all the money in the world. You can be a multi-billionaire, but if you do not have your health it means nothing. Your health is the No. 1 important thing in your life.”
— Suze Orman

16. “Just because you can afford it doesn’t mean you should buy it.”
— Suze Orman

17. “There is nothing more beautiful than a confident woman.”
— Suze Orman
18. “Although money alone won’t make us happy, the lack of money surely will make us miserable.”
— Suze Orman

19. “Thoughtful financial planning can easily take a backseat to daily life.”
— Suze Orman

20. “A wise woman recognizes when her life is out of balance and summons the courage to act to correct it, she knows the meaning of true generosity, happiness is the reward for a life lived in harmony, with a courage and grace.”
— Suze Orman

21. “At the end of your life, you cannot take a penny with you. So what is the object of money if you can’t take it with you?”
— Suze Orman

22. “If there is anyone dependent on your income – parents, children, relatives – you need life insurance.”
— Suze Orman

23. “Every financial worry you want to banish and financial dream you want to achieve comes from taking tiny steps today that put you on a path toward your goals.”
— Suze Orman

24. “No one’s ever achieved financial fitness with a January resolution that’s abandoned by February.”
— Suze Orman

25. “Don’t let what others think or say get in your way; their actions reflect on them, not you.”
— Suze Orman

26. “Bad debt is sacrificing your future day needs for your present day desires.”
— Suze Orman

27. “I love the Roth IRA. Tax-free income in retirement is a truly great deal.”
— Suze Orman

28. “If you expect your money to take care of you, you must take care of your money.”
— Suze Orman

29. “You can’t build a future if you do not know who you are. You can’t become who you are meant to be if you can’t tell the truth about who you are, what you have, and everything about your life. The truth is the absolute essence to your success, while lies are the absolute essence to your failures.”
— Suze Orman

30. “If you’re going down the street and you’re going the wrong way, remember – God permits U-turns.”
— Suze Orman

31. “Money is the currency of life because it is the external measurement system that all of us have as to how we judge where we are in our own lives.”
— Suze Orman

32. “True generosity is an offering; given freely and out of pure love. No strings attached. No expectations. Time and love are the most valuable possession you can share.”
— Suze Orman

33. “It’s easy to underestimate the real cost of home ownership.”
— Suze Orman

34. “People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks – but then they aren’t in the game when the markets are doing well.”
— Suze Orman

35. “What’s keeping you from being rich? In most cases it’s simply a lack of belief. In order to become rich, you must believe you can do it, and you must take the actions necessary to achieve your goal.”
— Suze Orman

36. “Women fake orgasms and men fake finances.”
— Suze Orman

37. “The mind gives us thousands of ways to say no, but there’s only one way to say yes, and that’s from the heart.”
— Suze Orman

38. “Late payments also hurt your FICO score. And never, ever take out a cash advance on your credit card.”
— Suze Orman

39. “When you’re happy you find pure joy in your life. There are no regrets in this state of happiness – and that’s a goal worth striving for in all areas of your life.”
— Suze Orman

40. “The only way you will ever permanently take control of your financial life is to dig deep and fix the root problem.”
— Suze Orman

41. “If you’re not staying on top of your money, you are putting your financial well-being at risk.”
— Suze Orman

42. “The less money you owe, the less income you’ll need and the less you’ll have to save for tomorrow.”
— Suze Orman

43. “When you understand that your self-worth is not determined by your net-worth, then you’ll have financial freedom.”
— Suze Orman

44. “I believe in God big time and I’m proud to say I believe in God.”
— Suze Orman

45. “America has a broken spirit, that the people that are saying, “Please help me, please let me keep my home, please let me keep my car, please recognize me as a vital human being,” they are falling on deaf ears.”
— Suze Orman

46. “Time and love are the most valuable possessions you can share.”
— Suze Orman

47. “Success is not how many zeroes your bank account has. It’s about making the most of the life you have.”
— Suze Orman

48. “The world does not need another credit card.”
— Suze Orman

49. “The advantage of online banking is that you can pay bills superfast, and your account is automatically credited or debited for each deposit and payment, making it easier to stay on track.”
— Suze Orman

50. “A pile of bills and statements – whether paid or not – is a sign that someone is clueless about what’s coming in and going out.”
— Suze Orman

51. “I want to see a new system. I believe that the credit scoring system is broken. That’s my belief.”
— Suze Orman

52. “You can’t build a foundation on lies.”

— Suze Orman

53. “No well-planned retirement should be without long term care insurance. It is the very cornerstone of retirement security.”
— Suze Orman

54. “I simply want you to give to yourself as much as you give of yourself. By taking care of yourself financially, you will truly be able to take care of those you love.”
— Suze Orman

55. “Look everywhere you can to cut a little bit from your expenses. It will all add up to a meaningful sum.”
— Suze Orman

56. “The truth will always lead you to a better place and a bigger place. And every single setback, every single one, has led me – not in my time, but in the time that it was meant to happen – to a place that I never in a million years could have imagined that I could go or become.”
— Suze Orman

57. “Many of the good things would never have happened if the bad events hadn’t happened first.”
— Suze Orman

58. “Writing is hard work, not magic. It begins with deciding why you are writing and whom you are writing for. What is your intent? What do you want the reader to get out of it? What do you want to get out of it. It’s also about making a serious time commitment and getting the project done.”
— Suze Orman

59. “Every time you overhear something hurtful, I want you to do something kind for someone else.”
— Suze Orman

60. “The key to making money is to stay invested.”
— Suze Orman

61. “Women are fighters. They will fight and fight and fight to get what they need, especially if they have children.”
— Suze Orman

62. “You can never solve a financial problem with money. The only way for you to have a larger net worth is for you to go within to see why you are going without.”
— Suze Orman

63. “The way to build your savings is by spending less each month.”
— Suze Orman

64. “If you’re financially responsible, your children have a much better chance to grow up financially responsible.”
— Suze Orman

65. “Never cosign a loan. Once you have cosigned, you cannot get out of it – even on your deathbed.”
— Suze Orman

66. “So many financial dreams are thwarted by the failure to act upon good intentions.”
— Suze Orman

67. “Power comes from who you are, not what you have, and the transformation starts with how you allow others to treat you.”
— Suze Orman

68. “I’m probably the only bestselling author you know who’s written more books than she’s read.”
— Suze Orman

69. “We tend to focus on assets and forget about debts. Financial security requires facing up to the big picture: assets minus debts.”
— Suze Orman

70. “To enjoy a long, comfortable retirement, save more today.”
— Suze Orman

71. “A great teacher once taught me that you’ve got to have faith that everything happens for the best. I have had many setbacks in my career and every setback has led me that much further into my truth.”
— Suze Orman

72. “Focus on what you have.”
— Suze Orman

73. “Make this the year you tackle that credit card debt once and for all.”
— Suze Orman

74. “We women know how to take care of everybody so well. But the one person we have written out of the equation is us.”
— Suze Orman

75. “You must trust yourself more than you trust anyone else with your money.”
— Suze Orman

76. “If you’re saving for the long run, it’s actually a good thing when the market is down because the more shares you have, the more you can potentially make when markets rise. And over time – decades, not months – the markets rise more than they fall.”
— Suze Orman

77. “I don’t care how far we’ve come with “women’s liberation,” with all these things. In a man’s mind, he still needs to be the support of his family. He needs to hold up the world.”
— Suze Orman

78. “If you’re in poverty and all you have is a debit card or a prepaid card or you pay in cash, it does not report to a credit bureau. If it doesn’t report to a credit bureau, it cannot create a credit score for yourself.”
— Suze Orman

79. “Consider a 15- or 20-year fixed-rate mortgage instead of a 30-year, if you can afford the monthly payments – they may not be as high as you think.”
— Suze Orman

80. “I am a big believer that orderliness begets wealth.”
— Suze Orman

81. “If you’re going to live in the house make it your goal to just pay off your mortgage.”
— Suze Orman

82. “If you have a 50 percent match and you get in trouble financially, you can either withdraw money as a loan, or withdraw the 50 percent match. If you take it out, you have to pay taxes on it, but you still come out ahead.”
— Suze Orman

83. “The foundation of a financial fresh start actually has nothing to do with money or specific financial dos and don’ts.”
— Suze Orman

84. “I am a financial planner, not a psychiatrist, but I do know that your net worth will rise to meet your self-worth only if your self-worth rises to accept what can be yours.”
— Suze Orman

85. “Once you stop looking for a job, you are no longer considered part of the unemployment number.”
— Suze Orman

86. “Remember to remember your power – everything you’ve learned with these steps to financial freedom – and put it all into practice everyday, because in the grand scheme of life, you’ll never really know how things are meant to turn out until they turn out.”
— Suze Orman

87. “You must remember the value that you add to others and not just what others have added to you. That’s how we build self-worth, which, in my opinion, is just as important as net worth.”
— Suze Orman

88. “When you give, give from the place of the heart because it is the right thing to do, not the easy thing to do.”
— Suze Orman

89. “What happens to your money directly affects the quality of your life – not your stockbroker’s life or your banker’s life, but YOUR life.”
— Suze Orman

90. “Be as good to yourself as you are to those you love.”
— Suze Orman

91. “A wise woman knows how to summon her courage and do what is right, rather than what is easy.”
— Suze Orman

92. “Men and women both have an equal capacity to make money, but they want money for different reasons. Men want money for power and women want it for comfort, and usually not their own comfort, but the comfort of others in their lives.”
— Suze Orman

93. “The dream of having one’s dream job turned into “Oh my God, I’ll take any job. I’ve been out of work for two years now. I don’t care what I do. I’ll do anything because I don’t have any money”.”
— Suze Orman

94. “Abundance is about being rich, with or without money.”
— Suze Orman

95. “Put your financial life on autopilot as a form of ‘forced’ saving.”
— Suze Orman

96. “People have got to learn: if they don’t have cookies in the cookie jar, they can’t eat cookies.”
— Suze Orman

97. “You will never be powerful in life until you are powerful over your own money. How you think about it, how you feel about it and how you invest it.”
— Suze Orman

98. “Money is a living entity, and it responds to energy exactly the same way you do. It is drawn to those who welcome it, those who respect it. Wouldn’t you rather be with people who respect you and who don’t want you to be something you’re not? Your money feels the same way.”
— Suze Orman

99. “Every morning I wake up, I can’t even wait to go and see what life can I change today. It doesn’t have to be a lot of lives, but I can change one life a little bit here, a little bit there, and I hope that everything I create, people know that.”
— Suze Orman

100. “The last thing family and friends want is for you to spend money on them that you don’t have or that you can’t really spare.”
— Suze Orman

101. “Many people are in the dark when it comes to money, and I’m going to turn on the lights.”
— Suze Orman

102. “When someone chooses to value herself over the things she can buy, true transformation begins.”
— Suze Orman

103. “You have to see every potential roadblock as an opportunity and a benefit.”
— Suze Orman

104. “Messages about money are passed down from generation to generation, worn and chipped like the family dishes.”
— Suze Orman

105. “If you wait until your children are high school seniors to spring it on them that there’s not a whole lot of money for school, they won’t have too many options.”
— Suze Orman

106. “Each cent you apply toward diminishing your debt replenishes you.”
— Suze Orman

107. “If you have debt I’m willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.”
— Suze Orman

108. “The truth is women in the workplace don’t have to fight nearly as hard for opportunities, or to dispel stereotypes, as they did before.”
— Suze Orman

109. “It’s not selfish to give TO yourself as much as you give OF yourself.”
— Suze Orman

110. “But credit card debt is unsecured debt, which means if you get in trouble and cannot pay off your credit card, you can discharge it in bankruptcy. What are they going do to you? If you’re in a financial position to just methodically pay off both credit card and student loans, pay them all.”
— Suze Orman

111. “I do not think I am successful just because I have money. I’m successful because I love who I am and I have no regrets, and I’m successful because I have a great heart and I have compassion and I care and I would be happy with or without money.”
— Suze Orman

112. “Rather than saying, ‘My checking account is a wreck,’ change it to ‘I will learn how to track my spending and balance my checkbook.’”
— Suze Orman

113. “It’s better to do nothing with your money than something you don’t understand.”
— Suze Orman

114. “I get so frustrated when people tell me it’s unrealistic to create an eight-month emergency savings fund, or have money saved for a home down payment, or pay off their $5,000 credit card balance.”
— Suze Orman

115. “Money is such an amazing teacher: What you choose to do with your money shows whether you are truly powerful or powerless.”
— Suze Orman

116. “I’ve never believed unemployment numbers because the way that they calculate unemployment makes no sense whatsoever. It’s not how many people are unemployed. It’s how many people are actively looking for a job.”
— Suze Orman

117. “If the only way you can build an emergency fund is to pay the minimum due on your credit card, that is what you need to do.”
— Suze Orman

118. “When you’ve been battered down and battered down and battered down, your spirit gets broken.”
— Suze Orman

119. “Nothing’s greater in life to see somebody who doesn’t have start to value who they are and, as soon as they feel valued, they can change this world too.”
— Suze Orman

120. “The most important loan to pay is your student loan. It’s more important than your mortgage, car and credit card payments. You cannot discharge student loan debt in the majority of cases.”
— Suze Orman

121. “True generosity must benefit both parties. No woman can control her destiny if she doesn’t give to herself as much as she gives of herself.”
— Suze Orman

122. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I want to have more,” “I want to be more,” “I did this for money.””
— Suze Orman

123. “If you pay off your mortgage before retirement, you take a huge financial load off your shoulders. You also become eligible to take out a reverse mortgage once you turn 62.”
— Suze Orman

124. “As our net worth falls, so does our self-worth. Ironically, it’s when we don’t have it that we most feel we have to flaunt it…”
— Suze Orman

125. “Stop saying yes out of fear about what others will think about you and say NO out of love for yourself!”
— Suze Orman

126. “I grew up thinking that because I couldn’t read, I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I worked my way through college as a waitress and thought I wasn’t capable of doing anything else. My grades in English were horrible, and I barely got through.”
— Suze Orman

127. “Women need to turn their attention from saving their spouse, their mothers, their this, their that, their kids, to putting that financial oxygen mask on their face first. When they’re solid, they can pick up the whole world.”
— Suze Orman

128. “Once your kids are grown and you know that you’re completely healthy, consider canceling your life insurance policy.”
— Suze Orman

129. “I wanted to give people the ability once again to realize that they can still dream, but it has to be a new American dream that’s based in honesty, integrity, and security – a dream that allows you to sleep at night, a dream that is attainable and allows you to stand in your truth.”
— Suze Orman

130. “Your goal should be to pay off your credit card bills in full at the end of each month and set aside money toward your emergency savings.”
— Suze Orman

131. “Learn how to prioritize all your debt. And did you know student loan debt is the most dangerous debt any of us can have?”
— Suze Orman

132. “I’m in a relationship with life. My life is just out there. I’m on the road every day. I love my life.”
— Suze Orman

133. “Choosing wealth as a goal requires facing everything about your money bravely, honestly, with courage – which is a very, very hard thing for most of us to do.”
— Suze Orman

134. “Private student loans should be avoided at all costs.”
— Suze Orman

135. “Every portfolio benefits from bonds; they provide a cushion when the stock market hits a rough patch. But avoiding stocks completely could mean your investment won’t grow any faster than the rate of inflation.”
— Suze Orman

136. “A cash advance on a credit card is one of the worst types of borrowing because the interest rate is typically 21 percent or more.”
— Suze Orman

137. “They got married, they got divorced, and half their money goes out the window.”
— Suze Orman

138. “Imagine you waking up tomorrow and you can’t get a bank account; you can’t get a credit union account. Everything has gone away and you’re now living in poverty.”
— Suze Orman

139. “When you can be happy in your sadness as you are in your happiness. Then you know the key to life.”
— Suze Orman

140. “Opposites may attract, but I wouldn’t put my money on a relationship of financial opposites.”
— Suze Orman

141. “Cut back your spending now.”
— Suze Orman

142. “Absolutely pay off your credit card debt, because a child can always get a loan to go to school, possibly a scholarship, a grant.”
— Suze Orman

143. “Even if you were to fall into extreme financial hardship and file for bankruptcy, you need to understand that your student loan debt will not be discharged in bankruptcy. It is the Velcro of all debts.”
— Suze Orman

144. “The truth is that you are nothing more than the custodian of your inner and outer wealth while you are on this planet. All you have to decide is what kind of custodian do you want to be? Do you want to be a good custodian of your inner and outer wealth? Or a bad custodian?”
— Suze Orman

145. “What women need to understand is that you cannot save a child if you can’t save yourself.”
— Suze Orman

146. “I have always said that if you undervalue what you do, the world undervalues who you are. And when you undervalue who you are, the world undervalues what you do. My experience is that women are, unfortunately, masters at both.”
— Suze Orman

147. “When you are starting out in your 20s, it is natural to think about all that you will have and do once you start making money, and making more money. That gives money way too much power over your life. It’s not about how much you make, but the life that you make with the money you have.”
— Suze Orman

148. “Make it a priority to have at least eight months of living costs set aside in a federally insured bank or credit union account.”
— Suze Orman

149. “I love, love, love that you want to use your debit card. But to keep your credit score solid, you still need to keep a few credit cards and use them at least once every few months.”
— Suze Orman

150. “Find $50 a month for savings. No excuses!”
— Suze Orman