One of the things we’re looking to do with this blog is give our ratings of some of the various personal finance Gurus that are out there. Today, I’m going to be giving you my opinion about one of the more famous gurus: Suze Orman.
I give Suze an F -.
Thats right, I’m giving her a failing grade.
Wow, you might think, thats pretty harsh.
We’ll here is my rationalle:
1) Conflict of interest: Suze Orman did some advertising spots for General Motors(GM) back in 2004. I stopped listening to her then because she was accepting money to promote a product that really wasn’t in an individuals best interest to own. Basically, in the GM spot, she was promoting using GM’s financing options to purchase new SUVs.
Its commonly accepted knowledge that owning a new car is not a good financial move. The reason for this is that; 1) driving increases your monthly expenditures . 2) new cars depreciate rapidly, 3) borrowing money to buy a depreciating asset puts you in debt. Basically, Suze was giving baised advice. Advice that if followed, would actually empoverish the individual who took it. Finance gurus should make you rich, not poor. Bad move Suze.
2) Poor quality of her books: I’ve been browsing through Suze Orman’s books as they come available in my local bookstore. Lately, it seems like the quality of the content has been suffering. Not only that, the margins and the font have been increasing also. It struck me as a little sophomoric. Raising the font size and margins is something a college freshman would do. Something they would do especially when they didn’t have that much to say and wanted to fill the space with fluff.
Sorry Suze, fluff gets an F in my book.
-James
p.s. click here for Its Your Moneys take on the situation. Click here for the lovely Miss Orman.
DINKS (Dual Income No Kids) Finance is a blog discussing personal finance for couples. While by no means financial experts, we own a variety of assets including real estate and stocks. We've both been up to our eyeballs in debt and have made tons of financial mistakes. However, we've both successfully retired that debt and we both do learn from our failings. We hope that our voice in this blog can help others in achieving their goals!
