Suze Orman

I feel like I understand most of the laws. Basically, if you can reasonably manage your emotions, you can manage your money, especially if you can get past that “money is a mysterious thing that only Earl Pansypants understands, not someone like me” thing. The one law I probably misunderstood was the last one, where—I mean, I would say, even though personal power can be an effective tool in getting money, However:—having money is /not/ a substitute for personal power.

The one idea that she didn’t separate out as a law but which was useful to me was the idea of the problem of—as I call it—perfectionism. Like, your stock has gone up a zillion percent, but you don’t sell any of it, because “stocks—especially MY stocks!—are Always Supposed To Go Up, so we can never sell”…. Instead of saying, You know what, it went up a lot; we did okay; now let’s sell a little and buy something we really want, or else sell some and transfer it to a safe/savings investment kinda thing, like investing in a bank or the government or something, right.

Incidentally she writes not about making more money (jobs, businesses) but about relationships, spending, and investing (ie you should probably sell a stock that you don’t feel good about, that’s “too risky” for you…. Unless it has some value probably but has gone down to zero recently because of mass panic), but she basically talks about managing money and achieving a reasonable amount of security for later in life on a reasonable amount of income coming in now, which is certainly a useful as well as a practical thing to know about…. It’s obviously not inspiration, but this is one non-inspiration money book where I would say that, despite the caution and at times the technical/specifics aspects, she’s not teaching fear-based or harmful things, so it’s good.… (meer)

Not much of a review here more of a commentary. I used to see Suze on TV here and there on cable channels. One of the super-personality personal finance people handing out their advice to the forlorn masses.

This book is certainly chock full of good info on retirement financial issues and planning. Good stuff by and large. Also some good info on preparing wills and living wills, and such.

Apparently Suze just walked away from the TV celebrity thing and stole away with her partner to a Caribbean island. Maybe she was burned out or something. I chuckled to think, well the retirement issues she's grappling with are probably far removed from what us hoi polloi face trying to keep our head above water. But hey I guess no one is preventing us from writing our own book to make a few bucks either.… (meer)