She Turned Missteps Into Profitable Experiences

“The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance” (Riverhead Books, 1999) is the latest bestselling financial advice book from Suze Orman. Her first book, “You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It” (Newmarket Press, 1995), is in its 21st printing. Her second book, “The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom” (Crown, 1997), is a New York Times bestseller.

Not bad for a University of Illinois student who worked as a waitress throughout college.

Question: Tell us about your work history before you got into finances.

Answer: In 1974, I got a job as a waitress at this place called the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, where I worked for almost seven years. And I thought that’s what I was going to do the rest of my life.

Q: That’s the part I want you to get into--how you changed careers.

A: Well, when I first got hired it was this tiny place that sat maybe 30 people, if that. I started coming up with these ideas, and before I knew it, it expanded to 105 people. All of a sudden, I was watching me making $400 a month and the people who owned it expanding. So it started with the thought that I could have my own restaurant.

Q: How did you secure the funding?

A: This guy who I’d been waiting on for years came in and said “What’s wrong, Sunshine?” I told him the story. He just gave me this look and went back to his jack cheese and ham omelet that I made him every single morning. He came back with a check with a note that I still have that said, “This is for people like you, to have your dreams come true. To be paid back in 10 years at no interest if you can.” He said, “I want you to go down to Merrill Lynch and open up an account.”

Q: How’d you do your first time investing?

A: At first we were doing great. [The broker] made $5,000 like in the first month, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My whole bedroom started to be pasted up with the Wall Street Journal options pages. I was starting to put it together, and then January of 1980 came and the oil stocks which he had been investing in started to crash.

Q: Were you still waitressing at this point?

A: No. I had left because I actually had the plans drawn up for the restaurant and was dealing with the [Small Business Administration]. And then the oil crashed, every penny was lost and that was my working capital. That was everything. Gone. I thought, “Oh, now I’m in serious trouble. What should I do?” I got dressed in my blue silk shirt and red and white striped pants tucked into my white cowboy boots--I thought I looked so hot. I was a size 6 at the time. And I interviewed with five brokers. I’ll never forget the looks on their faces. I honest to God didn’t know better. They ended up hiring me at the end of the fifth interview--in my opinion, nobody has ever said this to me, but only to fill their women’s quota.

Q: One of the main points you always emphasize is for Americans to get out of credit card debt. What’s your own credit card history?

A: I went and applied for a credit card at Macy’s and charged my card to the max, $2,000, to buy clothes. I came home and cried because I didn’t know how I would ever pay that off. I would park my car on the street at the meters, not in the lot where all the other brokers parked their Jaguars and Mercedes, because I didn’t know where I was going to come up with the money to pay that monthly parking fee.

Q: Was your financial planning company successful, the one you started in ‘87?

A: When we first opened up, I had a very hard time.

Q: I’ve heard you talk about somebody scamming you in the office.

A: Yeah. You betcha. I did it to myself. I set it up because I trusted her. So she had legal authority to sign certain things and she was signing the contracts. But it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

Q: How do you figure?

A: Because when you’re making a lot of money, as hard as you may not want to think it, unless you have incredible discipline, you can fall into the pit of “you are your money” and that you’re special because of your status. I hate to say it--I think that’s what happened to me in 1987. I was making a lot of money. I was extremely successful. And I thought I was hot stuff. And you know what? I needed to be kicked in the booty because otherwise I couldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing today--the work that really matters, that financial people don’t address--the America that’s in credit card debt and wants to get out and save for their retirement but nobody’s paying attention to them because all they have is $50.

Q: Did you get into credit card trouble besides the Macy’s card?

A: Terribly. Totally. Oh, serious credit card trouble, which is why I can write about these things. In ‘87, because of the setback from the employee, I again went into a lot of credit card debt because I wanted people to continue to think that I was successful. So before you knew it, nobody had debt like I did. And that’s when everything opened up. That’s when I started to tell everybody what had happened to me because I had been hiding behind the shame.

Q: Do you still have clients as a personal financial advisor?

A: I have clients from years ago, so if they want something I’ll help them, but no new clients for the past two years.

Q: Do you have a financial advisor?

A: I do, actually. . . . But let me tell you why. I’m traveling so much, I can’t watch my stocks every minute of the day, so the money is with [him]. He doesn’t make one investment decision without me. And I know if, God forbid, something happens to any areas that I have, I’d get a call from him in two seconds and I need to know that.

Q: When you make purchases now, do you use charge cards?

A: Absolutely. But I only do American Express. You can see my wallet. I carry American Express and Visa . . . if they don’t accept American Express.

Q: Has American Express approached you to do a commercial?

A: No. I wouldn’t do a credit card commercial if my life depended on it.

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