Growing Money

Suze Orman - The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom DVD

Ever since I read some of Suze Orman's articles on Yahoo Finance, I wanted to see more of her publications. I believe The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (1998) is her first DVD, so I wanted to see what she had come up with. This DVD came out before The Road to Wealth, but it is just as good to watch. The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom is really more about building up your character and preparing yourself for a better life. The DVD is focus on the guidelines of how you should plan for the future. One thing is she suggests is a trust over a will. A will may cause your beneficiaries a lot of money and hassle to claim property you leave behind. In a trust, however, you can transfer your property over to your beneficiaries immediately upon your death. Suze Orman also talks about long-term insurance. Nursing homes are not covered by medical insurance or medicare care, and are therefore costly, and could end up raking out all your savings. A long-term insurance can provide you a safety net, and Suze says the best age to get the insurance is at the age of 59. Before then, you should use the money you save up to invest in a mutual fund. There were some duplicate information on the two DVDs I've seen. That's fine, because it reinforces her beliefs. She seems to be pretty thorough and prepared with her answers in the Q&A sections. As she has said, there cannot be a perfect answer for every answer, because it depends on what everyone's situation is. Not everyone with $5,000 can go for the same investments. Some people may be able to take more risk than others. Or some people may not have $5,000 and have some debt. In fact, many Americans have debt. She talks about how you can find some extra cash in your pockets to pay off your credit cards or put them into a savings. Here's her idea, and I think it's a pretty good one. USE ONLY PAPER BILLS to buy things, receive change and put them in your pockets. So, say you buy a soda in a deli and it costs you $1.50. You pay two dollars in paper money and you get back 50 cents change. You put that 50 cents away. And then you buy a sandwich at another store, it costs you $3.50. You pay $4 in bills, and you get back 50 cents change. At the end of the day, you take all the change in your pockets and dump them into a jar. Do this everyday and at the end of the month, you'll have $10 to $30 more. That's $120 to $360 a year. She calls this finding extra cash in your own pockets. Try it, it may work. Suze Orman's DVDs are pretty good so far. I know some people should really see it. The next one I'm renting is: Suze Orman: The Courage to be Rich.

posted by Sean @ 4/04/2005 03:00:00 AM