‘Sometimes poverty is the greatest gift you can ever be given. Sometimes loss is the key that leads you to gain.’
Broke: Finance guru Suze Orman says she learned her life lessons after losing everything she had while working as a waitress. She's seen here with girlfriend Kathy Travis in 2011
While working as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkley, California, and living with a girlfriend in the back of a van, Suze was given a break aged 30 in 1980 when a group of regular customers pooled together and gave her $50,000 to open her own restaurant.
But fate took a cruel hand, and after investing the money with a broker she describes as a ‘crook’ at Merrill Lynch – it was all gone within three months. Having studied for a degree in social work – and having secretly accrued a huge $250,000 credit card debt - Suze had had no idea what she was doing and her money was lost in a string of failed investments.Too scared to let her customers know, Suze, who hosts the long-running CNBC series, The Suze Orman Show, admits in a new interview on the Sundance Channel: ‘I didn't know what to do. So I thought “I know. I could be a broker.” 'I lost everything and I was lying through my teeth and I didn't let anybody know about it. It wasn't until I stood in my truth and told everybody that I had $250,000 in credit card debt that everything turned around for me'
Having waitressed for seven years, Suze now found herself employed by the same firm where the broker who had scammed her worked, and said: ‘Really I had to do something to pay all these people back, so I went and applied for a job at Merrill Lynch, and they had no women working for them at the time. ‘It was the time of affirmative action when they needed to hire women, so they hired me. but I was told that women belonged barefoot and pregnant and I would be fired in six months. I would be outta there.’
Suze simultaneously and successfully sued Merrill Lynch for a prior investment loss of $50,000. After completing her training with Merrill Lynch, she remained at the firm until 1983 when she left to become vice-president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities. Speaking on the Words for Wisdom web series, part of the Dream School show, Suze told journalist Paula Froelich: ‘I lost everything…and I was lying through my teeth and I didn’t let anybody know about it.
‘It wasn’t until I stood in my truth and told everybody that I had $250,000 in credit card debt. At that point everything turned around for me. I had to reveal the truth about what I didn’t have, more than pretend about what I did. That was interesting.’
‘Now, did I lose anything by waiting those years? No, I gained more knowledge by of myself, I gained more knowledge of the real world...and I was I able to inspire myself to have the courage to go in and apply for a job at Merrill Lynch.
She adds: '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. Now with that said, lack of money sure can make you miserable, but I don't think I’m successful because I have money. I think I’m successful because I know who I am.'
