W hen I was a little girl, I had a speech impediment. In grammar school on the South Side of Chicago, I had to take reading exams, and would always score among the lowest in the class. One year a teacher decided that he would seat us according to our reading scores. From the very beginning, it was obvious that baby Suze had an Emmy-Award winning smile. There were my three best friends in the first three seats of the first row, while I was banished to the last seat in the sixth row.
If I always secretly felt dumb, it was now officially confirmed for everyone to see. Talk about feeling ashamed. I knew I would never amount to anything, so why even bother to try? In my case, I knew that I would have to pay for college myself, because my parents were having a hard time with money. The only options for me were community college or a state school. When I arrived, I met with a guidance.
Three generations of working women I told him that I wanted to become a brain surgeon. Why not try something easier? Why not take the easy way out? Why try harder? In my second year, I shared a one-bedroom apartment off campus with two friends I had met in the dorm, Carole Morgan and Judy Jacklin.
Judy had a hilarious boyfriend named John Belushi, and the four of us had quite the adventure for the next three years. Once again, it was the shame of my grade-school years holding me back. If I had trouble with English, what made me think I could learn a foreign language? I decided to leave school without my degree. I wanted to see America. I wanted to see what a hill looked like I convinced three friends-Laurie, Sherry, and Vicky-to come with me; I was way too scared to try this on my own.
As we drove through the hills on the day of our arrival, we were stopped by a man with a red flag who held up traffic so trees that had been cut down could be cleared.
That year a frost in the Berkeley Hills killed many of the eucalyptus trees. I got out of the van to watch and walked up to the man with the red flag and asked him if they needed any help. When it was time to move on, I applied for a job as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery, a great little place where we used to get our coffee.
To my delight, I got the job. While I worked at the Buttercup, I faced up to my shame of not having finished college and took Spanish classes at Hayward State University. Finally, in , I got my degree from the University of Illinois. When she had trouble writing, and eating — even dropping her fork, she reached out to her general practitioner. He looked at all of her problems, which she had addressed with various specialists, and insisted she come back to Florida for MRIs of her upper body.
I want it to be something else. She also had a prescription for an MRI of her lower body from the specialist dealing with her leg problems. She returned to Florida in early July, but she couldn't get them all done at once — so she opted for the lower MRI. Nothing showed up and she returned to the Bahamas. The doctor told her right then and there that they found something that wasn't good. It had been slowly growing there for about 15 years. Within days, she was at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital having the tumor removed.
Surgery was successful, with the entire mass removed, along with two discs that were replaced with titanium. These days, she is recuperating in the Bahamas, after spending a few weeks of post-surgery in Florida. All of her problems, including her coughing and spasming, have gone away. What she went through also highlights the importance of having all of your necessarily medical and legal documents in shape, like a will , plus a living will or advance directive, a revocable trust, financial power of attorney and durable power of attorney for health care.
Orman calls them must-have documents. Her experience also drives home the importance of having an emergency fund, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. After about two months of recovery, Orman just started going back to work. While the family was not poor, they were not a family of means by any stretch of the imagination, and her appreciation of the value of a dollar probably stemmed from her formative years. Given how well and how often Orman speaks these days, it may come as a big surprise to learn that she had a significant speech impediment as a child.
It was a huge blow to her self esteem when she was younger, because she always did poorly in grammar and reading as a result of her inability to speak properly. She did finally take a few Spanish classes a few years later in to get the credits and earn her degree. Then, in , her alma mater bestowed Orman with an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree. Orman, the title is apt. However, her broker was far more aggressive than he should have been, and within several months, all of her money was completely gone.
It was a heartbreaking moment, for sure, but it was also a transforming and truly life changing one, as it made Orman think that she could do a better job than her broker. With some self-taught knowledge, she set out to get a job for herself at a brokerage. No, Orman believes she was hired at Merrill Lynch because they needed to get some women on staff.
It was a great foot in the door for her financial career, though, and it later led to her earning a job as Vice President of Investments at Prudential in Even though Orman was able to land a fairly cushy job at Merrill Lynch, she still lived more or less as she had when she was a waitress: she was incredibly and unapologetically frugal.
For example, instead of splurging on a new car, she still drove a run-down older model. Instead of eating out at fancy restaurants during her lunch break, she opted for inexpensive fast food. It was a great early lesson in financial stability, and her ability to understand the value of a dollar is probably one of the things that helped her become such a successful financial advisor.
Orman actually sued Merrill Lynch while she was an employee there. As she learned more and more about the financial industry, she realized that her original Merrill Lynch broker had broken several rules that had caused him to lose all of her money. Believing she had a case, she sued her employer, who could not fire her while the case was still going on.
In the ensuing months, Orman proved herself to be a formidable broker in her own right, and Merrill Lynch settled with their new superstar.
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