Suze Orman is Having a Moment in the Sunday New York Times Magazine
The career of any financial adviser thrives on worry, and Orman, already the best-known financial adviser in the country, has hit the worry motherlode. In January, “Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan,” a guide to the economic crisis, made the best-seller list. Around the same time, Oprah Winfrey began giving the book away free in digital form on her Web site. (After Winfrey announced the offer, the book was downloaded more than two million times in one week.) Overall viewership on “The Suze Orman Show” is up 22 percent from this time last year, and the urgency of the calls has increased, too. Instead of asking about what kind of mortgage makes the most sense, her viewers are calling with questions of survival like, If I have to default on one of my various lines of debt, which one should I abandon first?
With the change in the economic climate, Orman’s role in the culture has shifted from pop finance guru to something more like a trusted national adviser.
What’s most striking about Orman’s frenetic, outsize celebrity is how starkly it contrasts with the sober simplicity of her message. Track your spending. Stay out of debt. Take care of your car. Look into a Roth I.R.A. Though she is larger than life and wealthy, her primary message is not about larger-than-life ambition or a sky-high entrepreneurial spirit. Orman’s advice rarely sounds like “Go West, young man.” It sounds more like, “Everyone should have a liquid eight-month emergency fund.”