Suze Orman

  b. 1951 | American Investment Advisor

At The Bottom

— 1981

"I knew I owed a lot of money, and I knew I had no way to pay it back."

Suze Orman tried to wrap her mind around the fact that she had just lost $50,000 of someone else’s money.  The child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Orman had grown up in a working-class Chicago neighborhood without much exposure to real wealth and where many people — her parents included — had constant financial troubles.  Making matters worse, as a child Orman had a speech impediment that injured her confidence and convinced many of her teachers that she was not a bright student.  As she remembered years later, she always “secretly felt dumb” and was surprised when the University of Illinois admitted her as an undergraduate.50  With only a few credits to go before completing her social work degree, Orman left Illinois and moved to California with some of her friends in 1973.  A few years later, as she approached her 30th birthday, Suze Orman was making $400 a month as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, California.  She hoped to follow in her parents’ footsteps and own her own small restaurant, but though she had plenty of ideas, she had no savings and no investors.  When a longtime customer heard of Orman’s dreams, he offered her $50,000 to get started.  Orman knew almost nothing about investing and turned the entire sum over to a broker who managed to squander it all within four months.  “I didn’t know what to do,” she wrote years later.  “I knew I owed a lot of money, and I knew I had no way to pay it back.