Suze Orman: 5 Winning Moves You Can Make With Your Money
Written by
Gina Hagler
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Successful financial advisor and writer Suze Orman has recently developed a strategy to help you plan for the future and maximize your investments. In an August 2023 episode of her Woman and Money podcast, Orman spoke about what she’d recently learned from watching the Women’s Soccer World Cup, and how those winning moves could translated into lessons for our financial lives.
1. Make a financial plan that includes your goal
Identify your goals — a new car, a house, a business, retirement – and implement a plan to win them with all you’ve got. It’s possible your long-term goal is not the same as your short-term goal. You might, for instance, want to pay off your student loans first. Then save for a house or to start a business. You can work on both of these goals at the same time, and with a good plan, you can make progress on both.
2. View yourself as a success
“It doesn’t matter what others think about you or what your ratings say about you,” Orman said. “It only matters what you know is true for yourself.” Her advice aligns with the psychological principle of self-efficacy: If you believe you can’t, you won’t. If you believe you can, you’re far more likely to do what it takes to succeed. Investing can be intimidating. There are a lot of terms that may be new to you. There are complicated concepts like risk/reward and capital gains. None of these are rocket science, but understanding them does take time and effort. Suze has a lot of information on her site and in her books that can give you a solid start.
3. Take it slow and steady
Don’t rush ahead without thinking things through. Think about the stocks you’d like in your portfolio. If you don’t have enough to purchase those shares in a big way, start small. Even if you do have enough cash to make a big buy, Orman advises investing over time so that the average share price will take advantage of times when that stock was selling high and low. To be ready for these purchases, keep some cash in a money market so that you’re earning interest but have the ability to use the cash when you need it.
4. Take a team approach
View your investments as players in different positions. Invest in a mix of assets like stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. By investing in a mix of assets, your portfolio will perform better over time. Why? Because there will be times when the stock market is taking a beating but the bond market is doing well, or when one industry or region is doing very well while another is not. When you have a diversified portfolio — a mix of investments — your losses will be offset by your gains.
5. Prepare for when things don’t go according to plan
Stay calm and remind yourself why you made this investment. Is this still a good reason to hold this asset? Decide ahead of time what you will do if the value of this investment goes up. What will you do if it goes down? Remember your financial plan and reason through market changes to achieve your goals.
You’re unlikely to get where you’re going if you don’t have a plan. You might be that one lucky individual who hits it big with a lottery ticket, but counting on that for your financial future is risky at best. It makes a lot more sense to control the things that you can by having a winning financial plan and putting it into action.
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