Back to Home > Thursday, Mar 29, 2007 Business Posted on Thu, Mar. 29, 2007 email this print this... Financial guru recalls her

It's tough to imagine Suze Orman as a waitress. But that's where she started, serving diner food to the likes of Apple founder Steve Wozniak at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley.

It was a time that Orman, now a 55-year-old bestselling financial author and TV star, described as "the best years of my life," despite making just $400 a month.

She said she could have gone on living like that forever, with friends in cramped apartments and driving a beat-up 1967 Volkswagen station wagon. That is, if it weren't for getting older.

"It was like, 'Uh-oh, I'm going to be 30,'" said Orman, who stopped in St. Paul, Minn., last week to promote her latest book, "Women and Money."

When asked about what she was like with money in her 20s, the personal finance celebrity said she was "a real idiot," and told tales of charging up her mom's credit cards with no way of paying them back and borrowing $50,000 from customers to open her own restaurant only to lose it in risky investments she didn't understand.

Fortunately for her, she reinvented herself as America's straight-talking financial adviser and beat the financial odds. She recently told The New York Times that she is worth more than $25 million. Most of us who wait to save for retirement until our 30s won't be so lucky.

When she thinks about the financial lives of 20-somethings today, she gets depressed -- about outsourcing, gas prices, the cost of health insurance, the decline of the pension plan, and unaffordable real estate.

"It is not easy," Orman said. "And I'll be the first to tell your parents they didn't have it like you have it. We have a severe problem here."

Think about her Buttercup Bakery days. It's hard to believe that someone who often professes to love her private jet was happier driving a jalopy. Then again, being satisfied about your financial lot in life is most definitely influenced by how those around you earn and spend money.

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