In this week’s Face Time with the Founder, Mable Chan talks to Suze Orman, best-selling author & TV commentator on personal finance, about her first job. How does your work attitude and self-awareness impact your sense of self-worth?
Find out this Sunday, Mar. 31!
Mable: With me on Face Time today is the fabulous Suze Orman – America’s most beloved author, advisor, TV commentator on personal finance. Welcome Suze!
Suze: Glad to be here
Mable: In your first job, how did you Suze, resist keeping up with the Jones, the pressure to spend, pressure to look good, which means money?
Suze: What’s fascinating is my very first job when I was thirty years of age, was being waitress for seven years at in Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley California making four hundred dollar a month for all seven years. Alright, so I didn’t have a lot of jones to keep up with because I was only a waitress. So it didn’t matter to me. But that served as a great foundation of me waited on people who were being successful and realizing, Oh my god, they are keeping up with each other and they don’t really have any money. I’m serving with these people but I’m happier than they are.
I never focused on why I’d have to act like I had more than I did. I focused on standing in my truth. There is nothing wrong saying to people “I can’t afford that right now”
Mable: For young people who are starting, they need approval, acceptance, they need to belong to a certain circle of friends. So they may not have that security, they may not have that confidence.
Suze: One of the main tenets of money is to keep good company. If you are hanging out with so-called friends that are spending money they don’t have, that really care about falsities about of life of impressing people by what they look like. Then those aren’t the people you should be hanging out with.
Here is the key, Don’t let the things, your clothes, you car, you home, don’t let the things that you surround yourself with define you. You need to define the things around you.
The greatest message however that I can give a student today would be this. You go to a job, don’t worry about what they are gonna pay you, you are to make those that you are dependent on a check for dependent upon you.
So if you are supposed to be there at 8 o’clock in the morning, show up at 6 AM. If you are not supposed to work on weekends, come in and work on weekends. Do something before you are asked to do it. Make your boss take notice that, who is that person? I need that person! As soon as they need you, now you have written your ticket to financial freedom.
The kids today are living with massive amounts of student loan debt. You will never have financial freedom if you have credit card debt, you feel powerless.
What makes you powerful? You are powerful regardless of your age, as long as you know your own thoughts. What do you think? what do you feel? What do you wanna do that honors who you are?
It is your mental attitude that determines whether you really are happy or sad. Remember the most dangerous thing to do is to jump a chasm in two leaps. If you are going to jump, jump all the way and get to the other end. Do it with that type of force, that type of determination. Lean in, and get there, and you’ll be happy that you landed on the other side