Book Review: Women & Money

Popular television investment guru Suze Orman wants women in MBA degree programs, board rooms, and anywhere under the glass ceiling to take notice. It's time for women to overcome fear and become better personal money managers.

Investments and Money: Why Women Stumble
by Gabby Hyman
gabby.hyman@MBA-business-schools.com
MBA-Business-Schools Book Reviewer

Women & Money, Suze Orman; hardcover, 272 pp; Spiegel & Grau, $24.95.

It may be fear, shame or embarrassment, or it could be just poor financial sense, but when women mismanage money and won’t ask for help, it troubles Suze Orman. In her eighth book, Orman, who claims she is worth $25 million, has had enough. “Women can invest, save, and handle debt as well and skillfully as any man,” she says in Women & Money, which rode the top of the New York Times Hardcover Business Book List for April. “So why don’t they?”

Orman writes, “The shifting roles of women at home and at work have dramatically changed where and how money interacts with a woman’s life. Yet while women have established or expanded their roles and relationships, when it comes to navigating the financial ramifications of this new world, they are using old maps that don’t get them where they really want and need to go.”

Whether they’re marching their way through an MBA degree program, poring through the NASDAQ on a daily basis, or running a company, most women hold the same stumbling blocks, Orman says. They “treat themselves as a commodity whose price is set by others.”

To that end, Orman, who began her professional life by earning a degree in social work and tending tables in a bakery, prescribes a formula using eight common qualities all women can wield with power in harnessing personal wealth. The book outlines a five-month program Orman says can lift women over the “stumbling blocks” so they may establish lifelong financial security.

Qualities Shared by Women of Wealth

Women who master their fear and learn sound management, Orman writes, engender native qualities of harmony, balance, courage, generosity, happiness, wisdom, cleanliness, and beauty. Orman doesn’t believe in self-help or financial help books that present “laundry lists of seemingly insurmountable chores”.

Orman may not always be appreciated in board rooms and at MBA programs — but at least half the audience should take notice.

About Suze Orman

Suze Orman was born in Chicago and received her B.A. in social work from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (1997), You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It : Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make When You Retire (1997), The Courage to Be Rich (1998), The Road to Wealth (2001), The Laws of Money, the Lessons of Life (2003), and The Money Book for the Young Fabulous and Broke (2005).

About the Author

Gabby Hyman has created online strategies and written content for Fortune 500 companies including eToys, GoTo.com, Siebel Systems, Microsoft Encarta, Avaya, and Nissan UK.

Posted on May 27, 2007 at 5:38 PM

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