Suze Orman needed to upgrade her leather jacket to a flak jacket tonight in a personal finance scrap match with personal finance bloggers over her new self-branded prepaid debit card. The Approved Card is her own personally-branded prepaid debit card with what appears to be a decent package of tools and features. The downsides, as pointed out by PT Money, are a $36/year minimum fee and a less-than-clear path to using it for building or rebuilding credit.
Some of the more outspoken posters got tweets back from Orman's Twitter account. 20 and Engaged had a history of the interactions (but sadly no longer does).
Am I a Suze hater?
People don't reach prominence by trying to please everyone. Suze Orman has been in the financial realm for a long time — certainly longer than any personal finance blogger I've met — has nine consecutive bestselling books under her belt, as well as successful radio and TV gigs. She has a wide following mainly because she gets in people's faces about the soft spots in their financial lives. This doesn't resonate with everyone, and that's to be expected.
But for the record, no, I'm not a Suze hater. She's helped many, many people get on the right track with their finances through direct advice and education. It's clear that she engages with people, listens to them, and genuinely wants to help them. This can't be taken from her: She's done well for herself on this earth by helping a lot of people.
Now, back to the prepaid debit card. Piece of junk?
Suze Orman's message is clear, but what's also clear is that she is a sharp businesswoman and a tireless self-promoter. (She's the latter because she's the former.) She's in a position to use the leverage of her large audience to spread her message, help even more people … and sell more products. The Approved Card is the newest product. Is it better than cash? Maybe. Is it a good long-term solution for managing personal finance? Possibly. For people who need a shorter leash for a season, a prepaid debit card with a healthy dose of Suze could be part of the solution. Is it without risk? No, but nothing is.
Regardless, I certainly don't fault her for offering this product. She should be free to do so, just as people should be free to sign up or not. Time will tell whether it was a good product or not, and the market will decide whether the $3+/month is worth the value that Suze Orman adds.
Postscript: Are my blogging colleagues idiots?
Absolutely not. I've met many of them personally, thanks largely to Phil's work. (Phil was the closest recipient of this barb from @SuzeOrmanShow.) But since we all just live in Clay Shirky's internet. and since now consumers of the media have not only the ability to talk back easily but also to talk with each other easily, repercussions from bad PR can be swift and long-lasting. Ticking off bloggers in one's niche is rarely a good idea. 😉
Hopefully Suze is not making money off other people’s misfortunes otherwise she’s a big hypocrite. I can take her show in small doses. She makes me laugh but I just assume so much of what she does is played up or semi-scripted for TV.
I loved Suze Orman in her prime when she helped so many people, but this latest product of hers is ridiculous. She’s not helping anyone by presenting a prepaid debit card.
Sad. Just ridiculously sad. It’s time for her mea culpa.
This prepaid card sounds like a bad idea, and I am surprised she is rolling it out. I agree the response to the tweets was bad PR; I wonder if it was her or someone on her team? Either way, not good, unless she wanted to create the fire storm she created.
Thanks for sharing this great post! I was reading some other guy’s blog post, and he had a screenshot of Suze calling someone else an idiot for berating her credit card.
I have always liked Suze Orman but this new card leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I think that it will lead many others to feel the same. I think your insurance for staying out of debt is to pay cash or use a credit card and pay it off.