It's Time for Suze Orman to Retire

It may be time for Suze Orman to take her own retirement advice and retire.

In an absolutely tone deaf series of articles and podcasts this year, she has said that $2 million or $3 million saved for retirement is “nothing,” “pennies,” and “chump change”!

She has also said that if you don’t have between $5 million-$10 million don’t even bother to stop working and retire!!

Now, for Suze that might be easy to say because she has an estimated net-worth of $75 million, and good for her.

But for most people achieving this level of chump change is not only unrealistic, it is dangerous and irresponsible for her to suggest to people that amount of money is nowhere close to adequate for retirement and they would need to be multi-millionaires to even think about retiring in America.

Can someone please do a safety check on Ms. Orman to make sure she is OK?

First of all, people should not pick a dollar figure out of a hat, in this case Suze’s high hat, because there is no one correct number for what constitutes a secure retirement. In her comments, she says people need a minimum of $5 million to retire securely and that is just an outrageous thing to say! What people need to focus on is three things to set themselves up for a secure retirement:

1. Don’t target a dollar figure—target being able to replace a percentage of your working income while in retirement and a smart percentage to target is 70%.
2. Factor in the total picture for your retirement including savings and investment income, Social Security, Medicare, and for those that have a pension or benefits from military or other service roles to our nation.
3. Limit debt and make sure you do all you can to stay healthy and keep the high costs of healthcare and long-term care at bay. Plus, what good is retiring with a bunch of money only to be undone by poor health and not being able to enjoy an active, meaningful lifestyle.

Don’t get me wrong—if you are someone who can call $2 million chump change good for you—but maybe Suze should check her privilege at the door when giving advice to others! People work hard all their lives raising families and saving what they can.

Their efforts should not be insulted and undermined leaving them feeling that unless they are a multi-millionaire they won’t be able to retire in America.

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Chris Orestis, Retirement Genius is a nationally recognized senior care advocate and expert in retirement, long-term care and specialty senior living funding solutions. The author of two books, numerous published papers and articles, and a frequent industry speaker; he is the innovator that brought the LTC Life Settlement into the market over a decade ago.