Stop Waiting to Make Great Financial Decisions

Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)

Suze Orman discusses the recent unanimous Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates and its implications for savers and debtors. She

Key takeaways

The Federal Reserve governors voted unanimously to raise the Fed funds rate by 0.25%.
High energy prices, specifically oil near $100 a barrel, are contributing significantly to inflation pressures.

Main topics

Federal Reserve interest rate hikes
Managing savings and inflation

Notable quotes

The goal of money is for you to be secure.

Conclusion

Financial security comes from arranging your financial life to handle

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi everybody, Suzy O here. Now, what is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure. And there is no better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account. It is essential for your financial foundation. So all of you should be participating in the ultimate opportunity savings account at Alliant Credit Union. Go to my... Alliant.com to find out more and be secure. Speaker 2 (0:39) September 20th, 2026. Welcome everybody to the Women in Money podcast and everybody smart enough to listen. Do you all hear me when I say everybody? Stop writing saying, Susie, I know this podcast is just for women, but why do you think I say everybody smart enough to listen? It's everybody. I don't care who you are. Money affects everybody. So all of you need to listen. However, I always like making sure women are absolutely taken care of. Maybe that's because I am a woman, or maybe because it's as you get older. Speaker 2 (1:26) Men die before we do, and then women are left not knowing what to do. So, of course, I have a bias towards women. Anyway, before we begin, this is Suzy's School, but I just want to remind you of one thing, October 3rd and 4th, that date is coming up, and in Glendale, California. Speaker 2 (1:53) There is a two-day empowerment workshop absolutely honoring the 100th birthday of Louise Hay. And therefore, I will be there on October 4th giving the closing keynote. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about, but I did name the talk, The Most Important Lesson of All. There's so many lessons and I'm going to have to choose one. And I have no idea actually what I'm going to choose yet. But then I never know what I'm going to do when I get on stage. I kind of just let it happens. And somehow it always happens exactly as it should. But if you want, you can go to suzyorman.com slash empower, E-M-P-O-W-E-R. Check it out there. If you can't come for whatever reason, don't worry. Go all the way down, scroll on that page that you go to, and you'll see how to sign up for free streaming. Over 10,000 of you have already signed up for that. And don't forget, after my talk, if you are there, I don't care if you have VIP seating, if you have regular seating, I will be doing for everybody a meet and greet if you want to. So just so you know. All right. Are your Suzy notebooks out? You're taking notes? Okay. Get ready. Last week really was quite the week in the stock market. but actually even more than the stock market because really it didn't do that much, believe it or not. It's going up, it's going down. We're at war, but no, we can't call it war. We're at whatever we think we're at over in Iran. We attack, we get attacked, then the stock market reacts, oil goes up, then oil starts to come down, markets go up, then markets come down. Your semi-stocks start to go up big, then they come down big, and then at the end, they're kind of all even. We're all over the place. It's like a roller coaster. Do you remember, at least I do, when I was a kid, I grew up in Chicago and I loved to go to a park called Riverview. Oh my God, so fabulous. They had the bobs, they had all kinds of roller coasters. And for some reason, I love roller coasters. I just love them. Speaker 2 (4:28) You ride a roller coaster, you go up and up very, very slowly. And then all of a sudden, you get to the top and you go down really fast, and then you go all around, and then you start to go up again very, very slowly. That's exactly what this market is doing. It's going all around, goes up slowly, comes down, you're on it for a ride. So just like I loved the ups and downs of roller coasters, I want you to learn seriously to love the ups and downs of the stock market because you're on this ride, not just for six months, one year. If you're in the stock market, you're on the ride for at least five years or longer. And so When it goes down, enjoy it. And that's when you dollar cost average. But the most interesting thing to me last week wasn't the stock market, although I will talk about it again in a little bit here. It was the bond market. It was what happened with the Federal Reserve, because that is key. So are you ready? Listen. The Federal Reserve, you already know what the Federal Reserve is. They dictate what the Fed funds rate is going to be, which eventually dictates your prime rate and HELOCs and things like that. But what happened was that even though Trump has been wanting the Federal Reserve chair to lower interest rates, lower the Fed funds rate, lower, lower, lower, that is not what happened. With the new Fed chair, he actually raised the Fed funds rate. And that, even though it wasn't a surprise, is not what Trump wanted him to do. Now, whether he should have done it or he shouldn't have done it doesn't matter. Here's what matters is that the vote, there are 12 of these Fed governors, okay? The vote was totally unanimous. I have not seen a unanimous vote where all 12 of them thought this is what we should do. They always dissented. There were three or four or whatever. All 12 decided to vote to raise the Fed funds rate by one quarter of 1%, taking it from about 3.75 % to four. Speaker 2 (7:07) Now, the reason that I'm making a point about this is that when you have a group of people all of a sudden that are in one boat, they're all unanimous, that means they're all going in the same direction, which means that it's probably going to continue to go in that direction, which means that they're going to most likely continue to raise rates. Now, why did they do that? Because all of them honestly believed inflation is still too high. And the Fed wants inflation back to its 2 % goal. So you can hear all the things that some of the politicians are saying, we're fine, it's not going to be a big deal, gas will go down. No, inflation is too high. And energy prices more than anything, believe it or not, is putting pressure on inflation. Because oil has been around, everybody, $100 a barrel. And I want you to remember something. Remember I told you a long time ago, oil is key. Because when oil goes up, you don't just pay for it when you put gasoline in your car. It eventually works its way through the economy. Speaker 2 (8:32) The truck delivering food to your supermarket needs fuel. Airplanes need fuel. Companies making and transporting products need energy. Those costs can eventually make their way to you. So the Fed is essentially saying, we have had enough. We've had enough of the dissent. We've had enough of people thinking that interest rates should go down. We need to put more pressure on inflation. And how does it do that? By making money more expensive. Higher interest rates discourage borrowing and spending, and that can slow down demand and eventually help bring inflation down, or so they hope. But here's what I want you, to understand that this will not be over, in my opinion.