Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - A Midlife Money Masterclass with Suze Orman: Cortisol, Self-Worth, and Taking Back Your Financial Power

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

For our very first guest on the The Live Like a Girl podcast, I sat down with the woman who taught generations of us how to take back our financial power: Suze Orman.Here’s why I had to start here. I spend my life helping women with hormones, weight loss, menopause, and underneath almost all of it sits one thing – cortisol. And when you scratch beneath the “cortisol surface,” so often what you find is money stress. So I brought in the icon herself to talk about what’s really keeping women sick and stuck, and what to do about it.We get into self-worth and net worth, why women hand over their financial power, the spender-to-saver shift, divorce and the sandwich generation, the truth about your home and your car, what AI is about to do to all of us, and the money moves that matter most in 2026. Suze also shares her origin story – from waitress to financial icon and I know it will light a fire in you.This one is a masterclass. So bring a notebook and get ready. If you’re wanting the deeper dive on exactly how to invest now, we’re giving you a special offer of Suze’s Masterclass: suzeorman.com/drmindyFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep345/  More on Suze Orman:Website: suzeorman.comInstagram: @therealsuzeormanYouTube: @suzeormanFacebook: Suze OrmanLinkedIn: Suze OrmanConnect with Dr. Mindy:Join Reset AcademyWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Dr. Mindy on InstagramSubscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter for tools and research on fasting, hormones, and metabolic healthDisclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Can I be honest with you for just a second? So many of the women who have come to me have literally already tried everything. They've done the diets, they've worked themselves out to death, they've done the programs, they've diligently followed the advice of their doctors, and yet they are still exhausted. They are still hormonally lost. They are still wondering why nothing seems to work for them. And here's what I've learned after two and a half decades of working with women. It's not a willpower problem.

I promise you, it's an education problem. Your body has a very specific set of needs. And most health advice out there was never designed with those needs in mind. And so this is exactly why I built my Reset Academy. It's my monthly membership community where I teach you how to use fasting, food, and lifestyle to genuinely work with your female biology. Every month you get new trainings, live Q&A's with my team and I, and a community of incredible women who are all in it with you.

They're doing the work, they're seeing the results, and the best part is they're cheering each other on. If you're ready to stop guessing and start actually understanding your body and finally getting results, come join us over there. All you have to do is head over to resetacademy. Dottermindypels.com. And I would love to see you inside the community and help you accomplish your health goals

and fall in love with your body again. So that's resetacademy. Dot, Dr.Mindy.com. For the past 30 years, I have been in the trenches helping women navigate their health choices. I've dedicated my life to understanding the intelligence of the female body. Through hours of research, teaching, and working with women of all different backgrounds,

I have come to one clear conclusion. Women are ridiculously powerful. Yet underneath our powerful facade, many of us are falling apart. When we put down the warrior armor, we also have the ability to be a massive, warrior. How many of us have fallen apart in our cars, just long enough to pull ourselves back together so we can put on a happy face and perform for a culture that has taught us we are worthy if we please everyone around us. Here's what I want you to hear. Both of these emotional states are you, the warrior and the warrior. And neither one is a flaw. That is the feminine. That is the

spirit, fierce and tender, unstoppable, and human all at once. Yet we were never taught to live in a way that honors both the power and the fragility that lives within us. This podcast exists to change that. That's why today we walk into a room where almost no one is helping women, the room of money. See, there is a cost to living in a female body. In the U.S., collectively, women spend an estimated $13 billion a year on our health just to manage what our bodies are going through in midlife. That's insane. At a time when our health is drastically changing, we are dishing, collectively dishing out billions of dollars to solve it. This trend is so prevalent, they've actually named it.

It's called the menopause tax. The challenge we face is that we have never been taught how to manage money the feminine way, a way that allows you to leave the feelings of shame at the door, a way that works with who you really are, both a warrior and a warrior. Today I introduce you to a woman who wants to be in your financial corner. She deeply believes in your financial intelligence, so much so. she's written over 30 books, appeared on numerous TV shows, and has dedicated her whole life teaching women to stop being afraid of their money

and start owning it. I welcome Susie Orman to the Live Like a Girl podcast. Susie is America's favorite personal finance expert and a number one New York Times bestselling author who has taught millions of women how to step into their finance. financial power. Susie is on a new mission in the third act of her life. She is fired up to help women who have been left behind in the money conversation.

Women who in the second half of life are wanting to finally master their financial health. In this conversation, Susie and I cover a gamut of money topics from how do you go from being a spender to a saver? What investments are best for women in midlife? Where do you start if you have no savings? How do you financially navigate gray divorce? What are the best strategies for financially helping your aging parents? What about your adult children?

Should you be financially helping them? Most importantly, where do you start when you want to have a healthier relationship with money? So consider this your masterclass in the feminine way of money. Not a lecture, an invitation. We'll talk about how to think, actions to take, outdated myths to release, and how to feel powerful with money instead of afraid of it in the years that matter most. No shame, no jargon, just the truth, and a way forward that finally fits you. Let's get started.

Okay, Susie Orman, I feel like I have a genius's brain hair that I'm about to pick. And I got to tell you something that's really burning on my heart, which is I spend so much time helping women overcome hormonal dysfunction, belly fat, menopause symptoms, insomnia. And when I look at the root of all of this hormonal dysfunction, there is one thing that sits in front. front of us, and that is cortisol. And when a woman is saturated with cortisol, her body will not function right. And when we scratch under the surface of cortisol, we see massive money stress. So my first question to you is, in 2026, what is probably the most important thing a woman can do, either with her mind or with her bank account around money. So the very first thing is this.

They have to say no out of love for themselves versus yes out of fear that others won't like them. Number one, number two. They really have to take care of themselves. They have to give to themselves more than they give to others. my opinion, the reason that women feel so powerless when it comes to money is they think money is there, if they're a mother, money is there to take care of their kids. They take care of their spouses. They take care of their pets. They take care of their employers more than they take care of who they are. And when women learn to put themselves first, first, you know, when you're on an airplane,

And you hear them say when the oxygen mass falls down, you should put it on your face first versus the kids. Well, a woman, you know why they say that? Because women, if they're sitting with a kid, when the oxygen mass falls down, they will put it on their kids' face first, not thinking about, but what happens if something happens to me? So the first priority to get this right is to not feel guilty if you give to yourself, to not feel guilty when you understand that taking care of your own retirement needs over your children's college education,

taking care of your own retirement needs over everything else in life, to be powerful because here is the bottom line. You are never powerful in life until you are powerful over your own money, how you think about it, how you feel about it, and how you invest it. But no, women turn away from it. Do you know, in my opinion, that while women may, I don't know if they still do, but you know how women used to fake orgasms? I've heard about that.

Right. Yeah, I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't know about that either. Right. But I used to say years ago, years ago, listen, women, we may fake orgasms, but I'm telling you, men fake finances. And somehow you know that the people that you're living, with if they're doing right with money, if they're not, you know if you're taking part of it

or you're not. So all of it comes back to you. And the bottom line really is this. Self worth. Self worth equals net worth. So if you don't value who you are, then what happens? Your cortisol starts to go up because you're worried. You're worried about yourself, but you're not telling anybody about it. Money is the main thing. Money is more important than anything else in my opinion. Money and health, wealth and health go together, really. Wow. Yeah, I agree. Take me back to when you were first starting out because your origin story is quite interesting and what I think is so fascinating about it is the mindset that needed to be able to go from a waitress to a financial icon that has been teaching women how to take control of their finances. What do you have to do to go from waiting

tables to being who you are today? What was the mindset that you cultivated? You know, sometimes we're forced into a situation to change. Sometimes, in my opinion, we don't choose to change. What's happening in the world or to us makes us change. And very simply, after having been a waitress for seven years, making $400 a month, and I was so happy doing that. From the age of 23 to 30, really, I didn't have a problem with that, until I realized that the people that I was working for that owned the restaurant went from a little tiny corner store to owning half the block based on my ideas. So I had this weird idea that maybe I could open a restaurant. So I called my mom and dad and asked him for $20,000. This is 1980 now.

And my mother says to me, Susie, we don't have $20,000 to our name. We can't help you. Now, number one, I felt so bad that my mother had to say that. I knew that. I don't know what I was thinking when I called to ask her. But anyway, the next day a man walks in, Fred has. Brooke, asked me what's wrong because I wasn't happy because I was feeling so bad about my mom. I tell him, he goes and sits down to all the people I have been waiting on for seven years

and came back with checks and commitments totaling $50,000. That's a lot back in the 80s too. Uh-huh, with a little note that said, this is for you to make your dreams come true to be paid back in 10 years at no interest. Now, I thought all the checks were going to bounce. I didn't know what to do with that kind of money. They told me to take it down to Merrill Lynch in a money market fund. Think about this.

At the age of 30, everybody, I didn't know what Merrill Lynch was. And I didn't know what a money market was. And so I go, okay, I take it down there to open up an account. I have a broker that takes me. It's the broker of the day. And I tell him what the money's for. I can't lose any of it. It's to open up a restaurant. And he says, signed here on the bottom line of all these blank papers. And I did. And to make a very long story short, he filled in all the paperwork and qualified me to trade options, which is the most speculative thing there. In three months, all $50,000 was lost. Whoa. That was the key to my success. That was the key because even though they told me I didn't have to pay them back, they weren't rich people.

They didn't have a lot of money. So I thought, I know I could just be a broker. They just make you broker. So I went into Merrill Lynch, interviewed for a job thinking, I can do this. I have to do something. And the manager told me they had no women, this is 1980, women belonged barefoot and pregnant, but he was going to hire me, but in six months he would fire me. And I said, okay, how much are you going to pay me to make me pregnant?

He said, $1,500 a month. I knew that was $9,000, which would have taken me two years to earn at the Buttercup Bakery. During that time, I loved what I was doing. I was like, oh, my God, I get this. I understand it. And again, to make a long story short, through the guidance of somebody who worked there, they told me that I should sue Merrill Lynch

because what happened was illegal. And so I said, all right, got the name of a lawyer, we did at contingency, because I sued them. They couldn't fire me. Oh, wow. And two and a half years later or so, right, when it came to court, the lawsuit, I was their number six producing broker. So you do what's right versus what easy. What was right was to sue them.

Yeah. And that's when I learned you put people's needs first before money because, you know, that broker didn't put my needs before the money he was going to make. And the rest is really history. So I tell you that story because really I was led to it and I followed it. I didn't think that I wasn't worthy enough to be there, right? Even though I drove a 19, I think it was 87 Volvo Stationway or 87, whatever it was, Volvo Station wagon, parked for tickets because I couldn't afford to pay for the parking with the Mercedes and everything. But I didn't care. All I cared was I loved what I was learning. And you bet on yourself. You bet on yourself. I did. And I hit big. And that's the story all the way

through to where I sit in front of you today. You know how they say to people, make a goal, write it down. Image what you want. There is no way I could have imaged every what happened to me. I barely got a grade above a sea when I was in college. I had dyslexia. I had a speech impediment growing up. I could pronounce my R's Ss or T's. I have written more New York Times bestsellers than books I have read. So here's the bottom line. There isn't an excuse big enough to keep you from being who you are meant to be. Do you understand that? Yeah. Yeah. And that's the story. Yeah, and I really resonate with that because I always say that's my superpower too. At the end of the day, I will bet on me over and over and over. And that's a beautiful strength, a place to

bounce from, which is incredible. And I sit with a lot of women who they go into their 40s and their kids are growing up and maybe they've been a stay-at-home mom and their husband's off working or their spouse is off working and they don't know how to manage money. They're not making the money. They don't have a skill set that's actually going to help them create a new career. And so this, this, it's like a like quicks and that perimenopausal time becomes like quicksand. And I have watched so many women struggle on how do I pull myself out and start to build something for me. So speak to that woman who is in a massive life change moment, who maybe put her career on hold to raise children, hasn't been the primary moneymaker. Where does she begin? You begin by recognizing

who makes the money doesn't give them the power over the money and doesn't make them more powerful and valuable than you. That's the first place that you start. So you need to care about yourself more than you do right now and get involved with the money. Where is it invested? How is it invested? You know, even if you do not work, listen to me closely now, you can have what's called a non-spousal working Roth IRA. And when I say IRAs from this point on, I only want all of you invested in. Roth 401ks, Roth 403Bs, whatever Roth you can do, I want you to forget the traditional, the pre-tax retirement accounts. Maybe we'll get into that later. But remember, I said that to you. So you have the right to have your own individual Roth IRA, even though you don't have any

earned income based on your spouse's income. So that means, if they make over $7,500 a year, $7,500 can be put where into your own Roth IRA. You have got to start having money in your individual name. Listen to me closely again. You entered this relationship as an autonomous woman, somebody who had control over what you did with your money, how you spent your money, and then you merged. And just doesn't stand for marriage. It also stands for money. So if you haven't been involved with your money, if you feel powerless over your money, that is not your spouse's fault. That is you not willing to step up and have faith in who you are, that you can understand what bills. I bet, by the way, that they're paying the bills of the household.

Yeah, yeah, I've watched that too. Do you know why that is? No. Because the house holds everything that they love. The investments and things like that, they don't care about. But the house holds everything that they love, which is usually their children, or even just their spouse. If you have what it takes to have raised children,

do you not think that you don't have what it takes to raise Bill Buck and Penny? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You're financial children. Yeah. And so that's what I would tell you where to start. Saving little by little in your own name. And you should absolutely have money in your own name. If everything's just in your husband's name or your spouse's name, something is absolutely wrong with that. that equation. Yep. Let's talk about cod liver oil for a second. And I know what you're thinking. Cod liver oil? Really? Dr. Mindy, that sounds like something my grandmother took. But hang with me here for a moment because this is one of those old school remedies that modern science keeps proving right. Cod liver oil is one of nature's most concentrated sources of omega-3 fatty acids. also it's high in vitamin A and vitamin D. All in a form your body can actually recognize and use.

This is such a powerful combination that is profoundly anti-inflammatory. It's protective to your brain. It supports your hormones. And it does something I care really deeply about, which is it starts to repair and nourish your gut lining at a deep cellular level. This is something I personally take every single day, and one of the things that I have noticed the most is what it's done for my skin. I recommend it to women who are navigating hormonal shifts, dealing with chronic inflammation, or simply trusting to protect their long-term health. So standard process is the company I deeply align with and trust.

It's a whole food-based, clean company, and it has held the standard. of quality for decades, and I expect only the best from Standard Process. They are definitely one of the top new supplement companies in the world. So if you want to try it, check it out. You can learn more and get some for yourself at Dr. Mindy Pels. dot standardprocess.com. That's Dr. Mindy Pels. Dot standardprocess.com.

Enjoy. How does a woman go about becoming? financially literate. It's like a whole different language. So if a woman's maybe even in her mid-40s and she's just waking up to what you just said, are there steps she can take to start to understand the language of money? Yeah. And I'm not saying this just to push my own podcast, but I speak the language of understanding. I don't speak money talk. I speak getting you financial independence talk. So the Women and Money podcast, honest to God, has transformed the lives of millions of people. It has taken them from a poverty mindset to a prosperity one. That, my own book,

Women and Money, and you don't have to buy it, go to the library and take it out. If you have credit card debt, if you don't have savings, don't you dare spend money on a book or anything that I have that cost money, what you need to do is look at the right resources. And the reason that I'm gearing you to my book, whether it's the ultimate retirement guide for 50 plus or whatever it is, is because it's written in a way that you will understand it. It's written not, it is finance speak. It's written for you who may not understand anything so that you can eventually, very simply understand everything. So I have to tell you that is where I would start. Behind me, you see many of the books that I have written. And each one of them will speak to you.

Probably the best book I've ever written is the nine steps to financial freedom. Outdated with facts and figures, but it talks about what keeps you from doing that which you know you should do with money. fabulous. Yeah. And I was just going to ask that, is it still applicable today? Because the philosophy is still the same. Yeah. The first three chapters and the last three chapters, perfect. Because it talks about the spiritual side of money. There it is. You know, and it's, you know, when I first came out with that book, the articles that were written about me, Susie the Flusi, What spiritual side of money? Who you are and your money is one. If you are a personal chaotic mess, I promise you your money is a financial chaotic mess because your money can't do anything without you.

Can't go to the store, can't invest. You're the one who works for it. Invest it saves it. So I always say you have to look within to see why you are. are doing without. So true. The same thing for business. I tell I tell anybody who asks me business advice. I always say that I heard this quote that the CEO of a company, the block of the company is the capacity block of the CEO. So if the CEO has a capacity block for emotional trauma or mindset, that's as far as the company can go. That it is a really, it's an inside job. And it's the same thing that you're saying about money. It's an inside job. If it's chaotic, you've got to go in and look at the chaos within. The main saying is you have to go within to see why you are doing

without. There's one thing I want you all to understand. It's not like all of some, some magic person from above, God, whatever it may be, looked down and said, Susie Ormond was going to be really rich. This one was going to be rich. This one was going to be rich, this one's going to be poor. No, it's self-effort and grace. Grace is always there by your side. It is flapping, it's a wing, flapping by your side, 24 hours a day, seven days a week from now until eternity. The wing that you all bring to this equation is the wing of self-effort. And when that wing flaps equally as hard as the wing of grace, I promise you you will have flight into the world of unlimited possibilities where anything and everything is possible. Please do not look at me and say to

yourselves, well, she grew up with money. Are you kidding? My mother was a secretary, sold Avon on the side. My father was in the hospital most of his life. I had to go to work at 13, had to put myself through college. Are you kidding? We grew up with no money. Oh, well, she was so smart. I told you earlier. I had dyslexia. I never read. I never did. I knew. I knew. I was stupid. I never thought. Why do you think? I didn't finish college after four years and I went to be a waitress and lived in my van for three months on the streets. It's like, really everybody? So they're, you know, it's not that I was born in it, that I was smart enough for it. It was because I had a desire to be more. Yeah, that's it. That's it. It's a pull to be bigger than you,

than you're seeing right now. I absolutely agree with that. I've heard you say that the economy right now is not acting normal. What do you mean by that and how do women handle an unusual economy? So here's what's interesting. The main thing is that you all need to understand is that the government and what goes on in the economy itself, ruled by the government or whatever, it can never save you. They can't even save themselves right now. Okay, everybody? They're getting further, further in debt. Their budgets are increasing. They're spending all of this money. None of that makes sense. It just doesn't. So you have to be the one that saves yourself. So we're getting further in debt. We're in war with this, with that, and the stock market is skyrocketing.

The stock market is skyrocketing at the same time that gold skyrocketed. Bitcoin did skyrocketed. It pulled back right now. But it's not like it used to be. There are certain things that absolutely work, such as when you do start to invest, you dollar cost average. You take a small amount of money every month and you go into something over and over again every month. But it's not based necessarily just on, is the economy doing good?

is it not? Look it. We have inflation. We have everything skyrocketing. Most of you can't ever afford to buy a home or do this or do that, but yet the stock market still is going up and up. So nothing is making sense. So when I say that the economy is kind of off-tilter, it's not like the good old days when the economy was good, the market was good, inflation was low. You could afford a home. You knew this. You knew. You knew. that that's not happening today. That is why this one podcast today, in my opinion, may be the most important seriously podcasts that Dr. Mindy, when it comes to your cortisol and your financial health has ever given because I don't want anything from any of you, but I want something for all of you. I want your financial cortisol to be zero. I don't want you to be afraid when it comes to, oh, all of a sudden

you got an inheritance from your parents and you don't know what to do with it. I want you to be as financially independent from financial advisors that need to make money off of you. I want you to understand that you have what it takes to do it on your own. I want you to be an empowered girl. I want want you to be somebody who goes, oh, I can do this. And how do I know you can do it? Because I did it. And I am no different than all of you. Don't you understand that? So therefore, come along with the ride. Get on the financial train. Where do you start? If you're hearing this, you're like, okay, Susie, I'm going to start investing. And what I just heard you say is don't give it over to a financial advisor. So what's the first step if a woman says, hey, okay, I'm going to start

stalking away a little bit every month, but she doesn't want to necessarily go to a financial advisor. What would she do? I would probably open up if I could, if I had earned income, a Roth IRA at any discount brokerage firm, maybe Schwab, maybe, you know, whatever it may be, fidelity, you choose wherever you want. And I would every month pick a specific sum of money that I could commit to, $100, $200, $200, you choose, right? And start investing it. Now, where should you invest it? Obviously, in exchange traded funds, so you have some diversification. However, what I will say to you, the best one out there would probably be the symbol V-O-O. But times are changing now, and there are many exchange-traded funds that you should really think about in how to invest.

And if I can, a little bit ago, I did a webinar. I did it on June 4th, where I actually gave all of you the name of the stocks, the exchange-traded funds, especially a new exchange-traded fund that will be brought out very shortly. that's a new way to invest that you should be aware of that you might want to look up. It will be on my YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Susie Orman or on the Women and Money podcast, but you might want to go there and check it out. And remember, you know, maybe Dr. Mindy, we can do a thing together where if just for your audience. That would be amazing. If they have questions, let them write you. give me the questions a few at a time and I can answer it for them or we can do another one of these

that simply answers the questions of your viewers. I love that. So we deal with them directly, directly as to what they need because we don't really know. Yeah, I love that idea. So if you're listening to this on YouTube, just put in the comments, the questions and then again, we'll do another episode like that this. I absolutely love that. I'm thinking you said something about health and wealth a few minutes ago. And I got to tell you, I've sat with a lot of women who have been under health crises before. And the finances it takes to get you out of a health crisis is insane. I have a very good friend who I helped through a long cancer diagnosis. And she ended up spending a half a million on top of amazing insurance trying to overturn her cancer diagnosis.

It took her a half a million dollars to get 10 more years out of her life. And medical bankruptcy is one of a major, major crisis. It used to be the number one. Number one, yes. So talk to me a little bit about the woman who says, I can't really eat organic. I don't have the money to go to the gym. I don't have the time to take care of my health as her chronic disease situation is building.

How do we help her see where she should be putting money into her health so she doesn't end up with a very big expense? Well, hopefully the first place, believe it or not, that you're putting it into is some kind of health insurance, whether it's an HSA account, a high deductible account, I love those, or whatever. that's something you should do. But let's just take the person who can't even afford that. Right. They honest to God don't even have that. Then it starts to become very, very difficult. That's when you start to look, in my opinion, at alternatives of how can you live where you don't have a housing expense? who can be there to take care of you when you can't take care of yourself? How do you build a network around you that can support you when financially you don't have any money and you're going to need that. Once you know that you have that in place, once you know that, then you have to say,

all right, so maybe I can't eat organic. All right. But you don't have to eat fried food. You don't have to eat certain meats, maybe. You don't have to eat a whole lot of carbs. You don't have to eat fast food. You could fast. Then you're down a meal or two. Two or three. So you can do things.

Like when you say you don't have time, you don't have time to take a walk. You don't have time to eat okay. You don't have time to make meals that would be nourishing for you. Because it costs as much to make a nourishing meal as it does a not nourishing meal, then what that says is you do not value the temple known as your body. And if you do not value the body that you have, then you cannot complain about getting sicker and sicker and sicker. That's when you have to look in the mirror and say,

why don't I value myself? Why don't I value my body? And then maybe to help you along, I have a thing where you create a new truth that you decide what is, write down, what is your greatest fear in life? It could be your greatest fear about money. It could be your greatest fear about your health. And write a new truth that is directly opposite that fear. Maybe if we go to money, I'll never have enough money. That's your greatest fear. So your new truth would be, I have more money than I ever need. I don't care that it's not true at this moment in time. But if you repeat it 25 times a day, if you write it 25 times a day, if you say it silently to yourself before you go to sleep, looking in the mirror, and you train your brain to think that way, you start to feel more powerful. And then all of us

sudden, don't be surprised when something really starts to go the way you want it to. That's beautiful. I, you know, I also spend a lot of time on YouTube doing videos on why ultra-processed foods are so damaging to not just the human body, but it's a major contributor to dementia and Alzheimer's. And a lot of the comments that I see on these videos is, well, it's cheaper. It's a lot cheaper to buy that food. And so there's got to be a way that I spend so much of my life trying to get people to look away from the convenience of something that appears to be cheaper and tastier and be able to look long term if you eat this stuff over and over and over again, you're now going to have medical bills, even if you have insurance. You're going to have medical bills that are going to skyrocket. Is there a little trick we can use in that moment where you're like, I just want the bag of Doritos

and you don't and I'm going to eat that as a meal or I'm going to drive through McDonald's as a meal instead of getting fresh food because a lot of the justification is cost. Yeah. If they think that the justification is cost given what fast food costs today, you are out of your mind. That is just an excuse for your own laziness. Sorry. If you think it's cost, I'm telling you, it's because you are lazy because you don't have the energy to cook something for yourself. You don't have the energy to make wise choices for yourself. Now the question becomes, what is draining your energy? Why don't you have the energy to take care of the only thing in life that matters not only to you, but the question becomes, but the the ones that love you. If you can't do it for you, why can't you do it for your children? And what are you teaching your children? They're just going to do what you do. Kids don't do what you say. They do what you do. So that's the real question. What's going on? Are you in a

relationship that you don't want to be in? Do you stay in that relationship because you don't have the money to leave? What is going on in your life that's making you not have self-worth? How are you insulting yourself? What are you doing? I can tell you, fear, shame, and anger are the three internal obstacles to wealth. And I am sure they are the same obstacles to health. You're afraid you don't know. You're ashamed of what you look like. You're ashamed maybe you're overweight or you're ashamed even you're too thin or whatever it may be. But it won't be until you make a decision that you are going to give to yourself more than you give to others. Not until you say no out of love for yourself versus yes out of fear that somebody else won't like you or yes out of fear that it's just too hard.

It's just really you have to put yourself first. And if you don't, Dr. Mindy can't help you. I can't help you. Nobody can help you but yourself. So why don't you want to be the healthiest and wealthiest version of you? Can you answer that question? Can you answer it? Yeah. I'm actually going to come in and say the culture hasn't trained us to take care of ourselves. And I'm not saying that as an excuse, but we get rewarded. I wrote about this in age like a girl. There's some research done that when we go through puberty,

the patriarchal conditioning we get is you will be worthy if you behave, if you put everybody else's needs ahead of our own. Now, I think that's changing, but I see a lot of women, I'm 56 years old, I see a lot of women in their 50s that are just waking up. And I believe menopause is, that's its purpose, is to wake us. up, but we haven't exercised that muscle. And so it's a really good muscle to start exercising with both finances and health. Yeah, you know, my theory, right, is that women have the ability to give birth, in most cases, women have the ability, in most cases, to feed that which they have

given gift, you know, given birth to. So we are born givers. We give to everybody but ourselves. And it is not until we are 50 when usually the kids are out of the house. Maybe we're no longer getting along that well with our spouse, whatever it may be, that we wake up and we go, what about me? Yep, yep. What about me? So the question to all of you is, what about you?

So, all right, you're 50. Now what? It wasn't until I was 50 that I decided to get rid of all the toxic relationships I had had in my life, the woman that I was involved with for eight years that was so toxic to me, and I decided I was not going to start my 50th year in a lie. Because I was living a lie. I was this powerful, very wealthy, financial whatever icon. But I was living with a woman who was a big,

to me, who I had no power in it, and I didn't care because I was traveling seven days a week, but it was a lie. And on my 50th birthday, I decided to end that lie. And that's when I met the love of my life, really, and I'm still with her now, 25 years later, KT. And we've lived in truth. So you have to stand in your truth. So the real thing is, what lie are you? You know, you telling yourself because you are afraid to change because maybe you won't have the money. Maybe you won't have people around you. Maybe you're afraid to be alone. I get all that. It kept me in a relationship for eight years. Are you kidding? So do you understand? It's not, money isn't what makes you powerful. You're the one who makes your money powerful. You're the

one who makes your health powerful. You're the one who makes this world powerful. It was beautiful. Gray divorce has become a very common statement right now. And when I was researching the information that went into age like a girl, I found a statistic that just blew me away, which is 70% of divorces after 40 are initiated by women. And I have also sat with good friends who have left marriages and were very concerned about the finance. and how that was going to unfold. So if you're, if somebody's hearing this and they're contemplating divorce, they just went through divorce, what kind of financial advice can you get, give a woman who's going through this process? Here's what I can tell you. Money is not as important as your health and happiness. It is not. And all the women, now I have counseled thousands and thousands and thousands of women, seriously, through divorce over the past 45 years that I have been doing this. And I can tell you that, number one, two things. Most of you stay for your children.

You don't want to leave your kids until they're older and out of the house, so you are going to sacrifice your own happiness and stay in a relationship that literally is killing your self-esteem. What are you passing down the message to your kids? They know your children. They know your you're miserable. They know you and your spouse are not getting along, but you're giving them the lesson of they're going to have to do the exact same thing. They're going to have to sacrifice for their children as well. So once you understand that, if you really want to give your kids the gift of power, especially your little girls, leave. Show them you can do it on your own. Show them that you never stay out of fear. You leave because you're courageous, because you believe in who you are,

and you believe that you can make it on your own. I promise you, I do not know one person who is in a divorce and was scared to death to leave and finally left that two years later didn't write me and say, oh my God, I'm happier than I've ever been. Oh my God, Susie. I just bought my first home. I got a great job. I got a raise. I have my own car that I own outright. I'm even able to put my kids through college now. I promise you. I'm not just saying this because it's a made-up thing. I have counseled you. I have seen you. I have the emails to prove it. So what I would tell you is this. Do you really want to live a life like a girl? A girl that used to have the courage to do anything and they weren't afraid. They didn't think of the consequences.

They lived life joyfully. But with courage, now though, with the understanding of what it takes and even more knowledge than you had when you were a lot younger, I promise you, every one of you can do it. Now, maybe you have to move in with your parents. Maybe your parents need you to move in with them because they're 70 and 80 and they will like that. I don't know what you would have to do. But if you put money, if you put your fear, if you put your doubt, if you put yourself misery in front of everything, that's not living like a girl. It's not even living. You're just existing. Yeah. You know, I had an interesting experience with a friend who left her marriage. two years later we were having a conversation. She's one of my best friends and I was telling her how I was going on

the Today Show for promoting age like a girl. And she said to me, well, gosh, I haven't really done anything big like that. I mean, I just bought a car by myself for the first time last week. And I was like, that's amazing. Like, that's as big of a win as me going on the Today Show because the self pride of getting yourself to that activity and being able to do it on your own. Nobody could sit next on the couch next to me on the Today Show. I had to go in and overcome any kind of fear, just like she had to go work with the guy who the car salesman. So I think you bring up a really good point, this exercising, even if you are in a marriage, like exercising these activities that we might be scared about and hand them over to somebody else to do when we face them and we do them, we get the reward.

within ourselves. Yeah, it's, you know, it's very funny how we, how we compare ourselves to others. Well, my success isn't very big. I just had this email from a 29-year-old woman who's making 90,000 a year, has $100,000 in savings, whatever it may be, and she put herself down. I don't have very much. I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? If you don't have anything, and all of a sudden you have $300, you have a lot. If you have $600, you have even more. And true fortunes are built one penny at a time, one dollar at a time. So don't compare yourself to what others have because you don't really know what they have. You may think they're really wealthy because they drive a brand new car, live in a big house, have designer clothes,

and yet they have debt up to their eyeballs, okay? I see it all the time. Yeah. Right. And sometimes those who don't have a lot of that stuff around them actually have more ability to pay their bills than those who have a lot. So just take it one day at a time. Don't compare yourself. Keep good company. If anybody ever says to you, you can't do that. You should never talk to that person again. Agreed. You can. You will. It's your destiny. one step after another, just that simple. Okay, let me ask you a personal question. And this one is a really important one, which is when was the last time you had your

vitamin D checked? And I'm saying this because in all my years of working with women, low vitamin D is one of the most consistent findings I see and one of the most consistently missed. and vitamin D matters for so many aspects of your health. We're talking about a deficiency that can show up as hormonal imbalance, mood struggles, poor sleep, immune issues, even stubborn weight that won't budge no matter what you do. But here's the part that most people don't know. Taking an isolated D3 supplement isn't enough.

This isn't like just running down to the local store and grabbing some D3. your body actually needs D3 to be combined with very specific co-factors to actually absorb and utilize vitamin D the way nature intended it. And most supplements on the market don't include these co-factors. That's why I personally love Caterplex D from Standard Process. It's a whole food supplement. It's vitamin D complex, not just an isolated nutrient. there's an incredible difference between checking a box and actually moving the needle on your health and this one really moves the needle. In fact, in my clinic, we used to test vitamin D and we could

see with a product like Cataplex D. We could see on lab work the vitamin D levels and people go up. So you can learn more and you can get yourself some vitamin D. You can test out Cataplex D at Dr. Mindy Pels.standardprocess.com. Enjoy. Think about the perimenopause group is really in this sandwich generation where we're having to take care of our aging parents and we're in this weird economy where we're launching our children into the world. And I've heard from a lot of friends who are saying that their kids are struggling to be able to make enough money to, you know, live and exist on their own. How do we counsel that family who's really trying to get their child to adult, but they're

trying to adult in this really obscure moment? Yeah, I have a saying that sometimes helping is hurting and sometimes hurting is helping. One of the reasons that I am who I am today is is my parents could not help me at all financially. Me too, by the way. All right? I want you to think about this for then the both of us, everybody. I had to put myself through college. I had to work two jobs. I had to when I left college. And now I'm with my girlfriend and we drive out with $300 to our, in our pocket to the west coast to see a hill because we were in Illinois. And now we're living on the streets for three months till we land our, you know, a job is a wait. and I did it. I did it. And here it was so great as I got older and I had money. And my mom, my dad died when he was 71. My mother now didn't have any money. I supported her. I took care of her. I made sure that she lived to her dying day of 97 the way she deserved to love. live because why I took care of myself. Now, obviously I didn't have any kids. That's probably why I have money if I think about it. But that's besides the point. Right. That's a very good. That's, that is definitely

the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed, perhaps. Right. Maybe. But when your parents are older, your true, I call it Dharma, your true actions in life that you really need. to do is to take care of the elderly. If they've been responsible for their money, they've done everything in the world to take care of you. They don't gamble. They don't drink. They don't spend. They haven't created credit card debt. Whatever. And they need help. I personally think your priority is to help them before your children, especially adult children. Because your adult children have years to get it together. They can go and live with five people in a house. I don't care what it takes, but they can work five jobs. They are still healthy. They have energy. So your goal, if that's

the situation, and you have responsible parents who have always been responsible, parents first, then you, then your kids, okay? However, if your parents have not been responsible, I was going to say, what about the flip side? Then, sweetheart. You need to talk to your parents and say, listen, mom, listen, dad, whoever it may be, you gamble, you're still in debt, you're going on vacation, you are not being responsible, I am not going to help you. I can't. I have to help myself. I don't want to end up like you. I am telling you right now, as much as I love you, you don't love yourselves enough, and therefore I'm going to love myself. I'm going to love my spouse, and then I'm going to love my kids, so they never have to feel like

I feel with you. And I have them write a note to their parents like that. It's very hard love. Sometimes the parents get their act together after that, just so you know. My sister and I are in that situation, and my sister moved in to take over the finances, and that's a really hard conversation. So I, and I agree. Like there needs, it's almost like, it's like parenting your parents. It's a really interesting place. So, but the more we put structure in place, like you can spend this much, you can't spend this much.

The easier, the tension in our own relationship with them, because we, it loosened because we weren't resentful. We had a plan for them. And, but it's a hard place to be in. I just want to say when your 86-year-old mom and your 90-year-old dad have mismanaged money and you now have to police them, it's a very difficult. I just want to, because some people might be in that spot. But the more you put boundaries around them, the more the relationship will succeed. Yeah. Yeah.

And once you see them changing then, but if they don't change, if they refuse to believe in anything. other thing with older parents, and even you, if you're in your 50s, you all better have what I call the must-have documents. You better have a living revocable trust, a will, an advanced directive, and a durable power of attorney for health care. Once you have your stuff in order, then you also don't waste money. You don't become a burden on your kids. If you become incapacitated, who's going to write your bills for you or pay whatever. So make you. Make a little bit of you. So make sure that your parents, and they're not going to want to talk to you about it, they're going to say it's fine. It's not fine. You never want to go through probate. If one of them becomes incapacitated,

get a conservatorship for them, now you're going to spend money. So you have to be aware and do the things today to protect the what-ifs of tomorrow. Yeah. How do you feel about real estate right now? Again, we're back at these young kids. Some of them are coming out of college and they're moving to small towns and buying real estate, rent or buy? What do you recommend? Hands down. Tell me why. Rent. Two things. Number one, before I even talk about real estate, I'm also somebody who doesn't necessarily believe in even the kids going to a seriously expensive college. Are you crazy? Are you nuts, given what's happening with AI and everything? Well, listen, if you have all the money in the world and you want to do it, I don't care. But if you are living paycheck from

K-check, you have to go into student loan debt, go to a community college, go to a college that will teach you some skill. Do not all of a sudden go into $200,000 of debt, all right? Number one. Number two, real estate, given what's happening with the insurance, property insurance, more than the mortgage. All right, so maybe you could afford a down payment. Maybe you can afford the mortgage payment. maybe. However, do you have any idea that in many cases right now in Florida, where I'm doing this from, I have a 2,000 square foot condo I live in. Guess what the insurance premium is on this condo, $28,000 a year? Why? Because none of the insurance companies want to insure anymore. Look around you. Fires in California. Tornadoes.

floods, all, Herc, everything. So weather has been destroying a lot of the real estate. So insurance companies don't want to insure anymore. You can't. California, that's what's going on here in California. Right. So unless you own something outright, you can't self-insure. And so you have to understand, can you afford the maintenance? Can you afford the insurance costs? Can you afford the property taxes? all of that, you might want to say, you know what? I think I'm just going to rent. Because then I still believe, whether you agree with this or not, the biggest way to build wealth today is in the stock market. And if the market goes down, you should be a wishing and a praying that it does. Because if your dollar cost averaging into it every month,

then you take your dollars, and when you invest, your dollars buy more shares, the more shares you eventually have, the more wealth that you will build in the long run. So I have found, and I've made money in real estate, but real estate has costs to it, fixing the roof, this breaks, that breaks. So I want all of you in a situation where, number one, if you own a piece of real estate today, and you want to keep it, especially if you're getting over, make it your number one priority that you pay off the mortgage before you retire, number one. Number two, if you can't afford to buy a home, it doesn't mean you can't live the American dream. You most certainly can. You need money to have a home. If you don't have the money to

buy a home, now you're living a nightmare, not a dream. You could rent, manage to save all of that money and guess what? You in the long run could be far better off and don't think that real estate can't come down again. I know that a lot of you think real estate can just go up and up. You forgot what happened in 2007 and 2008. You forgot what happened in 1993 in California when a $3 million home in California went to a million, then a few years later went to 12. So it depends on what is good for you. Don't feel that the only way that you're going to amass wealth is through owning a home. It is not, it is not, it is not.

Yeah, it's, yeah, really, I resonate with that deeply. What do you, what would you tell the empty nest couple, or maybe it's, or maybe it's a woman who's on her own, who's about to sell her home. and now she's got a bulk of money from the sale of that home. What does she do? Does she buy another home? Does she rent a home? How does she avoid capital gains? What's the process there?

So she's not going to avoid capital gains if her gain is more than if she's living in that home by herself. If her gain is more than $250,000 minus the real estate commissions and all of that, and her gain is more than $250,000. anything above that, she is going to have to pay capital gains on it. If she lives in there with somebody and they both lived in that home for two out of the past five years as their primary residency, then they can shelter $500,000 in total. But above that, you're going to pay capital gains. Once you get a large sum of money, now you have to look at your life and ask yourself, what do you need from that money? Do you need for it to generate the income for you to live your life,

for you to pay rent, for you to do a car, whatever it is? So you all have to look at your lives and go, what do I want for my money now? And you always want to have at least a three to five year once you have retired if your money is in a retirement account because you're going to have more than just the money from the house. You're going to have money that's in a retirement, in a 401k, whatever it may be. You want to make sure that you have at least three to five years in cash that is not invested in the stock market of your must pay expenses. Because if something happens and you need to pay expenses and you don't have enough, you've been laid off, whatever it may be, and the markets are going down, that is not the time that you want to.

sell stocks. And it usually takes three to five years for the market to go from its top to its bottom, back again to a top and things like that. So there's all kinds of ways for you to structure things. But once again, these are the things that I talk about really everybody on the Women and Money podcast and everybody smart enough to listen. That is why I wrote the book, the Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50 plus. You know, I have to say this. I am asked all the time. time. Do this program for the young ones. Do this for that one. And I decided years ago, you know, nobody cares about us when we get older. Once you're over the 54, the advertisers don't care about you. They're not advertising to you anymore, but I'm here to tell you that is where

I have focused all of my attention. Sure, young ones are listening to me. Okay. And I care about them. But if you are 50, 60, 70, and 80 years of age, who's giving you advice? They're not doctoring the advice for when you're older. I'm older. I'm 75. I know what it's like to get older. I know what it's like to have a life-threatening illness that took five years for me to recover from. I know what can happen. During that time, and honest to God, it was serious. They did not expect me to live. period, okay? And one day maybe we'll talk about that. But for five years during that time, now I understood that it was great that I had money. But I promise you that if I, somebody said to me, Susie, you could have all the millions that you have or you could have your health, I would have

have given up every single penny I had to have my health back. I promise you, that's true. Yeah. You know, I've sat at the bedside of four of my patients who were very wealthy, who had cancer diagnoses, who told me the exact same thing. It's really a powerful statement. So thank you for saying that. Yeah. So health really is more important than wealth. Thank you. I love that. Okay. Renting or leasing versus buying a car? Are you kidding me? If you lease, renting's the same thing. If you lease, you are making, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes out there because that is an expense that you're going to have forever. Owning a car outright, absolutely. But do you know that the average car payment today is like $700 a month? Stop spending money you don't have everybody. To impress people you don't even know or like.

So when you drive up to a stoplight, the person next to you can look over and say, what a nice car. Are you kidding? So you are to buy only, unless you can write a check for it, unless you're financially fluent, unless you're great, you are only to buy used cars. Because the day that you drive a new car off the lot, it depreciates immediately 20%. Do you know that? So don't waste money. Buy a car that's three or four or five years old, whatever it may be. Finance that, but don't finance it for more than three years. If you can't pay for a car in three years, you're buying too expensive a car. So buy an even older car. Now, I get that because a lot of

women want new cars because they're afraid the car might break down on them. If you're really afraid of that and you can't afford to buy a brand new car and you want to make sure that it doesn't break down and everything and you want all the latest gadgets all right if you want to lease but why you're leasing don't lease an expensive car lease a car that's only going to be $200 a month that then you can if you have extra money can start saving a car fund so a few years from now you can buy a car outright, but hands down most of the time own versus lease. My car that KT and I have is a two, it's like 14 years old. It's a 2012. Yeah. Right. We keep our cars forever. I love, I love my cars. I love my cars. Yeah. Right. And like friends. And recently we did buy for the first time

a larger car because KT has it in her mind that she wants to take these road trips and she wants to sleep in it. I hate the car and I because I miss my little car. I want my car back. So I called the dealer the other day and I said, I think I want to give this back. I don't like it. So anyway, I'm funny that way, but there you go. Okay, what if you are a spender and you know you're a spender and you want to become a saver. And you're listening to, yeah, what do we do? Give us some steps for that person. Ready?

Three things. First thing is this. You need to live below your means but within your needs. What do I mean by that? You have money. Okay. And you can afford $500 a month for a car payment or this or that. No.

even if you can afford it, I don't want you to buy it. I want you to live below your means, but within your needs. What do you really need? You need a car. All right, a car with four wheels. That's good. That maybe cost you $200. How do you do that? From this day on for the next six months, I want you to commit to only buy needs versus wants. What is a need? A need. A need. is food that you get at a grocery store that you can cook for yourself. What is a want? A want is food at a fast food place. You don't need that. Got that? Good analogy. All right. And then third, I want you to get as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending. Those are the three keys to turn yourselves around honest to God. It's interesting. I was thinking that, you know, I deal with a lot of women

who want to lose weight. And I used to say all the time, why? Why do you want to lose weight? Well, I'd feel better about myself. My relationship would be better. And I would just keep saying, okay, tell me more. Tell me more. You got to give me. And a lot of women would say, well, I want to be the same weight I was when I was in high school. And I'm like, but why? I kept just asking why, why, why? until I would get down to the core, and it was always so I feel worthy. So I feel enough. And I'm wondering if that's the same thing with savings. How do you go from loving the new car in the driveway that you just bought?

How do you love that same money that you spent on that car? How do you love it as much in the bank account without having to buy the car? I got news for you. There's a work there. So here's what's interesting. two things I want to tell you. I just have to tell you this game I used to play in the Susie Ormond show. Somebody, and you'll find this very fascinating, somebody would call in and say I'm $20,000, or I'm, you know, $20,000 in credit card debt that I didn't tell my spouse about. And I would say to them,

oh, I bet in the past few months you have gained 10 to 20 pounds. And they would say, how did you know that? So, and we did this over and over again. It's on the Susie Ormond Show replays. And the executive producer, Amy Feller, would always say, how did you know? And I started to realize for every thousand dollars that you are in debt, especially hidden debt, you will gain one to two pounds.

Because it is a burden on you. So when people are heavy, all right, a lot of times it's because of the money. One last thing. I was on the biggest loser. And my job was to pick who was going to be the winner that year. And I picked the winner based on their FICO score. And I picked the winner who got themselves out of serious debt. And I went, oh, if they could get themselves out of debt, they can lose weight.

And that was the person who won the biggest loser that year. And I picked them because of their money. So I'm telling you, money has a whole lot to do with weight. You know, I always had a thing. Gain money, lose weight. That was always my motto. They really go together, in my opinion. Now, you were like, how do you learn?

to love the money as much in the bank account as you do your car. Now, here's what's interesting. KT. and I have lived a very lucky and fortunate life. And we just had five homes. We had our own private island and this house, this little condo in Florida that I bought 25 years ago, so my mom would move to Florida with me. All right. Recently, we sold everything. Lock, stock, and barrel. Okay. We have money for ever, we have more money now than we'll ever know what to do with. And I am not embarrassed to say that.

You should be proud when you've done things like that, when you've come from nothing. And now you are seriously wealthy woman. Yeah, I am. Once you have that money or you start to have any amount more than you thought you could have, you get attached to it. You don't want to spend it anymore even though you can. And I remember back to when I didn't have any money, I leased a car. I wanted a bigger BMW. I wanted everything to impress people. So how do you teach people to love the money more that's in their savings account than their car? I got news for you. Once they have that money in their savings account,

they are not going to want to buy a car. Yeah, because it's going to feel so good and all the security that comes with it. You and I completely align on that because I feel the same way about weight and food. And I used to love, I had heard a statement that a quote, that nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. That's right. And the first time I heard that statement, I'm like, yes, that's me. I a thousand percent agree that,

that living in a body I love is the greatest satisfaction I could have and tastes so much better to me than the greatest dessert you could ever give me. And what you just said sounds very similar to that. Once you understand how you feel, that's what I heard. How do you feel when you look at that money in the bank account compared to how you feel when you look at the new purchase you made. And really be honest with yourself of how you feel around those two things. You'll decide that that security with it and the bank feels better.

You know, when I first started to make big money, was when nine steps to financial freedom came out in 1997, and it sold like three million copies, and it was on number one, whatever. And now I'm in New York on all these TV shows and everything. So it was decided I should probably buy, a place in New York City and take the money that all these television shows are giving me to travel there and everything and put it towards the maintenance and everything of a co-op or a condo.

Okay. When to look for condos? I was looking at the time, remember this is 97, 98, at 1.2 million dollar condos, whatever, which I could afford to have bought outright at the time. I ended up buying a condo for $250,000. $1,000. And people said to me, why would you do that? Why would you only buy that? And that's when I was realizing the question that I had to answer, which was, when do you buy more than what you can afford, when you can afford more than what you need? So I could afford more than what I needed. but I didn't want it. I wanted to accumulate a lot of money.

I wanted it when I was older. Because I thought, oh, I'll never write another New York Times bestseller. Oh, I'm not going to have all these things happen. I'm like, I better make sure that what I've just done, I protect. So if you can look at your money as what will protect you, carry you through, give you the life that you want when you can no longer work for money, then all of a sudden your priorities change. Yeah, they do.

Yeah. I agree. And I'm also going to keep saying there's emotional piece here, like really anchoring yourself because it's so analogous to weight loss. Like what that emotional pride that you would have from managing, or you do have from managing your money is the same pride you will have from doing the work to drop weight or prioritize your health. And that you can't put a price tag on. That pride is something that nobody could ever take away from you. So I look at the emotional piece of

this as well because what I deal with with so many women is insecurity and shame and guilt and it's just oozing out of them. Yeah. Do you understand that's why the two of us are like the health and wealth twins? Agreed. Because how many times have I said, and I said it earlier, the three internal obstacles to wealth are fear, shame, and anger. It's all about your emotions.

When you're angry, you go out and spend money. When you're afraid that something's on sale, you have to buy it because it won't be there. And you don't even need it. So we're so alike. It's kind of funny. I mean, everything you're saying, I literally am translating through health. And I'm like, I've sat in the trenches with so many women. When I closed my clinic, I had a patient base of 50,000 people that I had seen in 30 years

that I had sat with and guided. And it's just like you with money. you can see trends of why people's health gets off. And they're searching for something outside of them. Always. And once they make it an inside job, once you make health an inside job, once you make finances an inside job, you're doing it for you, you're doing it for self-pride,

you're doing it for security and safety. And so many women right now do not feel secure and safe. That is huge. But one of the big differences is that when you're not healthy, you can't lie about it. When you don't look good, you can't lie about it. Everybody see it. They see you.

When it comes to money, you can be the biggest liar in the world because you can lease a car. You can charge everything. You could buy a home with not a lot of money. You can, you know, if cookies aren't in the cookie jar, the cookie jar is empty. You don't have any money in the bank account. It doesn't matter because you get one credit card after another credit card and everybody thinks you're doing great.

And you just pay the minimum payment due every month. And you're living a lie. A lie. And nobody sees it. But you know who sees it? You see it. Right. And you see it.

And you vibrate it. That's right. Yeah. But you know what? People are living a lie now because you can take. a shot and the shot will make the weight go away. But that's, to me, the same as grabbing a credit card and purchasing something you can't afford. There's going to be a payback sometime. And that's a whole other discussion because I've spent so much time here on my YouTube channel

really talking about the downsides of these weight loss drugs. You know, I just have to say something about that, which is you need a muscle when it's. You need a muscle when it's. comes to your finances. You need to be strong to have the, listen, nothing is more scary than investing your hard-earned money thinking, oh my God, it's going to go down, it's going to go down. But if you dollar cost average and everything and you have at least five years or longer until you need the money, like I said, you should hope that it goes down. But you need this emotional financial muscle. And the word, I'm not, now I'm out of my field here. But what I see with everybody on these stupid whatever they are, they're losing muscle. Yeah. They're losing their strength.

And you can't lose muscle in either way and expect that you're really going to be strong. You know, you've got to be strong in today's world. You've got to be independent in today's world. You've got to care about yourself in today's world because nobody's going to care about you more than you do. And it's also about your money. Nobody's going to care about your money more than you. And what happens to it only is going to affect your life, not your insurance agent's life, not your stockbroker's life, not anybody else's life. And by the way, for those of you out there that have whole life insurance,

universal life insurance, variable life insurance, in my opinion, you are making one of the biggest mistakes out there. The only type of insurance you should have is term insurance. period, and do not buy annuities within a retirement account. I mean, I wish we could have this podcast for 10 hours. I know, right. I was like, oh, there's a whole other path to go. Agreed, agreed. You know, I did some research for age like a girl on happiness, and I wanted to know the neuroscience behind happiness. What can we actually measure happiness in the brain? And there is a researcher out of UCLA who has measured it. And what she discussed,

is a happy the people who are the happiest have the most balanced brains and when you look at the brain you cannot balance your brain without learning a very important component of life which is resilience yes you have to face adversity and when you look at that from the neurons in the brain you face adversity all of a sudden you create neuroplasticity you create you create create new neurons forming in the brain. So I agree we're like dancing around these two topics. I'm really frustrated with the weight loss drugs because now you don't have to become resilient to overcome a health obstacle, just like what you said. You don't have to, you have to have strength to be able to handle your finances properly. We are very much conditioned now, and I'm very

worried about it in this culture of let me give you the easy path and everybody's taking the easy path. You know how earlier I said that you didn't need financial advisors? It's because I don't want you to ever be dependent on anybody. For you to be secure, listen, the goal of money is for you to be secure. Just that simple. That is the goal of money. To be secure, you have to be independent. It's not even about having a whole lot of money. If you don't know how to manage, that money. Oh, you will be taken, possibly. You're happy when you are financially independent, which means you are not dependent on anybody but yourself and your own knowledge. That doesn't mean you don't check with doctors or whatever, whatever, but yourself. The same is true. Once you start

taking, here, I'm into your field now, I don't want you to be dependent on a shot. That's right. Because once you're, then you get afraid to stop the shot. And then you're afraid to stop the That's right. When you're afraid to stop anything, when fear enters the equation on any level, that says to me, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. That's how I look at things. Yeah. What do you think of AI? I'm scared of AI. I really am. Yeah, I'll tell me more. Yeah, I'll tell you this. Artificial intelligence, you don't, you know, half the time, how do you know that this is really me? you all this. Right. You know, how do you know? I've seen AIs of myself that I couldn't tell the difference. Yeah, me too. Of me speaking Spanish. And we were going to do this whole thing of me

speaking Spanish and bring out this podcast in Spanish. And then I went, no, I can't do that. I spent all this money to create it. And then I killed it because I can't speak Spanish. And therefore, I don't want people to think that's really me. So here's the bottom line, and I don't mean to scare all of you, but this is what I think. As time goes on, artificial intelligence will replace a serious amount of the jobs that are out there. The everyday jobs that are in your fast food places, you won't have any people doing any of that. That's already happening, by the way. That's happening.

You won't have doctors doing many of the operations. the machines will be doing. So many things will not be needed anymore from people doing it. When that happens, this is my greatest fear. You have a serious number of people. You see it yesterday or a few days ago when meta laid off 10,000 people or whenever, a few weeks ago they did that. And you see all of a sudden tens of thousands of people that had really good.

paying jobs gone. Look at the federal government. 250,000 jobs were Xed. What do those people do? Where do you go to get another job? And the goal of all these corporations that have stock on the stock exchange, their goal is to get their stock price to go up. How do they do that? They do that by decreasing their expenses. How do you decrease expenses by not having to pay health insurance over time, all this stuff by having everything artificially dumb. When that happens, we have a tremendous sub-workforce that is no longer paying into the tax system. If we're not paying into the tax system at the exact same time when the government keeps issuing more and more treasuries, more and more money, they're borrowing more money to

build this to buy that, the money that they did lend out at 2%, at 3%. Now is coming due and those people are going to reinvest it. Now it's at four or five percent. So now their expenses go up. What happens? And that scares me. I'm not going to lie to you. It does. That is why the two things that we're talking about right now are more important today, believe it or not, than they have ever been before. You need to stay strong. You need to stay strong. You may need to do manual work. You may need to do certain types of things that you've never done before in order to make a living that AI cannot do, or it cannot do at least for years from now.

I need you to have at least eight to 12 months of money in a must-pay expenses in an emergency fund. So if you do get sick, if something happens, you have money in case you're laid off, whatever it may be. to figure out what are you going to do with your life? I need you if you have a home to pay off the mortgage on that home so you reduce your expenses. I need you to start putting your money in. Roth retirement accounts, why? Because Roth retirement accounts, even though you don't have a tax right off today, get to build for you. And when you go to take it out, it's tax free. Oh, you don't need to take it out. No problem. You can leave it in there forever. Oh, you die, passes down to your children, income tax-free. So I'm trying to get you into a situation

that no matter what happens, you have a financial life preserver on so that you can save yourself, but you have to be strong, you have to be healthy, you can't be dependent on anyone, anything, and that's what I think. Yeah, it's such an important thing. And I could pull up about a hundred different situations that are going on in our culture right now where we're doing the exact opposite of that. What do you think of using AI for financial advice? There are some people who are recommending you take your finances and you put them into Claude and you get the wisdom of all these financial advisors. So here's what I have done over the past three years. Every question that I have gotten from people who write into the podcast and I try to answer a lot of

them. Obviously, I can't answer them all. I've put into ChatGPT and Claude, and I look at their answers. Sometimes their answers are fabulous. Sometimes their answers are 100% wrong. And I've been trying to train it. Like for some reason, when you go on to Claude or even ChatGPT and you talk about a Roth IRA and the amount of money you can put in, they keep saying 7,000 a year. when it's $7,500 a year. All the time. I get that with health too. Keep going. All right. So they're getting their information from old information, inaccurate information. And again, I'm going to restate how you are investing today and in the future is going to be very, very different than how you did it years ago because of automation, because of automation, because of

of what really makes the stock market move, which is why I was saying on the webinar that I gave a while ago, yes, we'll give you stocks and whatever, but there's a new way to invest now where you have a limited amount versus a whole lot because most of the stocks and index funds don't do anything. They're not really moving, so you're not getting as much bang for your buck anymore,

and automation has changed everything. So we need to keep you, up to date. We need to change as times have changed and times have changed. Do you think retirement is a thing anymore? No. Right. Like, you know, when I think about my dad, you know, there was a date he wanted to retire. Now he missed that date. But, you know, that old thing worked till you're 65 and then you retire. Is that a thing? No. Number one, it's now worked till you're 70 in most cases. So you could at least claim full Social Security, or if you're married and one of you needs to claim before at least 67 and 70 right now. However, you have to figure out, is Social Security going to be there? Now, I think it will be,

but chances are they may reduce it by 20%. They're going to have to do something. They are not going to get rid of it. So don't be afraid of that. How much do you have in savings? What can you do to reduce all of your expenses. It is far better for you to have no debt than to save enough money in a retirement account, especially if it's a pre-tax account, to generate the income to pay the mortgage, the car payment. No, if you simply, I can give you examples if you want. You'll have to tell me if you do or not, right? But you...

Give an example. Because this is a big issue for people on this podcast. All right, so let's just say you have, you bought a home. And now you still, it was a $200,000 mortgage that should cover every one of you. You wish, right? But just let's do that. 6% interest rate on the mortgage. That's $1,200 a month.

That's $14,400 a year. Okay? After 10 years, 15 years, after actually 20 years of paying it, you have only 10 years left. do you know that on a $200,000 mortgage, you will still owe $100,000. Now, your monthly payment is still $1,200 a month or $14,400 a year. How much do you need in a retirement account, let's say it's pre-tax, to generate after taxes $14,400 a year to pay that mortgage? Oh, you need about $600,000, even at 3, 3.5%, whatever the going rates are for that, after taxes, there it is. And you say, but what about the tax write-off?

In the last 10 years of a mortgage, the tax write-off is gone. The greatest tax write-off for a mortgage is in the first years because they want to know they are, the mortgage companies, that they have gotten their interest on the money. as if you held it the whole time, because they know chances are in seven to ten years you're going to sell it. So there's no advantage for taxes. Isn't it easier to take $100,000 pay off the mortgage so that you don't have to have $600,000 to generate those payments? That's an example for you. That's beautiful. Are there other investments that you can look at differently for a tax break or a tax tax advantage? Here's what I would say to all of you. Be happy if you have to pay taxes. Don't fear

taxes. You only fear taxes when you don't have the money to pay the taxes. So that means you're not having enough withheld. You're not paying the correct quarterly estimated payments. That fear of your taxes causes more cortisol than anything else in life because they can come after your bank accounts. they can come after everything. So therefore, what are you doing? If you're fearing your taxes, it's because you're not handling them correctly. It's just that simple. It is a fact of life.

You have to pay it. Chances are if you do things to get around it, all right, you're probably going to get yourself in trouble. Now, that doesn't mean that if you have an investment account where you have stocks that have a tremendous gain and maybe have some stocks, it has. have a tremendous loss, that you don't sell them both offset it and do things like that. There are strategies like that that you can do. But when you're worried about taxes, that tells me a lot about you're not doing something

right with your money. That's beautiful. Okay, I was thinking I'm going to call this episode a midlife money master class. I really, we went after so many things that I hear every single. single day on the thousands and thousands of comments that we're getting. I want to finish up with this one, and you've answered it like four times so beautifully. What does it mean to you to live like a girl? And I kind of mentioned it earlier, the answer. For me, living like a girl is having that vitality and that fearlessness that I had when I was younger. When I was younger, I would do things

that was so great, but now I'm afraid to do that. I want to be that girl again, where I have courage, where I stand in the truth, where I am not afraid of anything. That's what living like a girl is for me. But it's where I also know, though, that I'm a sophisticated, wealthy, beautiful, loving woman that cares about people that's living her life to the fullest, and that's really trying my best to make this world the best place possible for all. Susie Orman, you are iconic. You are definitely a disruptor. And we are so appreciative of you. And I could not agree more with that final statement. this is exactly why I renamed my podcast, Live Like a Girl, because when you come back to her,

when you take ownership back of that essence of who you are and who you were, that to me is the greatest feeling on the planet. Can I just say one more thing to you? Of course. Okay. Yes, of course. And this is true. A few years ago, especially after I was ill and everything,

I stopped going on TV, I stopped going on podcasts, I stopped doing anything like this. but I've always watched you. I've always admired you. I have with KT all of your books. We've tried fasting. We've tried doing everything. This is one of the very first podcasts and only podcasts that I said I would do. And the reason that I did that is because I respect you, I honor you, I trust you, and I know that our missions are aligned. So I hope we can do it again. A thousand percent agree.

I am in such appreciation and awe of you. So thank you so much for those kind words. They've been accepted. I appreciate that. Thank you. You know, we should probably say one last thing. Where do people find you? Because this webinar is golden that I want to make sure people get to.

Oh, thank you. So again, you can all go to Women and Money podcast. It's right there. I have like 700 episodes that we've done. And if you really want to understand certain things about money, what to buy, what to do, and all of that, go there. But to watch the webinar that I did a few weeks ago, please go to YouTube.com slash Susie Orman. It will be there. I'll also probably replay it on my podcast. But it's fabulous. And you know, there were some great deals that we gave because the webinar was June 4th on June 5th was my birthday. Yeah, happy birthday.

Thank you, my 75th. So a lot of things that people need, we gave them special pricing for. And I get that now we're finding out about this after it. But maybe we can work a deal with our publisher, Dr. Mindy, which for your people, we can give them the same deal as well. That would be amazing. and I'll leave all those logistics and the notes for everyone. And I'm sure my audience is going to want to have you back and do more.

So we're going to stay connected. Let's do live your best life with the two of us on stage together. Let's do a huge event. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm up for it. Let's go for it. Yeah.

Appreciate you so much, Susie. Thank you for coming on. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode, I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your

friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.