The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying

Suze Orman: The truth is I could not be better if I tried.

Suze Orman: The initial reason for writing this book was to share the extraordinary insights that I have gained throughout the years of being an actual financial advisor and dealing with people's money. Unlike many financial authors who do nothing more than write about money, you have to remember, for 18 years I sat across a desk, watching people laugh, cry, flourish, and be afraid of their money. And handing over that responsibility to me, I learned a lot from my own mistakes, from their mistakes, and the mistakes of the financial community and how they render most of us powerless when it comes to our money. That is why I wrote the book.

Suze Orman: Yes, absolutely! There are so many things as a self-employed person that are actually more beneficial than if you were an employee of someone else. There are even ways to get money as a self-employed person into a Roth IRA if you know the tricks of the trade. The book has been updated with all the new tax laws, which you can find on pages 141 through 147. That will help you tremendously.

Suze Orman: It was a process that revealed itself little by little by actually dealing with people's money that kind of just emerged over 18 years. It was a process that needed to emerge since things weren't making sense when it came to my clients. I would tell people to go and get a will, and for every simple action, six months later they would come back and it wasn't done. For instance, Kendra, do you have a will and a trust? And if not, why not? You know you need one. There is a reason that people were spending more money on credit cards than they knew they should be spending, and I couldn't figure out why at the time. Or simply saving for retirement -- they didn't do that either. So little by little I started to ask questions, questions of true value and meanings, rather than a sale for my commission and me. This book contains truths, not just words, and truths reveal themselves slowly and over time, but they do last forever.

Suze Orman: First thing to do, Robert, is tune in to "Oprah" tomorrow, where you will see me hosting a show with 15 kids just like you -- under the age of 21 and with $200,000 in credit card debt. So please know that you are not alone. In the book in step five I give you ways to slowly, but surely get yourself out of the situation that you have gotten yourself into. It is extremely important that you know that you are worth far more than the negative balance on your credit card statement. I beg you not to judge your self-worth by the red ink of your net-worth. Please start reading page 158 in the book and it will help you considerably. If you cannot afford the book, know that on the "Oprah" web site tomorrow night, they will excerpt portions of it to help all of you. There are ways out. Thank God time is still on your side.

Suze Orman: What did you originally purchase on those credit cards that maxed them out? I need to know that before I can answer your question about bankruptcy.

Suze Orman: It will depend on if you have a 401k plan at work where your employer matches your contribution or not. It will depend on what the current interest rate on that credit card is. And how much you actually owe and how old you are. What is very important to learn is that you are all not a herd of cattle where one answer feeds you all. You are all individuals with individual personalities as well, and I have more respect for each and every one of you than to give you just a pat answer. I can tell you this however, that debt of any kind will [always be] bondage. You will never have financial freedom if you have debt.

Suze Orman: On no level do you need life insurance. Life insurance was never meant to be a permanent need. It was only meant to be there during your working years when you were still young, before you had assets accumulated. Most life insurance policies are sold to you, not purchased by you. Do you understand the difference between the two? You need life insurance if you have a family to protect and if you lost your income they wouldn't survive. There is no reason to have it at all otherwise. Again in the book on step four, I go over this in great detail. I go over when you need and when you are taken advantage of in most situations. Please look at page 70 in THE 9 STEPS TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM.

Suze Orman: Again it is very difficult to answer the question since I don't know very essential things about you...like do you have credit card debt? How do you feel about investing? Why do you care if you get whacked at tax time or not? For, the truth is the more taxes you owe simply means the more money that you made. However, if you were to invest in a good no-loan without commission, one like an index fund, you will have very little tax ramifications while your money sat in that fund. If you held it long enough and it continued to grow, you will owe capital gains tax, but may you only be so lucky.

Suze Orman: There is nothing fair about some people working 40 hours in a factory or our schoolteachers who are in charge of our children's lives being paid a wage or a salary that they can barely get by on. Versus those, and this includes myself, who make extraordinary amounts of money and in most cases, with far less effort than the people who really keep this world running. How one changes this I don't know. We have a hard enough time on how we think about money on an individual level let alone on a national one. Do I wish we had a world where everybody had everything they needed and wanted? You bet I do. However, I have no idea how to accomplish that in such an economic system like the one we live in.

Suze Orman: When you take early retirement if you think that you will need to live off of the money that is in your retirement plan, then as time goes on, you need to start scaling down into more conservative investments that will not hurt you if the market turns south in a time of your life when you will really need the money. You happen to be in a sector of the market that is one of the riskiest of all. As quickly as they can go up, I have seen some stocks lose 50 percent, and please remember, Darrell, if something goes down by 50 percent, it has to go back up 100 percent just for you to break even. Don't push the envelope too far, for I have seen it backfire many times. The mere fact that you are asking the questions, tells me that you yourself are starting to become afraid. A lack of clarity usually leads to losses. Get back to the fundamentals of why you bought what you bought. If those reasons are still true to this day then stay put and put your fear aside. Six years is still a significant time away.

Suze Orman: The mere fact that you think that you can't possibly spare a penny means that you will never be able to do so. Your thoughts and how you feel about money are the main source of what attracts or repels money to you. If I were to take a dollar and rip it up in front of all of you, you would all gasp, thinking how could I be so disrespectful of money, yet none of you think twice when you throw away a magazine or food that spoils in the fridge. But money in money form has an energy to it; it is alive and it responds to you just like people do. When you feel powerful in life, people feel attracted to you. When you feel powerless, nobody is around. Money is the same way. If you feel so powerless that you can't give money away, you will never get a return. When you feel generous you feel powerful, and when you feel powerful, money is attracted to you. How much to give? Each and every one of you needs to decide what is a respectable amount. Show your children that giving can be responsible. Make it a practice that once a month you take yourself to a place of worship or where you feel comfortable and make an offering for everything that you have. Show them that there is always enough to give away because there is always somebody that needs more than you do.

Suze Orman: Absolutely not! If you continue to expand simply to save at most 50 cents on every dollar, your dream of being able to retire early will go by the wayside. Stop being so obsessed with the amount of taxes you have to pay. I can guarantee you that I pay a hundred times more in taxes than you, and I have adopted the attitude that I am happy to do so. When you concentrate on what you have rather than how much you have, your own thoughts begin to create your own future. How many people for the simple sake of trying to save on taxes wouldn't be able to pay their bills? I myself, today as we speak, just bought an apartment in NYC. I paid cash for it; therefore it will offer me no tax write-off whatsoever. However, it does offer me the freedom of thought that if anything were to go wrong, I would be able to pay for it. That is part of the key to financial freedom, please don't become a slave to you money simply to avoid paying taxes. Learn how to buy what you need versus what you can afford. I could have afforded a lot bigger an apartment, but I didn't need it. Stay respectful of your money and what it can and can't do, and when you do take that retirement plunge you will be swimming in a pool of freedom rather than imprisonment.

Suze Orman: Debbie, please know the six percent ceiling is incorrect. Most corporations allow you contribute up to $10,000 or a maximum of 10 percent. The six percent is what the corporation matches. Please don't limit yourself to just that amount.

Suze Orman: I would definitely recommend aggressive growth mutual funds -- again, no loans that don't have commission on them. However a more important question is whose name should they be held in. Please read in detail why I don't like the new education IRAs, as I think it is extremely dangerous to hold money in your children's name. There are far better ways for you to invest that money. I talk about this in the book in great detail starting on page 248.

Suze Orman: It is self-discipline. That is true, and the belief that you can do it, the belief in yourself and your abilities. Telling yourself that you can versus you can't. Creating new truths and going for it. To put it in a nutshell, the two most important things needed are self-effort and grace. Grace is always there for us. When we work as hard with self-effort as the grace is working, then you have true flight in the financial freedom.

Suze Orman: Yes, absolutely! Burt, one out of three of you will spend some time in a nursing home after the age of 65. Your health insurance will not pay for it, Medicare will not pay for it, only you will pay for it out of your own money. It is one of the most essential items that I think opens needs in their portfolio. The perfect age to start purchasing is age 54. My favorite long-term carrier is Continental Casualty. Please read starting on page 81, and you will get an education about everything you need to know about long-term care insurance.

Suze Orman: A will does absolutely nothing on any level to save your heirs from paying taxes. There is only one way to save them from paying taxes and it is by creating an AB Tax planning trust. It is essential that you get this done with your wife prior to one of your doing. For if one of you dies, it can save you up to $245,000 of estate taxes this year. In step four of the nine-step book I again tell you about everything you need to know about trusts and wills starting on page 44. And for you especially, you might want to read starting on page 104 of the book.

Suze Orman: Thank you for wanting me to help you. However, I no longer take personal clients and I am honored that you would have considered me. In regards to exiting from Vanguard, index funds will be hurt more than a managed fund if the market were to head south. For, they stay 100 percent guarded while a managed fund has the ability to go to cash. If it is starting to make you nervous than start the dollar/cost average, which I talk about in step five of the book, into a mutual fund that you feel comfortable with that does have the ability to go to cash.

Suze Orman: The tapes go beyond the realm of the book in that it brings the book alive in ways that only 30 true-life people can do. You laugh with them, you cry with them, and you hear them transform in front of your very eyes using the steps of this book. Currently these tapes are only available on QVC, and at this time we have no intention of bringing them to retail. They are a true journey with me serving as the guide; they are another way of learning what goes beyond the written word. The book itself is truly a magnificent peace of art that will paint a beautiful picture for you if you use its words as its paint brush.

Suze Orman: Yes I will be on tomorrow and I will also be on the "Oprah" chat room @10 PM ET on AOL.

Suze Orman: The next book release date will be Women's Day of next March. This sneak peek will be that it goes beyond financial freedom and into topics that were not discovered or discussed in my previous two books. It will be a journey into the soul of money and your life, with the end destination being one of a life of true wealth.

Suze Orman: May financial freedom be something that each and every one of you believe that you can obtain. May you all know that you can become a money magnet. May you all know that you can be the master of your own financial destinies. Please have faith in yourselves and know that anything is possible. I wish you all a life of true wealth, and abundance of joy of all kinds.