Can money buy you happiness?

“Yes!” says Suze Orman, widely touted as the US’ “most trusted expert on personal finance.”

You’ve seen her on US television, most probably on Oprah, where she has dished out advice on handling and growing money, sharing user-friendly recipes to financial success as though they were those of easy-bake chocolate chip cookies.

In her book Women and Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny, Suze (pronounced “Su-zie”), now in Manila upon the invitation of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), writes: “The simple fact is that nothing more directly affects your happiness than money.”

Suze, who met the press yesterday at the BPI main office in Makati, says that being successful financially is not about what you do with your money. “It’s what you do with your life. Every minute, every day.”

She should know whereof she speaks. A former C student with a speech impairment who lived in a section of Chicago where whites were a minority, she was not born to wealth. Today, she owns houses all over the world and employs a full-time household staff of four (all Filipino, she says proudly) in her Florida home. For several years, she waited on tables, fulfilling the one great expectation of her  to be a waitress. She earned about $400 a month, but she dared dream of someday owning her own restaurant. Fortunately, she had built up a loyal following among the diners in the restaurant, and they all chipped in so she could have the $50,000 capital needed. Unfortunately, her broker from Meryll Lynch messed up her investment (“Sometimes brokers make you broke,” she cautions). Broke, she applied for a job at Meryll Lynch. And she found her place in the sun.

Today, Suze is the author of five consecutive New York Times bestsellers: The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom; The Courage to Be Rich; The Road to Wealth; The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life; and The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke; and the national bestsellers You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It and Suze Orman’s Financial Guidebook. She is the host of her own award-winning CNBC-TV show, a contributing editor to O, The Oprah Magazine, and a featured writer in Yahoo! Personal Finance. She has also won two Emmy awards as TV host.

Bringing Suze to Manila for a series of talks on personal finance is a coup for BPI, which believes in “democratizing access to financial advice.” It is the first-ever visit to the Philippines for Suze, who happens to be a good friend of prominent Filipino businesswoman Doris Magsaysay-Ho.

An added push in convincing Suze to go to Manila, I presume, is the fact that the people who know her best are Filipinos  her driver, her cook and other personal assistants. Because of them, she knows of the deeply-rooted strengths and weaknesses of Pinoy culture  generosity on the one hand, and the tendency to rely on “foreign aid,” i.e., dollar remittances from relatives who work abroad, on the other.

Suze says that unless these remittances from abroad are used to help aging parents (“whom we should honor”), they foster a culture of dependency on the overseas worker. She says Filipinos are generous to their relatives almost to a fault, to the point that helping others redounds to hurting themselves. Suze says that sometimes, the OFWs are elderly, and the people spending their money back home are able-bodied and capable of finding jobs.

Suze with (from left) BPI asset management brand manager Norhene Quiambao, chief marketing officer Josephine Ocampo and asset management group head Theresa Javier.

She advises her Filipino staff, as she advises everybody, “There is nothing greater than having a sum of money in a bank account somewhere  for yourself.”

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Suze, 61, revealed that majority of those who watch her TV show are, surprise, 27-year-old males!

Her one big piece of advice to the young is this: If you start setting aside $100 a month at the age of 20, by the time you are 60, you would have saved $1 million. But if you dilly-dally and start saving up only when you hit 30, you would have only saved $300,000 by the time you’re 60. By delaying your savings by 10 years, you would have already lost $700,000.

Another nugget (nay, bullion) of wisdom from Suze: “What you do with your money is not as important as what you do with your time.” 

Her mantra, if ever, she has one, is this: Do not spend money you do not have. She is allergic to credit card debts. If you must use your credit card, make sure you are able to pay the debt in full  not just the minimum amount  when the bill is due.

Filipino industrialist Raul T. Concepcion, according to his wife Menchu, gave his children this piece of advice when they were starting out: “Never, ever, mortgage the house you’re living in.”

Suze agrees. “Never take out equity on the house you live in to buy another house.”

“I have watched 150 million people in America destroy themselves because of this,” she shares. She said that after she paid off the amortization on her first home, she bought all her succeeding homes with a check  with money that she already had.

She also affirmed what my parents Frank and Sonia Mayor also used to tell me: “The more money you have, the more you spend. Your expenses adjust to what you’re getting.” So even if you’re not earning much, you can discipline yourself to save.

Suze says that people shouldn’t wait to “hit rock bottom” before they start to get their finances together and turn their lives around.

According to Suze, because of the economic crisis that pummeled the US, many Americans woke up with a debilitating debt and told themselves: “I am tired of living the way I am living, I am tired of living a lie.”

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Why is money important?

Because it can buy you happiness.

“Oh, I know some of you are just horrified by this notion…” Suze admits in her book. “Happiness is all about the things money can’t buy  health, love, respect  right? Absolutely true  all these are essential to a happy life. All are determined by who you are and not what you have. But the kind of happiness I am talking about is your quality of life  the ability to enjoy life, to live life to its fullest potential. And I challenge anyone to tell me that such things aren’t factors in your overall happiness.”

Methinks happiness shouldn’t only be anchored on how much money we have. But I do agree that with money (honestly-earned, of course), we can be happier  to be able to ride home in an air-conditioned vehicle instead of a jeep; to be in a private room instead of a ward when we’re confined in a hospital; to fly business instead of economy on long-haul flights; to be able to visit New York, New York instead of New York, Cubao.

By bringing Suze to Manila to share her money-making strategies with people from all walks of life, BPI is democratizing the pursuit of happiness as well.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)