Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)
Ask KT & Suze Anything: Revisiting Can I Afford to Have a Baby?
Thu, 27 Mar 2025
On this episode of Ask KT and Suze Anything, Suze answers questions about RMDs, ROTHs, investing in art and wine. Plus, a baby sized “Can I Afford It?” quizzy and so much more! Jumpstart financial wellness for your employees: https://bit.ly/SecureSave Try your hand at Can I Afford It on Suze’s YouTube Channel Protect your financial future with the Must Have Docs: https://bit.ly/3Vq1V3GGet your savings going with Alliant Credit Union: https://bit.ly/3rg0YioGet Suze’s special offers for podcast listeners at suzeorman.com/offerJoin Suze’s Women & Money Community for FREE and ASK SUZE your questions which may just end up on the podcast. Download the app by following one of these links: CLICK HERE FOR APPLE: https://apple.co/2KcAHbH CLICK HERE FOR GOOGLE PLAY: https://bit.ly/3curfMISee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What financial opportunities should I explore in 2023?
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March 27th, 2025. Welcome to the Women in Money podcast, as well as everyone smart enough to listen. Hi, everybody. Robert, the producer here. So it turns out there was a major electrical failure on the island where Susie and KT live. And of course, you know that one needs electricity in order to record a podcast. And you should know by now that we don't like to leave you without a show.
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Chapter 2: Why was a previous episode revisited?
So what we're going to do today is revisit part of an Ask KT and Susie Anything episode from a while back. And we're going to jump right into it with KT asking the first question.
This question's from Ed. He writes, I'll keep it short. I'm 51. I have $10,000 in a bank account. Would Susie suggest investing it in a low-cost brokerage account or using it to pay the taxes on converting some of my somewhat hefty balance, $600,000, in a traditional 403b to a Roth 403b? Now, Susie, remember, Ed's 51.
Chapter 3: Should I invest in a Roth 403b?
If it were me, Ed, I would absolutely take that $10,000. Since you want to take it and invest it anyway in a brokerage account, I think that your money would be far better converting money to a Roth 403b where you will be also investing it, but you're going to be investing it tax-free. So yes, I would be doing that if I were you. but I would be checking it with my CPA. Yes, KT.
So next question, another man, Mike. I love when we get all these mixed up questions.
All right.
Because it's the Women and Money podcast, but I love when men come on.
I thought she was going to say, I love answering questions from all these mixed up men. No, they're not.
No, they're not mixed up. They're listening. Yeah. So Mike says, I'm 61 years old and my wife is 59. We are fortunate to have about $6 million in retirement savings currently. Good for them. Good for them, right, Susie?
Can I just butt in for one second? Yeah. Yeah. So here's what's interesting. A while ago, I was being interviewed by someone, and they wanted to know how the questions that are coming into this podcast differed from the questions that came in for the Susie Orman show in 2001 all the way up that I did, I think, to 2015.
almost all the questions were, I'm in debt, I don't know what to do, I don't have any retirement, I need to claim bankruptcy, and on and on and on. Very few, seriously, very few were about, I have a million dollars here, six million dollars there, and on and on. Today, the majority of the questions, because most of those people now that are writing in are
listened to me from all of my books, watched me on TV all those years. And now they're all multimillionaires, the majority of them. They all own one or two homes outright. They are all doing so great I cannot even stand it. I'm so happy for them. Well, that's a tribute to your work. But that's a tribute, everybody, to you can go from less to more. You can have money in your life.
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Chapter 4: How can I plan for RMDs before retirement?
Because I can't remember what they did in December 2022. 22. How do you remember all these dates? Oh, my God. She's a genius.
No, don't say that. I don't like when you say that. Anyway, so they changed the rules. And these rules really apply to you, Mike, even more than me. Obviously, they changed the rule from RMD starting at the age of 72 to 73. But the big change is that starting in 2033, If you were born 1960 or later, RMDs don't start until you are 75. Now think about that. Here you are only 61.
So that's 14 years from now. I don't care about three years before your RMDs and now we have a really big problem. Why don't you now? If you can start to convert money from a traditional IRA or a traditional 401k or wherever it is to a Roth IRA, a Roth 401k, why don't you make sure that you're doing backdoor Roths or whatever?
Because if you were to do that, then you wouldn't be building on the money that you have in these retirement accounts right now. You would actually be building your Roth retirement accounts. So when the time comes, guess what? Your RMDs won't be that big anyway, just so you know. So that's really what I would be doing.
There's all kinds of things that I could tell you to do that I'm sure I wrote you about, but that is the most important thing I want you to consider, all right? Because if you start planning now, you'll be very happy that you did 15 or 14 years from now. All right, KT.
You don't like RMDs.
I just think I'm mad at myself that we have to take them. I told you before. You told us a couple podcasts that you made a mistake. I made a serious mistake. And I was yelling at the person I do all my money with. I was like, while we were discussing what my RMDs are going to be, when should we take them? Should we take them in like kind? What should we do with them? And things like that.
And I said, and why the heck didn't we convert in 2010 when we were able to convert all of it? Who cares if I would have paid taxes? I was allowed to pay taxes over 2011 and 2012, not 2010. And for all these years, I would have had all this growth because I did magnificently, truthfully, KT, for us during all those years. And I'm like, what was wrong with me? No, ready?
What were you thinking? I was not thinking. All right. All right. I love this question. Susie, this is a need or a want question. All right, girlfriend. It's from Eric. Curious on your thoughts, Susie.
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Chapter 5: Is investing in art and wine a good idea?
I love- Why don't you answer it?
Yes, yes, yes. However, I'm going to answer if you can afford it, because if this is a need or a want, it's really a want. And if you can afford to invest in art and wine, boyfriend Susie would say do it. However- But you don't know I would say that. All right. So KT would say, boyfriend, do it. Now wait, KT has another bit of advice.
I'd be very careful in who I invested with in terms of a company or an app. I think it's really important that maybe you start some direct investing, either with a small gallery that you know, or with the wineries themselves. Every great winery here, just here in our own country in California, has fabulous programs. Investigate what you want to do before your investments.
She's so proud of her answer, everybody. Here's what I would tell you, Eric. There are more things than you realize when it comes to investing in art or wine. It's storing the wine. We have a very big wine collection. We do.
Yes, we do. Susie doesn't drink, by the way, everybody.
She has a sip maybe every now and then. But that is besides the point.
It went into a fabulous fine glass.
That's right. With a great dinner. Yes, but it cost me a lot of money to store those wines, just so you know. It costs us money today to store all the wines. And insure them. And insure them. All right, now... Let's move on to art. We invested in some art and we thought we were going to do great with it.
And one of the pieces that we had evaluated the other day actually has gone down in value rather than up. And so when it also comes to art, you have to insure your art. So there is a cost to protecting these investments. And therefore, you better take that into consideration. So Eric, you better know what you're doing because chances are...
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Chapter 6: What are the hidden costs of investing in wine and art?
Anyway, I remember one day we were in his factory in New York City and and he was doing all these silk screens of Chairman Mao and different portraits, his famous portraits. And he asked me if I wanted one. I said, how much is it? He said, for you, three hundred fifty dollars. $350, everybody. And what did you say, Katie? I said, well, let me think about it. Maybe I'll get one next month or so.
I didn't think at all about it.
And you didn't think you could really afford it at that time, right?
No, no, no, no. I could afford it.
But you didn't do it. I didn't do it.
Why? Because I thought I could just do this anytime. We're friends. Now just tell everybody what that sells for today. Okay. I don't really know the exact price of his prints today. How many millions?
Millions. Many, many millions.
He had the Marilyn Monroe. He had quite a few famous, great, great portraits. That you could have had. Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly was a beautiful one. Yeah.
All right. So anyway, you probably shouldn't listen to KT. All right, go on. Okay, so next question. Stick with the wine. There was another thing she passed up that would have made her so wealthy. It's not even funny, but we can talk about that another time. Coffee.
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