Suze Orman did not plan to become a financial planner and advisor; at the age of 29 she was a waitress making $400 per month, dreaming only of opening her own restaurant. At that time, financial planning was the furthest thing from the young Orman’s mind. But, through a series of fortuitous mishaps and sheer perseverance, she became not only a financial planner, but a nationally renowned expert – someone that many getting their MBA or masters degree online and at Harvard look up to. Her books, many of which have made the bestseller lists, focus on smart investment and other forms of financial planning.
When Orman was learning the financial ropes, she didn’t have the option of online schools and courses. Today, there are numerous online courses that promise to give financial planners and future tycoons the tools and skills to grow wealth. Boston University has a Certificate of Financial Planning that can either be taken as a self-paced online program or, more quickly, in a virtual classroom.
Suze Orman’s story, on her website, tells how she became a broker for Merrill Lynch, at the age of 30, almost by accident. Traveling to see the country with friends in a van, had landed her in Berkeley, where she got a job as a waitress. After working in that job six years, 
she began to think about opening her own restaurant, and set about raising the money. Her parents couldn’t help, but a long-time customer gave her a $2,000 check plus additional checks and promises from other customers totaling $50,000. She placed her cherished funds for safe keeping at Merrill Lynch, believing that they would safely grow. Instead, the money vanished in a market downturn. Orman went to work at Merrill Lynch to recoup her losses, getting hired “to fill a women’s quota.” She gave herself a crash course in finance, took the Series 7 exams, and when she left Merrill Lynch three years later it was to be a vice-president at another firm.
Orman founded her own firm in 1987, began publishing best-selling books in 1995, and started her own TV show in 2003 – a meteoric rise to fame that today’s students daydream about. She offers people advice about every aspect of their finances. She would have taken the information that could be learned at Boston University and run with it; the self-help advice she offers in particular to women comes largely from her life experience.
She has also worked with agents who have given her advice about her career trajectory, and she uses herself as an example of what a woman can do to master her financial destiny. Included in her teachings are the risk management, investment advice, tax planning, retirement planning, and estate planning which BU offers.
While the investment knowledge and skills possessed by Orman are readily available to all through online courses, the particular ingredients which produced her success involved skills beyond crunching numbers. It also took personality and perseverance, and those are harder to teach.
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