Invest in Yourself Transcript

Invest in Yourself Transcript

Speaker: Suze Orman

NARRATOR: Invest in Yourself: Suze Orman discusses the importance of responsible borrowing and repayment of student loans.

SUZE ORMAN: Hi, everybody, I’m Suze Orman. Let’s talk money, something that I’m pretty good at. All of you are about to make a serious investment in yourself. Now, some of you, when you go to school, you’re going to be able to pay for it; you have the money. But more of you, most likely, are going to have to take out a student loan.

You’re going to find there’s many places that will say “Yes, yes. Here’s money. Here’s this loan. You can have it.” But you are going to have to be responsible to the money that people want to lend you. And the reason that you need to be responsible is this; in most cases, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So if you get yourself in trouble, you take more money than you need, you graduate, you don’t pay it back, and this loan is growing and growing and growing, you’re going to be stuck with it.

But if you are simply responsible, which means only take out the amount of loans that you need to go to school. If somebody’s giving you more, say no. While you’re in school, meet with an advisor, talk with an advisor, and figure out: is there a way for you to be paying back this student loan while you’re in school so that when you graduate, it is very possible you won’t owe more than what you took out?

And when you finally do graduate, you need to make a promise to yourself that your number-one bill that you will pay each and every month is your student loan payment. If you can just do that, at the end, you’re going to be seriously happy with this investment that you made in yourself.