Suze Orman’s 2025 Suze School Commencement Address (and more)

Now listen, over the past few weeks all over the United States, students are graduating and they're listening to all these esteemed speakers give the commencement address that hopefully will inspire them to make the most of their lives. Now what's so wonderful in my own life is I've had the incredible pleasure and honor of doing that 3 times, and it's really something to stand up there and look

out at the future of America. But then I was thinking if I was to give a commencement speech honoring my Suze students, those of you who have been with me for all these years, what would I say? What would the message be? What would I want you to take away from it? So therefore please take your seat because today's Suze School is about celebrating the milestones you've already achieved and charting the next exciting chapter of your financial life.

You know, so many of you have navigated careers. You've raised families, weathered a real estate and stock market crash, and you've made it through a pandemic, illness, deaths, layoffs, and divorce. No matter what you have encountered, it is these real life experiences that have made up your life's story of who you are. Now this is important because your story is powerful because it's lived, it's not imagined.

No matter what situation you are dealing with, your path has to be one where you respect yourself, like yourself, and honor yourself, and it is from that inner platform of honor and respect that integrity and self-worth emerges and the ability for you to be able to accomplish anything and everything your heart desires. You must never forget what you have learned and what you have already been through in your life, your future, regardless of your age, doesn't slow down.

Listen, you may face job shifts, health issues, or caregiving responsibilities, and you are going to have to adapt and conquer each and every challenge. The most important thing is that you must never forget that no matter what situation you are in, no matter how painful, how seemingly hopeless, I want you to always remember. God does not know how to take. He only knows how to give.

For those of you who have been with me over all these years, I want you to know that when I read your emails, my heart and eyes fill with tears of joy and pride. One story after another, and I just want you all to know that I'm in total awe of your journeys and determination from overcoming living in a car with your family for years. Surviving seriously abusive relationships where you endured physical, sexual, mental, and most of all financial abuse, surviving life threatening accidents

and illnesses, and on and on. And today you are all thriving emotionally and financially. It's a true miracle if you think about it. And what were those key lessons that helped carry you during your hard times? Well, you believed that you are a warrior and you will not turn your back on the battlefield. You understood that when you undervalue what you do, the world undervalues who you are. And even more importantly when you undervalue who you are, the world undervalues what you do.

So you took your power and you now trust yourself more than you trust others, and you embrace the fact that what happens to your money directly affects the quality of your life, no one else's. And really when I think about it, the most important one of all is you stood in your truth and took all the actions necessary so that you now own

the power to control your destiny. So, in closing, as you all know, we live in very disturbing times, times that many of us have a hard time understanding, and you are not alone. But I want all of you to know you are far stronger than you have any idea. No matter what happens, you must always come from a place of integrity, love, honesty, and strength, and through your actions and intentions you will make this world a better place. Do you hear me?

This is your moment. Step into it with confidence, intention, and heart. Build a life and a financial foundation that reflects your highest values. Remember that success is not a destination, but a journey defined by purpose, balance, and generosity. I believe in you. I know you have what it takes to create a future that's not just successful but deeply meaningful. Thank you for letting me be part of your journey and to the millions of you who have and are a part of mine.

So before you march into your future, can we just take a brief look back at the month of May and what we should have learned from it? Do you remember this a month ago? Do you all remember how you were feeling? You thought the sky was falling. You thought everything was going to come down. You wanted to take all your money out of the stock market. You wanted to get out of treasuries. You didn't trust treasuries. You didn't know what to do with your money. You

were so paralyzed it wasn't even funny. You only felt safe with the cash you had if it was under your mattress. Many of you absolutely chastised me for talking about bitcoin. And you just were totally, totally upset. All right, if we take a look at the stock market, I just want you to think about what I'm about to say. Do you know that the stock market just wrapped up

a really strong month of May. Now, despite a few obviously ups and downs, the S&;P 500 and the NASDAQ ended the month in the green. In fact, May, listen to me closely now, delivered the best returns that we've seen since 2023. So can you imagine that if one month ago you took all your money out you felt good for those few days as the market went down further after you sold and then all of a sudden it started to go up and started to go up. And you were like, why did I sell? What did

I do? The lesson here is if you are invested in the stock market, stay invested in the stock market as long as you know what you are invested in is good quality. It makes sense, and you have at least 5 years or longer till you need the money that is in that investment. So your instructions really are, just continue to dollar cost average into whatever you have, or if you're done dollar cost averaging into it, just hold it. Cause if you had sold it, most likely you would

have made a serious mistake. Take Palantair, for example, went from 125 all the way down to the 70s and now as of Friday it closed at 1:31. I know I keep talking about Palantair, but that really is one of the favorite stocks that we all own hopefully. But if you had freaked out, look at what you would have missed, you know, the other day I was talking to a friend, and she was in a car and her husband was driving.

And I had told the husband I thought that he should buy IONQ, which is a stock that I've been telling all of you along with Keith, but I've been telling all of you a long time ago you should buy it and you should just keep it. Never told you that you should sell it. All right. And IONQ had a dramatic leap last week. One day it was up like 30% or 40%. And so, as I'm talking to my friend, her husband is listening, and he says, by the way, Suze, I'm thinking about selling IONQ.

And I said, and why would you do that? And he said, Because it's up so much and it's starting to go down, and that is the typical mistake that everybody makes. Yeah, hopefully it will go down. And why do I say hopefully? Because it's a great stock. It's an area quantum computing that many of you may want to be in. And if it goes down that simply gives you a chance to dollar cost average and get more shares just

that simple. So you need to look at your investments, not as if your strategy should be take your profits now in case they go down. Your strategy should be hopefully they'll go down so you can buy more. Just that simple, everybody. So again, your goal is to be an investor and to take a line from Keith Fitzgerald. You have to be in it to win it. Let's

talk about real estate for a second here. Real estate now, it's a very interesting thing what's happening in real estate because the inventory, the houses that are for sale. Are up dramatically seriously. So when there is a lot of inventory, what that means is that all of a sudden we're kind of turning from a seller's market to a buyer's market. So what's important about that is if you are a seller, don't overprice, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, because chances are you will not sell it.

If you're a buyer, however, do not stretch your budget just to get a home. You don't have to. Mortgage rates now are at about 7%, and they may very well stay there. And if they do come down, I would not expect them to go any lower than 6 or 5.5%. And if they got to 5.5%, that would be very lucky. So this is the area that you're in. Don't overstretch your budget. You can demand what you want.

You can negotiate your price. You can't walk into a situation with the mindset of what was going on many, many months ago and really for the past few years that you have to overbid it. You have to do a cash offer. You have to do all these things. No, you don't. The tide has turned there, so take your power if you are a buyer. And again, if you are a seller, don't feel that you're the almighty right now, cause really don't overprice or you are not going to sell your house.

I want to talk about treasuries just for a few seconds here. Treasuries are not going to go under. They're just not. They can't and they won't. So don't feel like everything is going down the drain. Interest rates are up on treasuries. Why? Because of what's happening with the tariffs. It's just that simple. And once again we saw a flip flop from we're lowering tariffs to now we're raising them even more.

And you have to understand that as long as there are chaotic, in my opinion, nonsensible moves with tariffs, the markets are going to respond accordingly.

They're gonna go down when in fact tariffs are raised when tariffs then are supposedly going to come down, the markets will go up, but there could come a time where all of you just stop listening to what tariffs are doing and you just go ahead and keep buying the stocks that you want and the markets just get used to the chaotic moves that are being made. So therefore just tune everybody out at this moment in time.

Know that the market, as I told you a few weeks ago, might go down a week or two, and it did, and then I thought it would go up and up, and I still do. That doesn't mean that it's not going to be a roller coaster. But just like you were when you were a kid, you enjoyed the ups and downs of the roller coaster. Start to enjoy the ups and downs of the stock market. So that you can take advantage of stocks that you want, ETFs that you want, investments that you want.

I just want to talk briefly about Bitcoin. So Bitcoin passed $111,000 of Bitcoin. That is a big deal. Bitcoin right now is at about $104,000 so who knows where it will be when this podcast actually drops or you're listening to it. I still like if you're going to buy into the Bitcoin investment arena. That you do it through either IBIT, an ETF or possibly a surrogate of Bitcoin, the stock MSTR - Strategies. Either way, why is that?

Let's just look at Coinbase for a second because many of you own your Bitcoin at Coinbase, and what was interesting is that this last month Coinbase told all of us that they had been the target of a cyber attack in which rogue overseas support agents were bribed to steal sensitive customer data. So what does that mean? That means through insiders at Coinbase. They were able to steal customer names, Social Security numbers, bank account details, and transaction histories, but no passwords or

private keys or custodial funds were compromised. Now they wanted a $20 million ransom. Coinbase still has not settled for that. They're holding strong. But there's just something. Even though only 1% of the customers were affected, there's just something that I don't like about it. So therefore I feel safer in IBIT. I feel safer with Strategies. I just feel safer where these crazy people aren't going to attack something where they know Bitcoin happens to be.

I mean, you got to think it's a little bit crazy that this guy in New York City who owns all this bitcoin or crypto all of a sudden is hold hostage for 17 days in order to get his password so that his Bitcoin can be stolen. Thank God he escaped and hopefully they have that under consideration.

But I just want you to think about that where you hold your bitcoin and how you invest in it and still know only invest in Bitcoin with money that you can afford to lose or be very volatile with or that you can stomach 20 or 30% drops overnight just same. But overall, the main message here as you walk forward is to be an investor, not a trader, to know what in fact you are investing in and to be consistent with it if you have money to dollar cost average into it.

At these levels, this is not a market in my opinion that if you had, you know, $24,000 to invest you would invest it all at once. No, you would dollar cost average or value cost average into it at maybe $2000 a month or even $1000 a month and just go with the market as the markets go themselves. So overall stop panicking. Learn from what happened last month when you all wanted out, and now many of you who got out are all wishing you could get back in. And now you're getting

in if you do at a lot higher price. So that is your update. That was your Suze School and until Thursday when Miss Travis joins us again, there's really only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to money. People first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe and for the graduates of 2025, congratulations.