Suze Orman is well known for her best-selling personal-finance books, in which she takes a motivational, emotionally-centered approach to money management. PBS's DVD of The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life essentially places viewers in the audience of one of Orman's public speaking engagements, as she presents her five "laws of money" to a live audience.

Suze Orman's The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life is a program that seems on the surface to have a universal relevance, but in fact is most suited to people who are relatively inexperienced with handling money, or especially who lack confidence and don't know how to get started on a better path.

The general tenor of Orman's approach, laid out in her hour-long presentation, is apparent in the names of her five "laws of money": "Truth Creates Money, Lies Destroy It"; "Look at What You Have, Not at What You Had"; "Do What Is Right for You Before You Do What Is Right for Your Money"; "Invest in the Known Before the Unknown"; and "Always Remember: Money Has No Power of Its Own." These are very general statements, with a tendency to veer into self-help-style emotionally-based advice. In fairness, though, Orman's pitch throughout the program is fairly practical, considering an audience of well-intentioned but inexperienced and confused people. (In all honesty, that describes a lot larger segment of the population than most people would like to admit.) Her five "laws" sound a bit too new-agey when stated by themselves, but her explanation of how these apply in practice is usually sensible. For instance, she elaborates on "Truth Creates Money, Lies Destroy It" by saying that if you spend more than you can afford, you're not being true to yourself. That's a pretty roundabout way to say "live within your means," but at least it makes sense.

Orman injects a lot of energy into her presentation, which is quite lively even though it's entirely made up of her talking. It's clear that she feels a rapport with her audience, and she often gets a laugh out of them. This tends to support her motivational message, which suggests that she, a former waitress, is just like her audience, and so her audience can become more like her, and handle their money with confidence.

Orman is clearly best when she sticks with fundamentals and with motivation, as when she explains in "Invest in the Known Before the Unknown" that paying off credit card debt and building an emergency fund should take precedence over investing in the stock market. Where she tends to veer into dubious territory is in specific investment advice. For instance, she starts off "Focus on What You Have, Not What You Had" with the sensible advice to evaluate whether or not to keep an investment that's declined in value by asking yourself whether you'd buy it now if you had the cash. That's good advice.. but she follows this up by suggesting that you rate your investments from one to five by a "fear factor" of how much you worry about them, and sell them off accordingly: for a "fear factor" of 2, sell 25%, for a fear factor of 3 sell 50%, and so on. While personal levels of risk tolerance are certainly important to consider when making investments, I'm hesitant to endorse a money management strategy that relies purely on emotional rather than rational factors. Orman also fails to point out that risk is inherent in all financial dealings: she focuses exclusively on one type of risk, which is risk of loss, but on the other end of the spectrum there is the risk of not achieving your goals (including the most basic one of outpacing inflation). There's no way to escape risk, only to manage it, a concept that I think she's sidestepping here.

Orman also makes a few factual blunders, which aren't a big deal in the larger context of the program, but that did make me wince. At the opening of the program, she makes a big fuss about how investing today is very different than twenty or fifty years ago. Well, this is true, but not in the way she says that it is. Orman paints a picture of our grandparents happily investing in a single stock or two, and sitting back and letting them go up in value, contrasted with today's ups and downs combined with mismanagement and stock market scandals. Uhhh... Suze, have you ever heard of this little problem called the "1929 stock market crash"? Investing was no safer in our grandparents' day than it is now... in fact, probably a lot less safe. The main difference, which she doesn't mention, is that fifty years ago the general public didn't get involved with investing the way it does now.

There are other points that make me wonder how much Orman really understands investing. She refers several times to the Nasdaq as something that "controls" the stock market; it's not. The Nasdaq, like the Dow and the S&P 500, is a stock market "index" that indicates, in a single number, how well a whole bunch of different companies (in this case, technology-based companies) are doing. The Nasdaq doesn't control the stock market any more than a measuring tape controls how much your four-year-old daughter has grown since her last birthday. Another oddity comes when she refers to the "double taxation" of loans that you can take out of your 401k plan. While it's a common misconception that you end up paying taxes twice on a loan from a 401k, it's not actually true, and I'm disappointed that Orman would make the mistake.

When it comes to investing, I am hesitant as well about her emphasis on "feel good" methods of making decisions. Not once did I hear Orman recommend that people go out and learn more actual facts to make a decision. Instead, she encourages viewers to get in touch with their feelings about money, and to feel empowered – all well and good – but follows that up by suggesting that this empowerment will lead to making correct decisions. Sorry, but while feeling good about yourself can certainly lead to more positive results than feeling powerless, it doesn't automatically equip you to make better decisions than before.

How does her advice stack up, on the whole? I'd give her full credit for inspiration and motivation, and passing but not outstanding marks for specific money-management advice. Part of my hesitation comes from the fact that she sidesteps the specifics of implementing her advice; in her first law, "Truth Creates Money, Lies Destroy It", she claims that if you are true to yourself and honest about what you can and can't afford, then you don't have to worry about a budget because you will naturally control your spending. This is something that I do agree with in principle, but for the kind of people she's addressing, I suspect that the devil is in the details. The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life ends up being a reasonably effective motivational piece, one that certainly has an encouraging rather than an intimidating tone; if it gets viewers to be motivated to improve their finances and to learn more on their own, it will have done an excellent service.

The DVD

The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life is presented in a nice plastic keepcase, even though it's released by Warner. I'll also take this moment to reassure viewers that Suze Orman does not, in fact, look as ferocious in the program as she does in the truly awful cover photo.

Video

The program is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, as originally filmed. For a program that was filmed live, not in a studio, the image quality is quite good. The picture is clean, with no flaws or noise, and natural-looking colors. Some edge enhancement is visible, and detail is lacking in the occasional long-distance shot, but for the most part the camera sticks close to Orman, and the image quality is quite satisfactory.

Audio

There's not a lot to ask for in a fairly straightforward film version of a lecture, but the Dolby 2.0 soundtrack handles the requirements well. Suze Orman's voice is always clear and clean, with no background noise or distortion at all. Since the experience of watching this DVD is largely just of hearing Orman speak, as she doesn't use any visual aids at all, it's pleasing to find that the DVD handles the audio experience very well.

Extras

One special feature is included, a 19-minute segment in which Orman answers specific questions from audience members. It gives Orman the opportunity to put her five "laws" to work on specific problems, and is worth watching once.

I was annoyed to find that this PBS DVD has an unskippable advertisement from the Lending Tree bank at the start of the program, indicating that the bank provided money to support the program. First of all, since viewers will actually pay for this DVD, they're doing something to support PBS right there, and shouldn't be subjected to advertisements as they are in free broadcast television. Secondly, I was rendered uneasy by seeing sponsorship of PBS programs by companies that might very well have a vested interest in the content of the program. It does detract from my impression of PBS as an organization that is free to present whatever it chooses to.

Final thoughts

For viewers who have their financial act together, there's nothing new in Orman's The Laws of Money, the Lessons of Life, but for anyone who is struggling with debt or just needs a kick in the pants to get on track, then this program offers a motivational message that incorporates some good common sense. Orman's emotionally-based approach isn't perfect, and I wouldn't rely on her for specific investment-related advice, but she does seem to be effective in galvanizing people to start dealing better with their money-related issues. I'll recommend it for viewers who are looking for a starting point on tackling their finances, with the caveat to follow it up with further self-education to fill out the areas where Orman is not as strong.