Suze sounds off

Globe Investor Magazine, May 22, 2008

I'm curious. Who is your mentor?

No one. My mentoring comes from the problems that have come my way. I have watched how their lives turn around or how their lives go down the drain because they didn't want to change. These people are my mentors because they are real.

What is the best financial decision you ever made?

The first time I had money, I paid off the mortgage on my home in Oakland. When I paid it off - and this is before I had written, you know, books or anything like that -- I owned my home outright, I felt secure. When I felt secure, I felt more powerful. When I felt more powerful, more people were attracted to me. And then everything was great. Did that make sense?

Complete sense.

Because I knew what it felt like to almost lose my home, I knew what it was like to have serious credit card debt and to wipe my 401K plan clean.

What was your worst financial decision?

My worst financial decision was probably taking money out of my 401K plan, to impress other people. To buy a Cartier watch to impress someone I was going out with at the time. And then I think about the stocks and the things that money was invested in . How many millions of dollars that would be today.

You and your life partner Kathy Travis have accumulated a lot, but you have voiced concerns that if anything happens to you, you will lose half your estate. So why don't you just move to Canada? We recognize same-sex marriages.

(Laughing) Well, here is the thing. I have just taken out a serious 10-year term life insurance policy so that if, God forbid, I was to die first, K.T. is okay. The reason that I only did a 10-year policy is that if the United States does not have its act together within 10 years, citizens like me have no choice but to give up my United States citizenship. And don't think that I won't literally do something like that. I most certainly will. People always say to me, "Why are you building such a huge compound in South Africa? Why is it you have kept all of that money over in South Africa? And it [same-sex marriage] is legal in South Africa. Think about that. What do you think about a country that just got its footing in 1994 and is more progressive than the United States of America. Shame on you, United States of America. Shame on you. They need to give us the same economic right that any heterosexual couple has. If that is what it is going to take to make a statement here in the Untied States, you betcha I will.

I understand that you just bought some real estate. Where?

New York City. Another place in New York. But I'm not looking to invest in real estate in the United States. I look to buy real estate here to buy homes for myself. My investment real estate is all in South Africa. And if you think people made great money here in the States on real estate, it is bupkis compared to if you had started investing in South Africa in 2000. I'm telling you, South Africa is something else. The stock market is up more than 200 per cent over the past four years.

Journalists have estimated your net worth: $25 million plus $7 million in real estate, and only $1 million in the stock market. You took some flak for how little was in the market.

It's now $3 million in the stock market.

Where is the rest of your money?

Zero coupon municipal bonds.

How are those bonds doing now?

I still, on 99 per cent of my money, am making 5 per cent tax-free. If you converted that to a taxable rate in the market, that's like 8 per cent. So why risk your money when you can do that? All I care about is the yield. They will all be held to maturity. What's funny is even though I am often asked here what I have in the market here, nobody ever asks me, "What do you have in China?" Because I actually have money overseas.

Ok, I'll bite, what do you own overseas?

For me its very different - I'm at a different level than a normal investor. I had a serious amount of money in a merchant bank (Chinavest) in Shanghai, and real estate in South Africa. And I put money in the stock market with a few gold stocks in south Africa itself in rands.

Any other international names?

Goldfields, was one, and I still own that. Goldfields was my favourite play. I also like ETFs that are overseas: the "EEM" [iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF], "GAF" [SPDR and S&P Emerging Middle East and Africa ETF], etc.

Suze, thank you so much.

You got it, girlfriend