# Classic Suze School: The Biggest Mistakes You Make as an Investor

An episode of [Suze Orman's Women & Money (And Everyone Smart Enough To Listen)](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439621652), 13 Aug 2026, 20 min.

Audio: https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2df1102a-5761-4c99-b489-aabd0161f8fe/44e0936e-923c-43c7-9e2a-aade00edf4d3/cab5ca90-0cf3-4dd6-b017-b4a4017d1b4a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=4e05fb00-5a5b-4ed9-b353-aade00edf4dd

For this Classic Suze School episode, think about when you invest. Do you focus more on what you lost? Are you investing all at once? Are you investing out of fear? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then Suze has the rules of the road you need to avoid making the biggest mistakes you could make, as an investor. Learn more about the Ultimate Scam Protection here: SuzeOrman.com Watch Suze’s YouTube Channel Jumpstart financial wellness for your employees: https://bit.ly/SecureSave Protect your financial future with the Must Have Docs: https://bit.ly/3Vq1V3G Help with the Must Have Docs: • Email:support@musthavedocuments.zendesk.com • Phone: 888-510-0510 Get your savings going with Alliant Credit Union: https://bit.ly/3rg0Yio Get Suze’s special offers for podcast listeners at suzeorman.com/offer Join Suze’s Women & Money Community for FREE and ASK SUZE your questions which may just end up on the podcast. Download the app by following one of these links: CLICK HERE FOR APPLE: https://apple.co/2KcAHbH CLICK HERE FOR GOOGLE PLAY: https://bit.ly/3curfMI See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:09] Robert: August 13th, 2026. Welcome to the Women and Money podcast
[0:13] Robert: as well as everyone smart enough to listen. Hi everybody,
[0:16] Robert: it's Robert, the producer here, and for today's classic Suze School,
[0:20] Robert: we're gonna go back a couple of summers ago and
[0:23] Robert: play you the main lesson about the biggest mistakes you
[0:26] Robert: may be making when you invest. Enjoy.
[0:34] Suze: So, I was thinking to myself, as many of you
[0:38] Suze: were sending me emails, and I was realizing that so
[0:43] Suze: many of you are making serious mistakes when it comes
[0:49] Suze: to investing your money.
[0:53] Suze: Let me tell you what I think are the biggest
[0:56] Suze: mistakes that you make as an investor.
[1:02] Suze: Your first one, seriously, is you look at what you had,
[1:08] Suze: not at what you have.
[1:11] Suze: Write that down.
[1:14] Suze: What do I mean by that?
[1:17] Suze: So, you have a stock that you bought, maybe you
[1:20] Suze: bought 100 shares, maybe 10 shares, maybe 1,000 shares, and
[1:24] Suze: you bought it at $30 a share.
[1:28] Suze: And now that stock, it is all of a sudden
[1:33] Suze: at $110 a share a year or two later and
[1:40] Suze: you are feeling brilliant you are feeling happy and you
[1:44] Suze: are absolutely calculating how much money, that stock has made you.
[1:51] Suze: First of all, a stock doesn't make you money until
[1:55] Suze: you've sold it, OK?
[1:57] Suze: But now it's going down and down, and now it's
[2:02] Suze: at $90 a share.
[2:06] Suze: And you're thinking to yourself, oh my God, I've lost money.
[2:11] Suze: Now you're upset because it's no longer in the $100 area,
[2:15] Suze: now it's in the $90 area.
[2:18] Suze: What you're not thinking about is you still have tripled
[2:22] Suze: your money. You bought that stock at 30.
[2:27] Suze: You didn't buy that stock at 100 something, you bought
[2:30] Suze: it at 30, so you still have a tremendous gain
[2:36] Suze: on your money.
[2:39] Suze: You have to look at what you have, not at
[2:42] Suze: what you had.
[2:44] Suze: You can't look at the gains you had and think
[2:47] Suze: of them as losses. You need to think as a
[2:52] Suze: stock that is a great stock or ETF that's declining.
[2:56] Suze: You can't look at it as a loss. You have
[3:00] Suze: to look at it as a gain.
[3:03] Suze: Again from your original entry point into that stock or ETF.
[3:12] Suze: Now it's possible that you bought it when it was
[3:15] Suze: above 100, and now it's down to 90 to 80.
[3:22] Suze: Now you're looking at losses there.
[3:26] Suze: But then chances are you made the second mistake, and
[3:32] Suze: the second biggest mistake is you don't dollar cost average.
[3:39] Suze: You just don't. You take all of your investment money
[3:43] Suze: that you have, and you buy something, and let's say
[3:47] Suze: you buy it at 100 now.
[3:50] Suze: All of your money is in that stock. You don't
[3:53] Suze: have any more money to put in that stock, and
[3:56] Suze: now it's down at 90, 80, maybe even 70.
[4:03] Suze: It's a great stock, but it's going down.
[4:07] Suze: You don't have the money to now buy it as
[4:10] Suze: it's going down, biggest mistake you will ever make.
[4:16] Suze: Dollar cost averaging, because many of you asked me this,
[4:20] Suze: is what is dollar cost averaging that Suze has always
[4:24] Suze: talked about?
[4:26] Suze: Let me give you an example. All of you, whether
[4:30] Suze: you know it or not, you are dollar cost averaging
[4:34] Suze: in your employer plans. You know, every single month when
[4:39] Suze: you have money taken out of your paycheck and they
[4:41] Suze: put it into your 401k, 403B, or TSP.
[4:46] Suze: No matter where the market is, the money's going in,
[4:51] Suze: and if the market's down, or if your stocks or
[4:53] Suze: mutual funds are down, your dollars buy more shares. If
[4:58] Suze: the markets are up, your dollars, cause it's always the
[5:01] Suze: same amount every month that's taken out, your dollars will
[5:04] Suze: buy less shares. But over time, your dollars that you've
[5:11] Suze: been purchasing with, the price has been averaged over time.
[5:17] Suze: And so has the amount of shares that you've been purchasing.
[5:21] Suze: So let me give you an example. There's two people.
[5:25] Suze: The very first person has $12,000 that they want to
[5:31] Suze: invest all at once. They love this stock. They are
[5:34] Suze: convinced that it's going up, and therefore they wanna buy
[5:38] Suze: it now.
[5:40] Suze: So, they take all $12,000 and buy this stock that's
[5:45] Suze: $10 a share, so they were able to buy 1,200 shares.
[5:51] Suze: That's what's called lump sum investing, where you take a
[5:55] Suze: lump sum of money, you invest it in something, and
[6:00] Suze: that's it. You don't have any more money to put
[6:02] Suze: in it. All right.
[6:03] Suze: The second person is smart because they've been listening to
[6:07] Suze: the Women and Money podcast, and they've been listening to
[6:09] Suze: me for almost 40 years now, and they've heard me
[6:13] Suze: say the number one rule of investing is dollar cost averaging.
[6:20] Suze: So they decide they also have $12,000 to invest, they're
[6:26] Suze: going to invest it over a year, every 3 months.
[6:32] Suze: Or when it makes sense when the stock moves up
[6:35] Suze: or down, they're going to invest $3,000 at a time.
[6:41] Suze: So, they invest $3,000 when it's at $10 a share,
[6:46] Suze: and they're able to buy 300 shares. Now, all of
[6:51] Suze: a sudden, this was an aggressive stock, it dropped considerably.
[6:57] Suze: And it dropped down to $8 a share.
[7:02] Suze: Now they're smart, so they take another $3,000.
[7:07] Suze: And they buy it at $8 a share, which allows
[7:11] Suze: them to buy 375 shares.
[7:16] Suze: Now the stock starts to turn around.
[7:19] Suze: And they see that it's up at 9, maybe it's
[7:23] Suze: gonna start to go up again.
[7:26] Suze: And here we are almost 3/4 of the way through
[7:29] Suze: the year at this time.
[7:32] Suze: And so, therefore, they take another $3,000 they buy it
[7:37] Suze: again at $9 a share.
[7:40] Suze: And this time they're buying 333 shares. Now, here we
[7:45] Suze: are at the end of the year, and guess what?
[7:48] Suze: It's back at 10.
[7:50] Suze: And so they take their last $3,000 and they invest it,
[7:54] Suze: and they're able to buy 300 shares. Now over that year,
[8:01] Suze: as the stock went down, you saw they were able
[8:05] Suze: to buy more shares. Then when they first did it,
[8:09] Suze: their first purchase, they were able to buy 300 shares,
[8:12] Suze: then they bought 375, then 333, and then again 300.
[8:18] Suze: So after a year, they had accumulated 1,308 shares.
[8:27] Suze: The first person, had 1,200 shares. Remember, they had $12,000.
[8:36] Suze: They invested it all at once. It was at $10
[8:39] Suze: a share.
[8:41] Suze: So they were able to buy 1,200 shares.
[8:46] Suze: Here we are a year later. The first person has
[8:51] Suze: now just broken even. They still have 1,200 shares. The
[8:56] Suze: stock is at 10, so their investment is back to
[9:00] Suze: $12,000 where they were one year ago.
[9:04] Suze: The second person, by dollar cost averaging in this example, has
[9:12] Suze: 1,308 shares. It's back at $10 a share. So now
[9:18] Suze: their $12,000 investment is worth $13,080. They are up $1,080
[9:29] Suze: above what the first person is up.
[9:34] Suze: That is an example of dollar cost averaging.
[9:40] Suze: So, the biggest mistake, one of them, that you make
[9:44] Suze: is when you make an investment, and you invest all
[9:49] Suze: the money that you have, and you don't have anything
[9:53] Suze: else to put in or take advantage of it when
[9:56] Suze: it goes down. Some of these stocks that went down
[10:00] Suze: dramatically this last week.
[10:05] Suze: Hopefully you were smart enough to dollar cost average into them.
[10:11] Suze: So, it's just something I really want you to do.
[10:16] Suze: The next mistake that you make is that you are
[10:20] Suze: an all or nothing investor. For some reason, you don't
[10:26] Suze: feel like the concept of dollar cost averaging is something
[10:30] Suze: that you can do. So you either do something with
[10:33] Suze: all of your money.
[10:35] Suze: Or you do absolutely nothing at all. The key to
[10:40] Suze: successful investing is do something with small amounts of money
[10:46] Suze: if you are afraid, but just keep doing it. So
[10:51] Suze: you need to look at what you have, not at
[10:54] Suze: what you had.
[10:56] Suze: So don't look at stocks as to what they were.
[10:59] Suze: Look at stocks to what they are. What are they
[11:02] Suze: right now? What have you in your account so that
[11:06] Suze: you can buy more?
[11:09] Suze: Right? You have to dollar cost average. You can't be
[11:12] Suze: an all or nothing investor.
[11:16] Suze: And you cannot let fear rule your emotions.
[11:22] Suze: Biggest mistake you will ever make if you look at
[11:26] Suze: your portfolio or any of your stocks and you are afraid,
[11:32] Suze: but yet you know that their good quality, good management,
[11:38] Suze: everything is on its side, it just got obliterated.
[11:44] Suze: For a while, go away and don't look, OK? 'Cause if
[11:51] Suze: you come from a place of fear,
[11:55] Suze: I promise you, you will make the biggest mistake of
[12:00] Suze: your life. Now, I just want to tell you a
[12:02] Suze: little bit of a Suze Story for a second, as
[12:06] Suze: to where did I learn about fear.
[12:11] Suze: And I learned about it when I was a stockbroker
[12:14] Suze: at Merrill Lynch back in 1980, 1981, back then.
[12:20] Suze: When you're a stockbroker, you have a book, meaning all
[12:23] Suze: of your clients were your book. Each one had one
[12:28] Suze: piece of paper in this book that showed me what
[12:31] Suze: they bought, how much they bought at, when they sold,
[12:35] Suze: or whatever it may be.
[12:38] Suze: So I was very much in touch with what every
[12:42] Suze: client I had was doing, cause I had to literally
[12:46] Suze: make a physical entry to keep track of their buys
[12:52] Suze: and their sells for them. This was the day before computers.
[12:57] Suze: And I started to notice that I had a group
[13:04] Suze: of people that always made money.
[13:08] Suze: And then I had another group of people that always
[13:13] Suze: lost money. And I wonder why that was because you
[13:21] Suze: see back then, when you liked a stock, like XYZ stock,
[13:28] Suze: you would call all your clients and tell them to
[13:32] Suze: buy it, and let's say they would buy it at
[13:34] Suze: $30 a share.
[13:36] Suze: And undoubtedly sometimes the stocks would go straight up, but
[13:40] Suze: a lot of times they would go from 30 down
[13:43] Suze: to 25, maybe back up to 30, but a lot
[13:47] Suze: of times after we purchased a stock it went down
[13:50] Suze: at first.
[13:53] Suze: So I decided to call all the clients because I
[13:57] Suze: noticed that the clients that always lost money. When the
[14:03] Suze: stock went from, let's say 30 to 25, they sold.
[14:06] Suze: They would call me and say, just sell the stock.
[14:09] Suze: All the clients that made money. I never heard from them.
[14:15] Suze: They were fine that it went down.
[14:17] Suze: So when I called them, I said to them, how
[14:21] Suze: did you feel when I asked you to buy the
[14:26] Suze: stock X Y Z?
[14:28] Suze: And they said to me, I liked the idea. It
[14:32] Suze: made sense, and I knew in the long run we
[14:35] Suze: would make money. I said, So you felt secure about it.
[14:38] Suze: You weren't afraid. And they said, Yeah. I said, OK,
[14:41] Suze: just wondering. Then I called all the people who had
[14:46] Suze: lost money and I asked them how did you feel
[14:51] Suze: when I asked you to buy that stock.
[14:55] Suze: And they said, well, truthfully, Suze, I was afraid. I
[14:59] Suze: didn't really want to buy it. I, I was afraid.
[15:02] Suze: And I said, well, why did you buy it then?
[15:05] Suze: And they said, because you told us to, and we
[15:09] Suze: thought it was a good idea, but still it just
[15:12] Suze: didn't quite feel right.
[15:16] Suze: And then I realized, oh my God, as I looked
[15:20] Suze: at all the transaction of all the clients I had,
[15:25] Suze: those that purchased things out of fear.
[15:29] Suze: And then they were afraid, obviously even more when the
[15:32] Suze: stock went down, those were the people that always lost money,
[15:38] Suze: cause they were out of the stock when the stock
[15:41] Suze: eventually came back.
[15:43] Suze: Because once you sell, you don't go back in, you're out.
[15:47] Suze: All the people that consistently made money, never sold because
[15:52] Suze: they weren't afraid.
[15:55] Suze: When they bought it, so do you understand that one
[16:00] Suze: of the biggest mistakes you can make is when fear
[16:05] Suze: rules your emotions in anything in your life.
[16:12] Suze: So you have to be very clear in knowing why
[16:17] Suze: you are investing in something.
[16:21] Suze: And are you afraid? Like, do you even go into
[16:24] Suze: that investment, and you're even afraid to go into that
[16:28] Suze: investment to begin with. If you are, don't do it.
[16:35] Suze: 'Cause I promise you, if you do it, when it
[16:38] Suze: goes down, you will sell at a loss and then
[16:42] Suze: it skyrockets back, but you're no longer in the stock.
[16:47] Suze: So before you buy anything,
[16:51] Suze: you have got to ask yourself the question, how do
[16:54] Suze: you feel about what you're about to do if you
[16:58] Suze: have doubts, if you have fear, just don't do it,
[17:03] Suze: because once you do something, it's already done. There's time
[17:07] Suze: to do things always, so you need to do something
[17:12] Suze: from a place of strength, not from a place of fear.
[17:19] Suze: Did that make sense to you? Now, I will say
[17:25] Suze: that those four rules of the road when it comes
[17:29] Suze: to investing, can honest to God turn your losses into gains,
[17:36] Suze: turn you into a much, much better investor.
[17:41] Suze: A wiser investor, an investor that makes money versus an
[17:47] Suze: investor that loses money.
[17:51] Suze: In summary, you are to look at what you have,
[17:55] Suze: not at what you had.
[17:58] Suze: You are to always dollar cost average.
[18:02] Suze: You are not to be an all or nothing investor.
[18:07] Suze: You can try things out, but as long as you
[18:11] Suze: feel secure about it, just that simple, everybody, if you
[18:17] Suze: just put those rules in effect.
[18:21] Suze: In the long run, over one year, over two, maybe
[18:26] Suze: over three, you will be very, very happy. Now, obviously
[18:31] Suze: with all of those is the knowledge that what you're
[18:35] Suze: investing in is something that's needed, that has certain elements
[18:42] Suze: to it. It's something that everybody wants, so you just
[18:46] Suze: can't do those rules with stocks that are not good.
[18:50] Suze: You do it with stocks that are.
[18:55] Suze: And until KT joins us for another Ask KT and
[18:58] Suze: Suze Anything, there's only one thing that I want you
[19:02] Suze: to remember when it comes to your money, and it
[19:04] Suze: is this people first, then money, then things. Now you
[19:09] Suze: stay safe and healthy, and if you do, you will
[19:13] Suze: be unstoppable.

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