This 75-Year-Old Millionaire Says She Would ‘Drop Dead’ Before She Bought a Morning Coffee. Here’s Why.
She also avoids dining out as much as possible, relying instead on home-cooked meals.
Key Takeaways
- Author and host Suze Orman is reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.
- However, she refuses to routinely spend money on dining out and beverages, especially coffee.
- She noted that money spent on coffee each month could instead go into a Roth IRA.
Suze Orman has spent the past few decades urging Americans to save more and invest wisely. The best-selling author and longtime TV and podcast host has also amassed a fortune of her own, reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.
Despite her financial success, she has repeatedly spoken out about one everyday expense: buying food and beverages, especially coffee.
The 75-year-old millionaire has said she won’t spend money at coffee shops. Instead, she chooses to make her own brew at home.
“I do Cafe Bustelo coffee every morning,” she told The Wall Street Journal in 2024. “I would drop dead before I bought a coffee — I do one cup a day and that’s it.”
Orman said that repeated small purchases can add up over time. She noted that money spent on coffee each month could instead go into an investment account, such as a Roth IRA.
Orman broke down the math: If someone spends around $100 on coffee each month and instead put that money into a Roth IRA, the funds would grow to around $1 million after 40 years.
“You need to think about it as: You are peeing $1 million down the drain as you are drinking that coffee,” Orman said to CNBC in 2019. “Do you really want to do that? No.”
She told the outlet that she would never buy a cup of coffee, despite being able to afford it, because she would “not insult” herself “by wasting money that way.” Takeout coffee is a “want,” not a “need,” she added.
Extending that philosophy to food
In a more recent interview with the Journal, published earlier this week, Orman called eating out one of the biggest wastes of money.
“We still to this day eat at home,” Orman said in the interview, noting that her wife, television producer Kathy Travis, had prepared congee rice for lunch and meatloaf for dinner that day. The two of them sometimes eat at restaurants, but not because they want to. They view eating at restaurants as a way to meet friends and catch up. Orman added that she still worries about how the restaurant bill could impact her friends, and routinely pays for dinner.
“If we go out to eat, the deal is we have to pay because I am not going to let people, who I know don’t have the kind of money that we have, waste their money on food eating out,” she said.
Orman’s aversion to dining out may resonate even more now that restaurant meals have become noticeably pricier. From December 2024 through December 2025, the cost of “food away from home,” the category that includes restaurant and takeout meals, rose 4.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That outpaced both the 2.4% increase in grocery prices and the 2.7% rise in consumer prices overall during the same period.
“Look up McDonald’s. Look up Taco Bell. Are you kidding me? $23, $30 just to go to McDonald’s for whatever you eat there,” Orman said.
Key Takeaways
- Author and host Suze Orman is reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.
- However, she refuses to routinely spend money on dining out and beverages, especially coffee.
- She noted that money spent on coffee each month could instead go into a Roth IRA.
Suze Orman has spent the past few decades urging Americans to save more and invest wisely. The best-selling author and longtime TV and podcast host has also amassed a fortune of her own, reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.
Despite her financial success, she has repeatedly spoken out about one everyday expense: buying food and beverages, especially coffee.
The 75-year-old millionaire has said she won’t spend money at coffee shops. Instead, she chooses to make her own brew at home.
