Suze Orman, the longtime personal finance expert, bestselling author and former host of CNBC’s The Suze Orman Show, remains frugal despite having built a fortune in the tens of millions, particularly when it comes to eating out and buying coffee.
In an Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal “My Monday Morning” interview, Orman said she and her wife still eat at home whenever possible.
“We still to this day eat at home,” she said, according to Fortune, which reported on the interview.
The couple does eat out occasionally, but usually because of social obligations rather than because they want to.
When friends invite them to dinner, Orman said she and her wife insist on paying because she does not want people with less money spending their money on restaurant meals.
“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, according to Fortune.
Moneywise, reporting on the WSJ interview, said Orman continues to view eating out as a waste of money.
“I couldn’t agree with that more if I tried,” Orman said.
Orman said the situation has gotten worse as restaurant prices have risen. “It’s even gotten worse… We still to this day eat at home,” she said.
Orman pointed to fast-food prices as an example. “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,” she said, according to Fortune.
The cost of eating out has also risen faster than the cost of food eaten at home.
Fortune reported that prices for food away from home increased 4.1 percent from December 2024 to December 2025, compared with a 2.4 percent increase for food purchased to eat at home, according to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. Overall consumer prices rose 2.7 percent during the same period.
Orman applies a similar philosophy to coffee. In 2024, she said she drinks Cafe Bustelo at home rather than buying coffee elsewhere.
“I do Cafe Bustelo coffee every morning,” she said. “I would drop dead before I bought a coffee. I do one cup a day and that’s it,” according to Fortune.
Orman has argued that small purchases can add up over time and that the money could instead be invested.
Fortune noted that putting $100 a month toward coffee into a Roth IRA could potentially grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars over several decades.
In a 2019 CNBC interview, Orman made the point more dramatically. “You need to think about it as: You are peeing $1 million down the drain as you are drinking that coffee. Do you really want to do that? No.”
Kevin O’Leary has made a similar argument about everyday spending.
In 2024, he said, “A coffee for five dollars and fifty cents. You go to work, you spend fifteen bucks on a sandwich. What are you, an idiot?” according to Fortune.
O’Leary added, “Most people, particularly working in metropolitan cities, are just starting out their jobs, making the first $60,000, piss away about $15,000 a year on stupid stuff,” according to Fortune.