What Suze Orman Can’t Live Without

Now, obviously, I live on the private island [editor’s note: Orman lives most of the year in the Bahamas], and they’re the only shoes I wear. Literally. You see that little black thing? It’s a little plug (hence the name) in the middle of the ball of the foot that supposedly stimulates your acupuncture points. It grounds you to the earth apparently. I don’t know about that, but they’re just totally comfortable. I will buy five to ten pairs at a time because I’m walking in them, I’m fishing in them, I do everything in them on the island. I’m wearing them right now. When I do an event, I’ll wear a boot, obviously, but 99 percent of the time the only shoe I wear is Pluggz. I actually found them when a friend of mine, who I think was on the board of Pluggz, gave me a pair. I’m pretty sure they were looking for me to talk about them on my TV show, and they sent me like 20 to 30 pairs, and guess what? I loved them. I gave them to all my friends. And that was it.

Whenever I wear it, I am telling you, every single person says, “Can I have some? Where did you get it?” A few years ago, I contributed to Oprah magazine and included this aromatherapy oil as one of my favorite things, and it sold out totally. Even to this day, I still use it. I don’t know what’s in it, but it smells like a mix of amber and vanilla, and that particular oil on my body is the perfect match. I think I actually got it as a tester in a gift bag with a whole bunch of other samples, and nothing else was as good. When I tell you — crazy every time I wear it.

I have trouble with my voice because I have an esophagus that just doesn’t work. My voice has given me a hard time for a long time now, but Evamor water is one of those waters with a naturally high pH of 8.8 to 9.1. It’s not infused and comes from Louisiana right in the United States. If I check into a hotel, they have to have Evamor. If we go to an island, I bring God knows how many cases. It’s the only water I will drink. I believe only in high-pH water, I’ll tell you, because everyone’s body is too acidic. And we have reflux. And esophageal cancer is the No. 1 growing cancer in the United States. So the water you drink — nothing is more important. You can go without food, but you can’t go without water. And you know, our water is killing us. Years ago, I thought, How strange that people spend money to buy water? Now I know. When I have high-alkaline water, it calms my throat and I don’t spasm or cough nearly as much. I wouldn’t say it tastes different, though.

My hair is one of my greatest traits. I cannot tell you how many people write to ask, “Where do you get it cut? Where do you get it colored?” Blah, blah, blah. My hair is incredibly thick and coarse, though, so to smooth it out, especially for television — for high-definition television! — it will go absolutely crazy. But this stuff you can buy at CVS. It’s not expensive at any level, unlike things you can buy that are $80 a tiny bottle. This shampoo keeps my hair absolutely frizzless. That, plus the rinse — fabulous. When I travel now, I can blow out my own hair because of this shampoo. You know how much money I’m saving? I don’t need to travel with a hair person!

My partner K.T. and I are neat freaks, and we have the condo in Florida, and the house on the island, so every night she and I do the dishes. K.T. is not the neatest of cooks, even though she’s a neat freak (though she is an incredible cook). So after I’ve done the dishes, it’s my job to also make sure that all of the floors are okay with the vacuum. With the Dyson, it takes me two seconds! We have a Miele, actually, too, but you have to plug that in and connect the hose, and it’s a whole thing. With the Dyson, I grab it, and BAM, the floors are clean. Nothing drives me crazier than hair on a floor. So after I’ve washed my hair with the Ten, my hair will still come out, so I’ll just grab the Dyson. I love it.

Mary Allan is this woman who has this skin-care line where she goes to Europe and picks the flowers herself. Everything in the line is absolutely natural, and she’s not the kind of person you go and meet in the store and she’s trying to sell you something for $500. She makes the purest, most extraordinary oils for the face. I’m going to be 67 in June, and there’s no way that I look like I’m 67, and I have to really attribute that to Mary Allan’s oils. She started making them little by little when she was the mixer at Dermalogica, and then she went off and did it on her own. When you order from her, she does this whole interview with you online, and you send pictures in of yourself, and she makes what you need. My favorite is the vitamin C oil because it smells like caramel. Nothing she makes lasts that long because it doesn’t have preservatives or stabilizers in it, so you gotta use it.

I am totally gluten-free. I’m a nut about what I eat. I don’t do gluten, meat, sugar, fried food, dairy — nothing! But my favorite treat in the morning — and it’s really the one I look forward to because everything else that’s great for you can get really boring — is raisin-cinnamon gluten-free bread. Oh my god. Well, No. 1, it’s gluten-free. No. 2, it’s the right texture, while still having all the things in it that I can eat. A lot of gluten-free breads have dairy or egg, but this has exactly the stuff that not only tastes great but when you toast it, it toasts! A lot of GF breads you have to toast like five times to get crisp! I have this with olive oil, and because you obviously can’t buy it on the island, I’ll get ten loaves at Whole Foods, freeze them, and bring them here. I just looked in the freezer and I only have one loaf, so need to get more.

K.T. and I have truly become master fisherwomen. There’s this Wahoo Fishing Contest, and these men come in — they get on their $6 million sport fisher boats with their captains, and K.T. and I only have a little Boston Whaler that holds two poles because it’s not very big. Well, last Thanksgiving, we went out to that contest, and we won! And the men freaked because women don’t win these contests because wahoo is one of the hardest fish to catch — you have to go 16 miles per hour on the boat and the lure has to be 15 inches long, and you’re dragging it 300 feet behind you. You have to then get it into the boat before the shark gets it, and the fish can be 50 to 100 pounds, so good luck! This year, so far we’ve caught 45 wahoos and other people have caught 2 to 3! That’s because of my Lindgren-Pitman pole, which is expensive, but I need it to get the fish in. It’s the only thing that works and is truly necessary. Actually, K.T. truly is the one thing I can’t live without. If I lost everything else but had K.T., life would still be okay.