Time to get a new personal finance guru?

Felix Salmon of Reuters writes that CNBC personal finance show host Suze Orman has lost her credibility in commenting about financial services products now that she has entered the field with her own.

Salmon writes, “But what I can’t do is simply say ‘you can trust Suze Orman.’ You can’t trust Orman on the subject of her competitors — which, now, includes every checking account in the country. You can’t trust Orman on investment advice. And I don’t trust Orman either on the value of credit scores and credit monitoring — a service she sells through MiFico for $50 per year.

“Orman’s heart is in the right place: none of her products are really bad. If you sign up for a one-month free trial of her newsletter, you don’t need to provide a credit card number: all you get is the newsletter for one month. If you then want to subscribe, you need to subscribe. That’s a sign of an honest merchant: Orman isn’t looking to rip anybody off.

“But if you want an impartial judge of whether to have a checking account or a prepaid debit card, Orman is certainly not the person to ask: she’s a full-fledged financial-services provider, now. Who will watch the watchdog? I think we need a new guru.”

Read more here.