5 Personal Finance Podcasts You Should Be Listening To
The first step to handling your finances well is deciding to learn how to do it. Luckily, there are tons of free information sources to help you become more financially literate, from websites to videos to podcasts. Listening to personal finance podcasts is a great way to increase your financial literacy, and you can do it while driving or walking the dog. There are plenty of options, too! Podcasts are more popular than ever: In fact, there are more than 700,000 active podcasts and more than 29 million podcast episodes currently available. More than 50% of all Americans have listened to at least one podcast episode; 32% of all Americans listen to a podcast episode at least once a month, and 22% listen weekly. If you’re among that 32%, consider adding another show to your queue, and if you aren’t, maybe you should give it a try. Here are five of the best personal finance podcasts to follow.
Planet Money
Planet Money is produced by NPR, which describes the premise of the podcast as, “Imagine you could call up a friend and say, ‘Meet me at the bar and tell me what’s going on with the economy.’ ” The podcast debuted in September of 2008, making it the oldest podcast on the list and one of the earliest finance podcasts period. The podcast’s original purpose was to explain and cover the global economic crisis, and it was an offshoot of another NPR podcast, This American Life. Why should you listen? Because the show breaks down broader economic issues (like health insurance or insider trading) and presents them in an accessible way. Planet Money will increase your financial literacy painlessly! Recent episodes have focused on betting, why interest rates worldwide are currently so low, and the economics behind the music business. The podcast is released twice weekly and won a Peabody award in 2016. Listen to some of the top episodes to get an idea of why this podcast succeeds: You’ll learn about things like why Coca-Cola didn’t raise the price of a bottle of soda for 70 years or why the average T-shirt in your closet has traveled the world more extensively than you have.
So Money
When podcast host Farnoosh Torabi was 22, she was $30,000 in debt and making $18 an hour while living in New York City. As she climbed out of debt and tried to get better at managing her money, she realized there was no easily understood, practical financial advice aimed at young adults. So she took her experience as a financial reporter and started creating the kind of content she felt she needed. Her first book, You’re So Money: Live Rich Even When You’re Not was published in 2008. Soon, Torabi was appearing on morning news shows and writing articles for top magazines. She then released her second book, Psych Yourself Rich: Get the Mindset & Discipline You Need to Build Your Financial Life, and her third book, When She Makes More. Now, she has a website and a podcast, which covers topics like how women can negotiate for equal pay, talking about money with someone you are about to marry, and how to use lists to improve your life.
Afford Anything
Host Paula Pant was a journalist working in Colorado when she realized that although she loved her job, she hated being tied to a cubicle. So she saved her money, took on some side hustles, and was able to backpack internationally for a couple of years. When Pant returned to the states, she built a successful freelance career before realizing she was still tied down. So she turned to creating passive income sources. Pant took lessons from her own life to write a book, launch a website, and eventually start the Afford Anything podcast. Lots of her advice centers on minding the “gap,” which is the amount of money you have after you pay your expenses. Some podcast episodes discuss how to design your life so your expenditures are low, while others focus on how to increase your income. Pant suggests growing and investing in the gap by bringing in passive income. There’s also advice about using index funds to save for retirement, how to travel inexpensively, and what kind of IRA you should choose. This podcast is perfect for people looking for ways to design a modest lifestyle who are curious about creating income flows that would allow them to retire early.
The Fairer Cents
Talking about money is often viewed as a social taboo, and the personal finance sphere is often dominated by male writers and hosts. The Fairer Cents aims to correct both issues and is welcoming to female listeners who find traditional financial media intimidating. The two hosts are also from different generations, which adds a diversity of experience and opinion to their views. Kara Perez is the millennial founder of Bravely, which is a community devoted to giving women the personal finance tools they need to reach their financial goals. Generation X author Tanja Hester published the book Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way and writes the finance blog Our Next Life about the journey she and her husband took to retire early and how their life has been since. Episode topics include actionable financial tips, FIRE (financial independence, retire early), how to achieve creative dreams, and how to be your own financial advocate.
Smart Passive Income
What is passive income? Investopedia defines it as “earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprises in which a person is not actively involved.” Developing passive income sources is an integral part of the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) ethos that permeates a lot of the discourse in personal finance circles. Smart Passive Income is an online media resource created by Pat Flynn that’s dedicated to teaching you how to run an online business and optimize it for passive income generation. Flynn was a young architect who was laid off at the beginning of the 2008 recession, and he started an online business as a way to survive. His advice is based on his own successes and failures. Flynn wants to help people thinking about starting a business to develop passive income to avoid scams and get-rich-quick schemes. Recent podcast episodes include information on how marketers are returning to email to grow their business and how to use your accomplishments to bolster your confidence and commit to action.
Each of these podcasts has great information to help you best manage your individual financial situation but, certainly, it is important to understand all of the different financial options available to you in order to make ends meet during times of financial crisis. That is why we are committed to offering customers several different alternative lending solutions, including car title loans and personal loans.