Like food and water, money is an essential of everyday life unless you quite literally live under a rock! Whether you’re fascinated or intimidated by it, learning more about personal finance can be a huge help in making your monetary goals a reality.
Personal finance podcasts are a great way to learn more, with the best of them covering everything from investing basics to entrepreneurship to how to pay off debt and much more.
Unsurprisingly there are a huge variety of finance podcasts available, but I’ve sorted through and listened to the masses to find the best finance podcasts available today. Finance is a big space, so I’ve broken them down into a few different categories to help you find something that interests you.
For Quick Daily Hits: Optimal Finance Daily
Optimal Finance Daily is a daily podcast that offers quick hits of personal finance insight. Episodes are typically 10-15 minutes long, perfect for a morning walk or short commute. For a quick burst of useful financial information, it’s the best personal finance podcast around.
Topics on the show range from budgeting basics to wealth building and reader Q&A. Guests often include finance bloggers, investment advisors, and early retirees from the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) community.
There are well over 1,000 episodes of Optimal Finance Daily, so it can feel a bit overwhelming for newcomers. Fortunately, the show has curated a number of “starter packs” on its website, pulling together a bunch of episodes on a particular theme.
You can use these lists to easily find essential listening on subjects like retirement, budgeting, debt payoff, and more.
For Deep Dives: Planet Money
Planet Money is a long-running NPR podcast that helps explain complex economic topics in an easily-digestible manner. The show focuses on the US economy, with deep dive episodes several times each week.
Each episode (or in some cases, series of episodes) covers a different topic in-depth. Everything from economic indicators like what the most recent job report actually means, to industry trends like why GE is splitting into several companies while Big Tech is merging, is covered.
Plus, there are a fair amount of random topics that you didn’t know you were interested in, until you start listening! From how the truffle black market works to why SE Asia suddenly developed a taste for wheat, Planet Money has got ya covered.
Shows aren’t too long, typically running for around 20-25 minutes. If even that’s too much of a time commitment, NPR also produces a daily bite-sized economics show called The Indicator, where each episode lasts under ten minutes.
For Economic Updates: Marketplace
If you like to keep your finger on the pulse of the US economy, equity markets, or global finance, check out Marketplace. The show aims to provide context to current economic news, explaining complex topics in a beginner-friendly way.
The near-daily show reports on the latest economic numbers — jobs reports, stock market fluctuations, consumer spending data, and more — and explains how these facts and figures fit in with broader trends in the economy.
There are several podcasts under the Marketplace banner, some of which have hundreds or thousands of episodes in their own right. For newcomers, I suggest starting with the original Marketplace before branching out to some of the more niche shows.
For Investing: We Study Billionaires
We Study Billionaires is an investing podcast that focuses on key lessons learned from billionaires and famous investors. The show’s hosts, Stig Brodersen and Trey Lockerbie, conduct deep dives into the life stories, personalities, and investment strategies of billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
Although the subject matter is the financial elite (ultra-elite, really!), the show does a great job of providing actionable lessons that everyday investors can use to sharpen their investment skills and implement new strategies.
There are now hundreds of episodes, but like Optimal Finance Daily, the show has thankfully curated “starter packs” that contain the key episodes for newcomers to listen to first.
For Financial Independence: ChooseFI
For fans of the FIRE movement, or those looking for financial independence in general, ChooseFI is an absolute must. The show’s hosts discuss everything from the fundamentals of FIRE to the nitty-gritty of optimizing your financial decisions.
ChooseFI also hosts guests from all over the finance world: FIRE bloggers, travel hackers, entrepreneurs, and more. Each episode is packed with actionable tips for things like paying off debt, cutting expenses, and traveling for cheap or free.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, the FIRE movement is based on the premise that if you save aggressively early in life and invest wisely, you can retire early — like, really early. The concept was popularized by the likes of Mr Money Mustache and Paula Pant of Afford Anything.
For Listener Questions: The Ramsey Show
Dave Ramsey is one of the most famous figures in the personal finance industry. Originally the host of a popular radio show, he now provides financial advice through a number of podcast productions, his website, and several best-selling books.
The Ramsey Show still follows the original format that made Ramsey famous. Listeners call in with questions based on their specific financial situation, and Ramsey provides genuine, no-nonsense (and often brutally honest) advice.
It’s essentially doubling down on the personal aspect of personal finance. Through hearing other people’s stories, and the advice that goes with them, listeners can often gain insights into managing their own financial situation.
With over 6000 episodes in the back catalog, and releasing three episodes each workday, you definitely won’t be short of episodes to listen to if the concept appeals!
For a Wide Variety: So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi is a great general-purpose financial podcast. It covers all the bases, from debt payoff to investing and business, as well as deeper subjects such as the psychology of money and its role in relationships.
Hosted by financial correspondent Farnoosh Torabi, So Money now has over 1200 episodes. The show has two major formats: interview-style episodes with special guests, and a weekly “Ask Farnoosh” episode with listener-submitted questions.
So Money has hosted many famous guests from the world of finance, business, and more. Top episodes include interviews with Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Margaret Cho, and Jim Cramer, and there are many others worth listening to as well.
For Global Affairs & Economics: Money Talks from The Economist
For a more global perspective on markets, economy, and money in general, The Economist is a great option. The Economist is actually a weekly subscription magazine, but it also produces several popular podcasts. Of these, “Money Talks” is the most directly money-related podcast.
The show discusses the latest economic indicators and jobs reports, framed from a global perspective. Other episodes focus on global trends, like the rising influence of venture capital (VC) or the decreasing power of central banks to fight inflation.
Released weekly, with each episode lasting around half an hour, it’s a good way of getting useful context on what’s happening in the global economy right now.
For Budgeting: You Need a Budget
A podcast about… budgeting?
Yep!
Hosted by Jesse Mecham, founder of the popular You Need a Budget (YNAB) budgeting software, the show explores the power of budgeting and how it can radically transform your financial wellbeing.
Through a combination of user stories, expert interviews, and candid advice, the You Need a Budget Podcast does a great job of making a somewhat dull subject come alive. I’m a big fan of the personal Debt Stories sub-series, where YNAB users explain their past financial struggles and how they overcame them.
Do you have any favorite finance podcasts that we haven’t mentioned? Tell us about them in the comments!
Image via Alexey Laputin/Shutterstock.com
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