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Whatever your money goals are at the moment, there’s a podcast for that.
We browsed personal finance podcasts and listened to many episodes looking for the best ones. We considered podcasts focusing on all sorts of financial advice, including investing, FIRE, Millennial and Gen Z money, and retirement.
Here are our top picks for the best personal finance podcasts of 2020.
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Length: About 60 minutes
Listen for: Conversational talk about all a variety of money topics, ranging from career advice to debt payoff to buying a car.
Recent topics:
- An interview with a couple that retired before 40
- Whether to refinance your mortgage during a period of historically low interest rates
- How to balance your work life and personal life
Created by friends Tiffany Aliche (AKA The Budgetnista) and Mandi Woodruff of LendingTree, this show balances a fun conversation with real and timely money issues. It gives practical advice in an easy-to-listen way.
Released once weekly, episodes build up to a deep dive into a topic on money, finance, or career advice. Each episode ends with listener questions.
This podcast pulls together a variety of those personal finance questions you didn’t even know you had … and their answers.
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Length: About 40 minutes
Listen for: A variety of topics multiple times per day
Recent topics:
Like his books, Dave Ramsey’s podcast has become a staple of the personal finance podcast world. With over 22,000 reviews, it gets lots of listens each week.
And there’s a good reason why — this podcast is one of the only personal finance podcasts with episodes daily. Most episodes aren’t hosted by Ramsey himself, and a variety of co-hosts take on some episodes.
This podcast has a lot of content, and it can be a lot to keep up with. Luckily, it’s organized with the topics noted in each episode’s description, making it easy to pick out what you want to listen to of the day’s episodes.
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Length: 60 minutes or more
Listen for: Investing stories from real people and advice anyone can put to use
Recent topics:
- How to achieve financial independence even when you’re not a high earner
- How to teach your kids about money
- How to stay on track with retirement planning
This podcast does a good job of making investing a tangible thing that’s accessible for everyone. Without over-complicating the issue, hosts Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench facilitate investing conversations with everyday people.
While it does tend to focus on investing with a goal of financial independence and retiring early (known as FIRE), the principles work whether you want to retire young or just build long-term wealth through investing.
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Length: About 60 minutes
Listen for: FIRE advice you can apply whether you plan to retire at 35 or 65
Recent topics:
- Calculating a number for financial Independence
- A case study of several households working towards financial independence
- How to keep earning and saving once you reach financial independence
The FIRE movement has grown into a full conflagration, with many people planning to retire sooner than the traditional time frame to pursue their passions outside of their work lives. Whether you’re just toying with the idea of FIRE, or are already on your way there, ChooseFI focuses on the investing strategies it takes to get there, and plants the seed that money can be a tool for freedom in the future.
ChooseFI releases every other day or every three days, with most episodes lasting about an hour. This podcast has been running since 2018, and has amassed over 3,400 five-star reviews.
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Length: 30 minutes to an hour
Listen for: Interviews with people who have achieved money goals, financial advice geared towards millennials and Gen Z
Recent topics:
- Paying off $215,000 worth of debt in 48 months
- Balancing money and career goals
- How to make a budget that works
Financial educator and blogger Jamila Souffrant collects inspiring stories from people who have built wealth, paid off debt, or achieved something with money. Topics tend to focus on starting out on your own financial journey, and stories center around topics that will resonate with millennials and Gen Z, including student debt and beginning to invest.
Whether looping in guests (who recently included Jesse Mecham of podcast and blog You Need A Budget and author Michael Arceneaux) or answering listener questions herself, Souffrant makes complex money topics simple. There’s no overly complicated financial jargon here — this podcast breaks out practical advice from peoples’ real experiences and can help you understand how to break big goals into smaller steps.
Listen here »
Suze Orman’s Women and Money
Marc Royce
Length: About 30 minutes
Listen for: Detailed and timely advice on saving for retirement and investing
Recent topics:
- Navigating saving and investing for retirement in uncertain times
- How to keep emotions in check when managing your finances
- Whether it’s best to pay down debt or build an emergency fund
Suze Orman’s Women and Money podcast isn’t so much a women’s money podcast as it is a retirement podcast. Since women tend to live longer in retirement yet often have smaller savings, a natural emphasis on a women’s money podcast should be retirement. But, the advice applies to everyone.
Much like in her other work, Orman doesn’t sugarcoat her financial advice on her podcast. While it can be a bit heavy on some of the more complex financial topics (Should you save in a traditional or a Roth IRA? How should you diversify your investing portfolio?) it’s a deep dive that will payoff for anyone willing to do some extra homework.
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- So Money with Farnoosh Torabi: Hosted by the money expert and author, this podcast pulls off-beat topics into a personal finance perspective — recent guests have included Queen Latifah and many other podcasters on this list. Torabi keeps a running theme throughout many of her episodes with continuing series, most recently with one on FIRE, and the racial wealth gap.
- How to Money: This podcast, hosted by two friends, gets back to the personal finance basics. From how to budget to how to choose insurance, this podcast is great for anyone taking their first foray into managing their money.
- Afford Anything: Hosted by personal finance blogger Paula Pant, this podcast focuses on money mindsets as much as it does actual advice. It’s amassed a large following and over 2,400 reviews on the iTunes podcast store.
To find the best personal finance podcasts of 2020, we spent hours listening to podcasts, browsing the iTunes podcast store, and compiling listener reviews.
We chose only podcasts that had at least 1,000 reviews on the iTunes store, and that are currently recording. We focused on podcasts that record consistently, at least once per week.
Once finding compiling a list of podcasts that met these qualifications, we grouped podcasts together based on six categories: general personal finance topics, daily podcasts, and podcasts on retirement, FIRE, investing, and millennial and Gen Z finances. From there, we chose the podcast that had the highest percentage of five star reviews for each category.
