Best personal finance podcasts

By Jonathan Chevreau on February 20, 2013
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Here's a rundown of some daily and/or weekly podcasts I find useful.

As any investor is well aware, keeping up with global politics, macro-economics, regional currency fluctuations plus the vagaries of sectors and individual stocks can amount to almost a full-time job. The wealth of digital sources available on the web and through iPads, smart phones and the like is a blessing but sometimes seems like a curse when the amount of data coming at us exceeds our capacity to absorb it all.

Of course, if you’re strictly a purist “index” investor, you can largely ignore the noise as it relates to making individual portfolio adjustments, apart from occasional rebalancing of asset classes. However, based on the feedback MoneySense got from Preet Banerjee’s article on Core and Explore investing, I suspect more investors—even occasional indexers—are much more active in making tactical portfolio adjustments.

Bottom line is most of us need to make some effort to keep up with economic and financial developments around the world. But I’ve found the very ubiquity of information and technology can be harnessed to our advantage, no matter how busy we are. In my own case, I have a commute of almost an hour in each direction, much of it on the subway.

I’ve found that various financial audio (and video) podcasts downloaded to an iPhone (and most other devices) is a useful way to absorb information while commuting or exercising, or even waiting in the many lineups life can subject us to over time. Here’s a run-down of some daily and/or weekly podcasts I find useful:

BBC World Service Global News: This is a handy global affairs roundup of 20 to 30 minutes that is available every 12 hours.

BBC World Business Report: a less frequent podcast of different durations more focused on economics, business and investing.

BBC Documentary Archive: long (25 to 40 minutes) audio documentaries that are indepth on a single topic (a recent one was on Hillary Clinton)

Bloomberg on the Economy: Usually single-source summaries of between 5 and 20 minutes with various economic and investment experts around the world. Alternative is Bloomberg—All Podcasts.

FT Money Show: Weekly 20-minute podcast from the Financial Times

The Economist All Audio: 7 to 15 minutes most days often on single world political events and occasional financial topics. Those who subscribe to the iPad edition of the Economist can also download audio of the entire weekly magazine: good for absorbing world events on long walks or treadmill sessions!

60 Minutes Podcast: Weekly 45-minute full-audio podcast of the famous TV show.

Jim Cramer’s Mad Money; 45-minutes daily in the week: full video of Cramer’s manic but often insightful take on (primarily) the U.S. stock market. This guy is the “anti-indexer” but does sometimes recommend ETFs outside the US market. He’s been preaching diversification and lately has been positive on both gold (the GLD ETF) and Canada broadly.

Motley Fool Money: Weekly audio show just under 40 minutes: excellent wrap-up of the week’s major events in the U.S. stock market, usually with 3 or 4 guests. Good to listen to while exercising on weekends: most recently I listened to it while grocery shopping!

The Disciplined Investor: Weekly hour-long podcast by Andrew Horowitz, usually with special guests.

NPR Planet Money: 20 minutes or so every few days on quirky topics like “why buying a car is so awful”

The Suze Orman Show: Weekly 45-minute full video of Twitter’s most-followed personal finance guru.

The Dave Ramsey Show; 40 minutes but not having listened to this one yet, can’t comment further.

Mostly Money, Mostly Canadian: 20 to 40 minute occasional podcast by Preet Banerjee and the title aptly sums it up. Various guests, including an appearance by myself.

Financial Post: Various audio podcasts from staff writers from Canada’s daily financial newspaper.

About Jonathan Chevreau

As MoneySense’s Investing-Editor-at-Large, he is also author of Findependence Day and co-author of Victory Lap Retirement. Reach him at [email protected], where he is the founder of Financial Independence Hub.