If you don’t know where to start with your financial journey, know you are not alone. A survey conducted by CNBC found that around 70% of Americans admit to being stressed about their personal finances. If finances and financial literacy seems like a daunting task take a first small step of listening to Smart Money Podcast .
Being in college offers a unique financial experience whether you are paying for your entire college tuition and cost of living yourself, have student loans, or are getting financial resources from a parent or guardian. Everyone can benefit from some financial literacy.
This podcast is easy to understand, with a vast range of topics, and makes financial security sound possible. The podcast NerdWallet Smart Money is an approachable first step to understanding topics like saving, budgeting, low risk investing and more.
Finding a financial podcast that has people hosting who you can trust is important. The first host is Liz Weston, is a certified financial planner, who’s writing won a Pulitzer Prize for business and financial journalism. The second host is Sean Pyles, who gives real world guidance to consumers and his writing has been included in the New York Times.
NerdWallet, the company the hosts work for, is a personal finance company that is publicly owned and has the goal of educating people on their finances and helping consumers make informed decisions. It has comparisons and reviews on college loans, credit cards, and banks. A potential conflict of interest to keep in mind is that they do have association with certain banks.
Unlike other podcasts that simply go off of personal experience this podcast has a financial advisor and financial journalist leading the conversation. This gives listeners peace of mind that the information they are receiving is accurate.
On the podcast they bring in hosts like financial educators, mental health counselors, and credit experts. They choose their guests according to the topic and leverage their expertise to give more holistic advice.
The show allows for audience engagement and participation, listeners can interact via an email, and a voice mailbox so if you have specific financial questions the hosts can take them and try to give the best advice they can. They talk through these interactive questions and give advice for how to handle the problem, or how to prevent it from happening.
The show is formatted in two ways, the first is a split episode where they have a topic for the first half that they have selected and the second half is audience interaction. The other format is where they have guests on the show and go in depth about one specific topic.
Some of my favorite episodes include:
- Smart Money Podcast: Navigating Generational Financial Trauma in a Digital World – NerdWallet
- Smart Money Podcast: Overcoming Financial Fears, and Appliance Repair Tips
- Smart Money: How to Talk to Parents About Their Finances – NerdWallet
- Smart Money Podcast: Day Trading Highs and Lows, a Guide to Calculating Risk – NerdWallet
There are some episodes that talk about 401K and retirement but as they will reiterate in the podcast time is one of your most valuable assets so I would argue that those are worth a listen as well. Depending on your lifestyle there will be episodes that jump out to you and others that do not so take the tools you need and save the rest for when you do need them.
As young people there is this constructed story that struggling with money and making huge financial mistakes is something we are told is a part of the process of growing up. With a trusted podcast like this it might give you the confidence to believe in your own ability to manage money and change the ending to the financial illiteracy story.