If you’re like most people, money management doesn’t come naturally. Learning by trial and error, spend and earn and spend, and attempt and fail, is how most of us get our financial bearings. But if you don’t want to spend your own funds in the learning process, there are other ways of getting the knowledge you need.
Winning on the first go-around can be a tremendous disadvantage for future success; it’s that first, large loss that provides the most important lessons going forward. The sooner that learning takes place, the sooner the opportunity to apply the lessons and achieve success will come.
For Warren Buffett, his first and greatest lesson was his failure to recognize his mistake when purchasing Berkshire Hathaway. In 1962, Berkshire Hathaway was a failing New England textile company that Mr. Buffett bought because he believed it was undervalued. Instead of selling for profit when he could, at a price slightly below his offer, he held on and bought more stock.
It was an emotional decision and, "the dumbest thing I could have done,” he would later recount. However, his company retains the name of his biggest investing mistake and his most important lesson.
Luckily, you don’t have to heavily invest in one company to learn the best management of your personal finances. Warren Buffet’s experience, along with numerous others, is documented in texts that we can read and learn from every day. If you are on the go and still want to learn how to manage your personal finances, audiobooks provide the perfect educational resource.
Quick Look: The Best Finance Audiobooks To Listen To Right Now
Best for Beginners
Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together by Erin Lowry - Get it now
Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street by Fred Schwed - Get it now
Think and Grow Rich: or Men and Woman who Resent Poverty by Napoleon Hill - Get it now
Best for Intermediate Enthusiasts
- Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robin - Get it now
- The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey - Get it now
- The Millionaire Next Door by William D. Danko - Get it now
Best for Advanced Knowledge
What Makes a Great Personal Finance Audiobook?
Most of the best finance books also come as audiobooks. But if the listener won’t be viewing the text, then the book should not rely on charts, graphics or ideas so complex that verbal descriptions will not suffice.
Therefore, the complexity of the information to be transferred voice-to-ear must be categorized by the ease of absorption. A great finance book is not necessarily a great audiobook.
In another economic time, classics likeBenjamin Graham’s introduction to fundamental analysis, The Intelligent Investor, or Vicki Robin’s goal-setting Your Money or Your Life might the best books to begin personal financial education and planning.
However, the decade since the Great Recession has left the youngest third of U.S. earners behind in their pursuit of financial security. Total student debt is now at $1.5 trillion, where 20 percent of U.S. student loans are already near default and, according to The Brookings Institution, 40 percent of student loans will be in default by 2023.
With that being said, the main components that make a great personal finance audiobook are:
- Ability to digest information through audio rather than relying on visual elements.
- Addresses a post-recession audience.
- Considers the impact of student loans and financial security.
The Best Finance Audiobooks
Best For Beginners
1. Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together by Erin Lowry
Broke Millennial
is written for the youngest earners who deal with both paying off debt and beginning their financial planning. One of Ms. Lowry chapters asks “Is Money a Tinder Date or a Marriage Material?” and follows up with “Wait, I Shouldn’t Just Pay the Minimum Due on My Credit Card?” with another.
Broke Millennial is a great starting place to learn about everything from the financial benefits and pitfalls of moving back home to paying rent to parents, to the far-off land of retirement.
Get it on Amazon
Kindle edition: Get it now
Paperback edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
2. Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street by Fred Schwed
Especially good financial listening will be found in the sounds of Where are the Customers’ Yachts? Published in 1940 by Fred Schwed, it is as the second half of the title suggests,a good hard look at Wall Street. The way to get rich on Wall Street, Mr. Schwed suggests, is to manage other people's money.
The book issues a full-page warning before it begins, saying “The information contained herein, while not guaranteed by us, has been obtained from sources which have not in the past proved particularly reliable.”
Get it on Amazon
Hardcover edition: Get it now
Paperback edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
3. Think and Grow Rich: or Men and Woman who Resent Poverty by Napoleon Hill
Think and Grow Rich
by Napoleon Hill, which was first published in 1937, is the end product of two decades of research. Andrew Carnegie, then the richest man on Earth, gave Hill an introductory letter and assignment: organize a “Philosophy of Personal Achievement.”
Hill interviewed over five hundred successful people including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and John D. Rockefeller.
Get it on Amazon
Hardcover edition: Get it now
Paperback edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
Best for Intermediate Enthusiasts
1. Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robin
Your Money or Your Life
begins by asking her readers what life is worth in monetary terms. Each day that goes by and each year that passes is one less to enjoy.
What is the value of that time in dollars? How much time and energy should be spent pursuing financial security versus making the most of what is left of this wonderful but uncertain lifetime? Vicki Robin and her co-author Joe Dominguez encourage readers to think about their ultimate goal, how much time they have and how much money they’ll need to achieve that goal.
Get it on Amazon
Kindle edition: Get it now
Paperback edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
2. The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
Dave Ramsey is the star ofThe Dave Ramsey Show on radio and the author of The Total Money Makeover, which offers a simple plan for paying off debt and saving for retirement. His co-host, Jonathan Mendonsa, says the program and book are best for those in their early twenties. Dave Ramsey’s book covers psychological, educational and emotional hurdles faced by earners, savers and investors as well as concrete methods for managing debt, emergencies and retirement.
Get it on Amazon
Hardcover edition: Get it now
Kindle edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
3. The Millionaire Next Door by William D. Danko
Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko describe the very wealthy people they met who were not obviously wealthy—“the blue-collar/millionaire next door segment.” The Millionaire Next Door reveals the common traits the authors found among millionaires in their years of research. The millionaires they studied practiced frugality and managed their money conservatively in order to acquire their wealth.
Get it on Amazon
Paperback edition: Get it now
Kindle edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
Best for Advanced Knowledge
1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
In the preface of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, Warren Buffett wrote “I read the first edition of this book in early 1950, when I was 19. I thought then it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is.”
Benjamin Graham lays the foundation of value investing upon which Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) into an internationally known and respected financial firm worth over $500 billion.
Get it on Amazon
Paperback edition: Get it now
Kindle edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
2. A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-tested Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton G. Malkiel
Burton G. Malkiel disputes Benjamin Graham’s contention that stocks can be analyzed for their value, much less for their potential behavior. A Random Walk Down Wall Streettakes the reader through a history of financial catastrophes, starting with the tulip bulb craze that ended in 1637 through the dot.com crash, the U. S. housing bubble of the 2000’s and the recent bubbling in cryptocurrencies.
Mr. Malkiel then attempts to explain the historic and current methods that professional money managers have used to tame the market’s inherent randomness.
Get it on Amazon
Paperback edition: Get it now
Kindle edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
3. Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller
The title of Irrational Exuberance by Robert Shiller is taken from the phrase used by Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspanin a speech given during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. Dr. Shiller forecasted both the end of the dotcom bubble and the housing crash. According toThe Economist, “The book should be read by anyone who thinks valuations don’t matter.”
Get it on Amazon
Paperback edition: Get it now
Kindle edition: Get it now
Audiobook: Free with Audible Trial
Final Thoughts
“Don’t spend any money,” a wise man once recalls overhearing as the way to wealth. How to feed, house and clothe the non-spender was not overheard.
Any person who could live without spending even a poverty level income for 30 years would accumulate $2.5 million if invested at an average stock market return. The road to financial security and prosperity is traveled in steps taken in daily decisions about saving and spending.
The wisdom of those who have gone this way before can make the journey easier. And with the ease of audiobooks, it can be learned on-the-go.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should you look for in an excellent finance audiobook?
You need to consider the content, material and if it focuses on the different aspects of finance.
What are the best finance audiobooks for beginners?
Several excellent books include “Where Are the Customers’ Yachts,” “Think and Grow Rich” and “Broke Millennial.”