Podcasts

At work, I can listen to my mp3 player (that Archos 650 wifi I bought earlier) while I work. Although music is great, even 30GB of music can get old after a few weeks of listening to it on shuffle for 8 1/2 hours a day, so I've turned to podcasts for constantly updating entertainment at work.

Of the podcasts I've enjoyed are some NPR podcasts (Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and Intelligence Squared being some of my favorites), and podcasts about humanism and atheism, two topics that also interest me.

I saw that there were lots of personal finance podcasts, but I was hesitant to listen to any, because I know that for every person out there with good knowledge and advice, there are 20 that are trying to sell something. So, there were no real finance based podcasts in my lineup.

Enter Get Rich Slowly. This list of twelve personal finance podcasts was just what I needed. I didn't pick all twelve to listen to, but I did start listening to some.

My favorite so far? Sound Investing. This is a podcast of a weekly radio show in Seattle, which is close to me. The hosts are obviously knowledgeable, and seem to really care about people's investments, especially retirement. Not only that, but they're very upfront about who they represent, and what financial interest they have: The host, Paul Merriman owns a financial advising firm that advocates index fund investing and asset allocation as a long term investment strategy. They share all of their secrets, and their website, fundadvice.com, is a wealth of information. Their policy seems to be this: If you want to manage your own portfolio, we'll show you how we would do it so you can do it well, but if you decide that we do well enough and it's worth it for you to let us take care of the day to day stuff, we'll be happy to. It's refreshing to see advisors that don't just push annuities or their own products, but will actually care enough to give you advice on funds that they have no chance of ever getting control of, such as the TSP account, a 401(k) like retirement plan for government employees and military members.

I've never heard of Paul Merriman before, but I like him already, and I would love to pick his brain. I wonder if somebody at that company would agree to an informational interview about what they do. I'm a little interested in exploring that sort of thing as a possible career.