Even though the availability of audiobooks in a digital form is relatively new when compared to older audio technologies, the origins of audiobooks actually date back as far as the 1930s. They were often used as an educational medium and were found in schools and libraries. Before audiobooks were available digitally, talking books, as they were often referred to, were sold in physical form on analog cassette tapes and vinyl records. However, with the widespread adoption and penetration of the Internet, audiobooks are now available online from many different sources.

Audiobooks that Talk about Finance

The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan

Despite its sensational title, David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich is not a get-rich-quick guide. Rather, the book is a straightforward march through common-sense personal financial planning that suggests readers “automate” their contributions to retirement and investment vehicles. Bach, in fact, calls his model the “tortoise approach” to becoming wealthy by retirement age.

His core principle is that to succeed, you must “Pay Yourself First.” To set aside a fixed, monthly sum of money before considering what is left for living expenses. The “automatic” part of the title comes from Bach’s emphasis on using automated payroll deductions to avoid the temptation of using the money to pay today’s bills.

The Automatic Millionaire does not offer much that is new for readers already familiar with personal finance basics like accelerated mortgage payments, “the miracle of compound interest,” and the setting up of emergency funds. But, for those just starting with financial planning, Bach provides a host of resources to put recommendations into action. For those who really get tired and don’t seem to find time in their daily busy schedule to pick up the book and read it, we have got an audiobook version for people just like you. Keeping the pace fairly decent, you can digest this one in say about 3 to 4 days on a fast track.

Security Analysis

Benjamin Graham and David Dodd wrote the “bible” of fundamental equity investing in this classic, first published in 1934. If you’re interested in the techniques of value investing, an approach favored by Warren Buffett (who was a student of Graham’s at Columbia University), you’re certain to benefit from this book.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

One constant of financial markets is they suffer periods of collective greed and fear, which has resulted in such catastrophes as Britain’s South Sea Bubble and the Netherlands’ Tulip Mania of the 1630s. The British journalist Charles Mackay explored these and other crises in his 1841 classic and we can probably see similarities and repetitions in scenarios of today’s market condition.

Getting finance related books in an audio format is one way to get those who are not in favor of the subject to be able to gain from the knowledge in these books.