I’ve been meaning to listen to an episode of the Money Mastermind Show ever since FinCon’14, where I realized that the hosts are definitely money masterminds. Hosted by Glen Craig, Kyle Prevost, Miranda Marquit, Peter Anderson and Tom Drake, the Money Mastermind Show does not disappoint.

As we journeyed along in our 15 passenger van, I subjected my cast to 3 of their episodes and verified what I suspected – the cast who had no personal finance experience all said they “liked the other one better,” whereas the few who actually had their act together, claimed “this one is much more interesting.”

I have to say, I agree. While I enjoy Listen, Money Matters!, I find it’s really hit or miss for useful information for me. So far, Money Mastermind Show was all hits. I like their diverse panel and how clearly they discuss their different approaches to similar goals.

We started with the first episode: The Importance of Figuring Out Your Money Philosophy. Not only is that an important lessons, it’s a brilliant way to introduce you to the panelists and gives you a good idea of exactly who you’re about to start taking money advice from (and you should always at least have a clue about the people you’re taking money advice from!! It’s why even bloggers have an About Me page.)

I had some mercy on my cast and picked a less finance-centric episode for our second episode and went with: How Networking Can Help Your Career, because heaven knows networking is how you get anywhere in the arts.

Not gonna lie, when I noticed the date on there, I was pretty excited for the FinCon flashback as well – where networking definitely did help my blogging career. However, at the time, I largely ignored that table in the corner where all the podcasters kept turning up. Now I know what they were saying 😉

The panelists pretty much agreed that the key thing to networking is building an actual relationship. Just asking someone for help or favors comes across really rude, but being legitimately interested in the incredible things people have done before you can help start a useful friendship.

I know at FinCon, I was so impressed by the set up of the entire event because it really managed to make that type of environment so easy to access. By organizing a ghost tour there, I met a few of the event organizers who let me set it up and more than 100 other attendees who decided they wanted to go on the ghost tour too. Where I’m pretty much a newbie at blogging, I’m pretty experienced at organizing things and know way too much about dorky and delightful ghost tours, so this gave me something to talk to interested parties with.

Finally we finished up our drive with the episode entitled: What’s Your Retirement Number? I thought the Masterminds had some interesting facts – like the average life expectancy when Social Security was established. Personally, I enjoying working on retirement calculations and figuring out ways to inch that date up.

Overall, I think this’ll definitely be on regular rotation for future drives. I don’t know that I’d recommend it as part of an “introduction to personal finance” situation, but for the next step beyond – absolutely!

I mean, who doesn’t want to be come a money mastermind? I know I do.