It’s been a long while since I subjected my cast to some forced personal finance lessons via podcast, but since J. Money and Paula Pant teamed up and we had an 8 hour drive from Oregon down into California – the time was right!

J. Money writes pretty much my favorite personal finance blog of all time Budgets Are Sexy and is quite possibly one of the nicest bloggers ever.

Paula is a woman after my own heart with her nomadic lifestyle tales over at Afford Anything. Her website is based on a mantra I hold dear to my heart – you can’t afford everything, but you can afford anything.

Let’s start with a little disclaimer here, I know some folks are really picky about audio quality – I am not – but if you are, start listening to their podcast about 5 or so episodes in, they struggled figuring out how to clear up the audio for the first podcasts.

But if you skip the first 5, you’re missing out on a lot of fun and informative money talk!

One of the cool things about the M.O.N.E.Y. Show podcast is that it really appeals to anyone. Maybe you like to read my blog because you think I’m some circus freak, vagabond psycho and that’s different and interesting to you, but you have a mortgage and 2.5 kids and a chocolate lab.

J. Money is down with your life. Your life is his life and vice versa.

San the circus freakness, Paula is my kind of people.

And this makes their conversations fascinating! Not only because of the wildly different perspective on things, but because they further prove that the core principles of personal finance really do apply to everyone. Sometimes the ways we apply them differ, but at the end of the day, building the same types of habits help you achieve some kick butt goals.

The first episode of the M.O.N.E.Y. Show goes over their backgrounds and introduces you to J. Money and Paula, which I think is important. You really should know a little about anyone that you take financial advice from.

In episode two, they battle it out from opposite sides over the classic money conundrum – do you focus on saving more or earning more (editor’s note: why not both? #amiright?).

Jay focuses more on the savings side – and I agree it’s a great starting point. When you’re just strapped, you might not be able to do anything this second to earn more, but you can probably find some places to cut back, even if that means spending 30 minutes hunting down some grocery coupons online.

Paula prefers to focus on making more – which, in the long run, I think is totally the way to go. And I agree that there are definitely times where you start to put so much time into figuring out how to save a few dollars, that you could’ve made twice as much money in that time if you were directing your efforts in the right way.

Episode 14 focuses on one of my favorite topics, how to make money as a blogger. While blogging really isn’t for everyone, I do think it’s a great side hustle for a lot of people. You might think, Mel, I’ve really got nothing to say about finance and I don’t do insane jobs like you.

That doesn’t matter! You probably shouldn’t be writing about personal finance unless it really interests you. Maybe you’re on a weight loss journey and you’re willing to share how much you hate it and what a struggle it is – you’d probably have a decent audience. I’m a miserable human being when I’m on a diet, but I don’t think I could write about it. My mom comes home and tells us crazy stories of stuff that happens in the high school main office she’s a secretary in. I keep telling her she should be changing the names and writing them down and starting her own anonymous website (seriously, apparently public schools have ridiculous amounts of crazy drama).

If enough people are interested in your stories (and there are an awful lot of people on the web, don’t automatically think no one will be interested), you can monetize your blog pretty easily.

See – feeds right back into Paula’s advice in episode 2 to make more money.

Paula and J. Money have both been blogging for a while and have plenty of great advice on the subject.

The verdict – another hit in the van! While I haven’t yet gotten any of them actually excited to listen to personal finance podcasts, this one and Stacking Benjamin’s currently hold the record for conversations provoked because of what we were listening to.

Interested in checking out The M.O.N.E.Y. Show? You can subscribe to their podcast right here.