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If you’ve never swapped your weekend TV show binge for a personal finance documentary, you’re missing out.
Although personal finance is personal, films and documentaries about money can help us feel less alone when making big financial decisions. Most of us didn’t learn about money in school, so we have to take a hands-on approach to personal finance education for information to really stick. Otherwise, it feels like navigating a dark cave with no guidance.
I write about money for a living, and I’m always looking for ways to improve my financial literacy. I often suggest reading personal finance books, listening to podcasts and subscribing to financial newsletters (like the one at CNET called Money Matters). Then I went down a documentary rabbit hole and discovered the benefit of “watching” personal finance.
Documentaries about money you shouldn’t miss
There are several films that focus on personal finance, from the bare-bone basics to unpacking scandals like the Game Stop saga. If you already subscribe to streaming sites like Netflix, you already have several at your fingertips. Here are three documentaries that stood out to me.
Read more: Best Streaming Services for Documentaries
1. Get Smart With Money
Great for the basics
The 2022 Netflix documentary Get Smart With Money follows four financial experts as they help people with different money struggles. It focuses on the basics: Paying down credit card debt, breaking the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, learning to budget while pursuing early retirement and investing in the stock market.
Peter Adeney (Mr. Money Mustache), Tiffany Aliche (The Budgetnista), Ross MacDonald (Ro$$ Mac) and Paula Pant of Afford Anything partner with folks from different socioeconomic backgrounds to unpack their spending habits and set benchmarks for meeting their financial goals.
The film introduces us to Ariana, who describes herself as an emotional spender. She has $45,000 in credit card debt, and at one point she took out a personal loan to consolidate her credit card payments into one with a lower interest rate. But she quickly found herself in a debt cycle, maxing out her credit cards. Tiffany Aliche, a financial educator and author of Get Good With Money, steps in to help Ariana regain her footing by establishing a sustainable debt pay-off plan.
If you already know a thing or two about basic money management, you won’t find anything groundbreaking in this documentary. Still, there are important takeaways. The main lesson is that you can’t change a bad money habit without changing your mindset and setting attainable goals.
2. The Most Important Class You Never Had
What you don’t learn in school (but should)
From the creators behind Next Gen Personal Finance, which provides educators with free resources to equip students with financial literacy skills, this film focuses on personal finance education and its impact beyond the classroom.
Only one in six high school students in the US is required to take a semester of personal finance to graduate. In this 37-minute documentary, you’ll meet eight high school educators as they incorporate basic money management into their classrooms, covering savings strategies, investing, budgeting and preparing for retirement. Each educator examines why a lack of personal finance education is failing younger generations and what we can do to develop a strong foundation in money management.
Patrick Kubeny, an accounting and personal finance teacher, focuses on real-life scenarios in the film. He covers practical subjects such as saving for retirement and dodging credit card scams. One of his students has already saved over $1,000 in a Roth IRA because of what Kubeny has taught in class. It serves as a reminder that personal finance education can better equip kids with the financial competency they need to be successful after high school.
3. Money, Explained
Navigating money’s minefields
Money, Explained is a docuseries by Vox that addresses several topics: credit cards, student loans, retirement, financial scams and gambling. Condensed into five short episodes of around 20 minutes each and narrated by a celebrity lineup, this series doesn’t explain money but focuses on a range of niche topics, from technology’s role in financial scams to the history of credit cards and the impact of student loan debt.
This docuseries emphasizes the human side of finance. It doesn’t set out to teach you how to budget or pick the right credit card, but rather explores how money affects our sense of security and mental health. It’s a great starting point for anyone looking for an informative yet digestible documentary to boost their financial literacy.
Plus, you get to listen to Tiffany Haddish, Edie Falco and more celebs talk to you about the dangers of get-rich-quick-schemes and the student loan debt crisis, which is something I didn’t know I needed until I saw it.