The Best Personal Finance Magazine: October, 2005

For the August and September issues, I started a comparison among the big three personal finance magazines: Money, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, and Smart Money. My methodology was simple: the magazines got one vote for each article that I found useful -- either for me, someone I knew or for this blog.

As a reminder, here are the results after two months (the number of useful articles I got out of each of the personal finance magazines):

Money - 25

Kiplinger's - 15

Smart Money - 6

Well, I continued the effort for the October issues (just out), and here's what I got:

Money - 12

Kiplinger's - 4

Smart Money - 4

This gives us a three-month total of:

Money - 37

Kiplinger's - 19

Smart Money - 10

A few comments:

1. I think the contest is all over. But I'll keep posting on it since I find it interesting. I may even add in Forbes, Fortune, and Business Week since they have useful financial information too.

2. Kiplinger's and Smart Money are hurt by the fact that so many of their articles are "The Greatest Stocks/Mutual Funds to Buy Now" sort of articles. I just don't see a lot of value in these. Why? Because they change every month -- there's literally a new list of "must have" stocks and mutual funds that appear every month. Does that mean the ones they suggested from the previous month are no longer good?

3. In the previous two posts, I've had someone suggest that I look at the cost per valuable article (implying, I assume, that Kiplinger's and Smart Money are still a good value since they cost so little and have 3-4 good articles per issue). While it is true that using this method they are all worth the investment, I'm looking for the BEST personal finance magazine, hence I'm comparing all three.

Comments

[Michael]

I'm with you: MONEY is the best one out there. I'd also contend that it's gotten significantly better since its last editorital renovation.

The hot-stock/hot-fund/hot-sector articles that fill KIPLINGER'S and SMART MONEY absolutely turn me off. They're ridiculous. I put such mag recommendations only a few notches behind those of Wall Street shills.

FORBES has its useful moments, too, but the nicest thing about that mag is that you can get a multiyear subscription dirt cheap on eBay.