The Best Personal Finance Magazine: November, 2005

In August, 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. I continued by reviewing them in September and October.

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 - 37
Kiplinger's - 19
Smart Money - 10

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

Money - 11
Kiplinger's - 9
Smart Money - 4

This gives us a four-month total of:

Money - 48
Kiplinger's - 28
Smart Money - 14

My thoughts:

1. Kiplinger's did well this month -- almost as many good articles as Money.

2. Money is strong EVERY month. It's averaging 12 good articles per issue!

3. Am I wasting my time on Smart Money? It seems like I get a bunch of good stuff from their website. Does it include material not in the magazine?

Comments

[Sarah]

I'd be very interested in the answer to number 3. This is an interesting topic, one I've wondered about because I used to be in charge of magazine orders at a library.

[Caitlin]

This month's Money was a free subscription trial issue for me, but I too found a lot of useful information in there. I had forgotten that they led the pack in your "study" ;) I might actually subscribe to this one...or ask for a 'scrip for xmas maybe.

[HSB]

A little background: I used to subscribe to Money and then it went downhill, so I switched to Kiplinger's. Then Money redesigned and Kiplinger's got stale. Now I have one issue left of Kiplinger's and just resubscribed to Money (because I got a two-for-$10-a-year-deal with Business 2.0). I tend to pick up copies of Smart Money here and there. I think BusinessWeek, Fortune and Forbes are also helpful at times, even if not strictly personal-finance-focused.

Money right now is the best personal-finance magazine, in my opinion. The redesign and topic categorizing was a smart move.

Where I differ is that I feel Smart Money is on the rise and Kiplinger's is sliding. I still think Smart Money is too stock-oriented, but Kiplinger's style and tone is too lax and condescending for my taste. I won't be resubscribing, but I'm sure I'll read it whenever possible.

Actually, I think the best thing going right now is the proliferation of personal-finace blogs. It's very interesting to see laymen's perspectives on personal-finance issues. (By the way, FMF, I borrowed the concept from your monthly magazine review for a personal magazine-idea checklist on my PF journal. I hope you don't mind...)