The Best Personal Finance Magazine: March 2006

In December, I declared Money Magazine as the best of the big three personal finance magazines (Money, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, and Smart Money). I promised to start the competition at ground zero in 2006 since Money was so far ahead that the others could never catch up.

Here's an update on my competition for the best personal finance magazine. My methodology: the magazines get 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 scores through February:

Money - 21
Kiplinger's - 12
Smart Money - 9

Here are the results for March:

Money - 4
Kiplinger's - 3
Smart Money - 3

So, our total for the year stands at:

Money - 25
Kiplinger's - 15
Smart Money - 12

My thoughts:

1. My winner for 2005, Money magazine, stumbled a lot this month. This makes two months in a row that the mazagine has performed worse than last year. We'll need to see if this trend continues.

2. Kiplinger's is back to its "average". Expected.

3. Smart Money continues with too many "hot stock of the month" articles.

Comments

[Ulyee Foobar]

Wish i would have seen your mag reviews before subscribing to SmartMoney; i find the editorial is pretty lame, though there are bright points.

The big test: someone keeps ripping Money off from the library, so i can never see the latest issue!

Foob