SmartMoney (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]
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SmartMoney (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]
SmartMoney (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT] REviews
I have been a subscriber for 5 or 6 years now and I always find each issue to be valuable. SmartMoney strikes a good balance between investment advice/coverage and information/articles that deal with the other aspects of your financial life. Among the features I look forward to every month:
- Ten Things: a “watch out” list of 10 things that you should know about the different professionals you interact with (your dentist, your accountant, a real estate broker, etc.). Always an eye-opener.
- Stock Screen: Paul Sturm is a knowledgeable, value-oriented journalist who puts together a list each month of 8-10 stocks that make it through a rigid screen of several characteristics. Each month, he features a different screen and he uses a good mix of quantitative characteristics and common sense to generate the list.
- Feature articles that profile common people and the serious personal finance problems they have endured (e.g., collecting on insurance, fighting the IRS, traveling overseas).
SmartMoney is frequently compared to Money magazine, but Money is often more narrowly focused on investing and it sometimes dumbs down its articles. I also read BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune regularly. While they all have their place, none provides the depth and common sense focus of SmartMoney when it comes to personal finance. I have photocopied and saved countless articles and I sometimes refer to them years later. … my advice is to get a subscription now – it’s definitely worth it.
I have subscriptions to Forbes, Smart Money, Money and Fortune. Out of all 4, i like Forbes and Fortune the most, because they seem to give details also on the backgrounds of the companies they are presenting as good buys. Even if Smart Money is not as good as these magazines, it is still well worth the money and provides a cheaper alternative to the beginner investor.
My main problem with Smart Money was not their writing, but their way of doing business. I made a one year subscription through Amazon and i was supposed to get the March issue as the first issue (in February). Well, i received this issue, but with it i was also sent the January and February issues (published in December of last year and January of this year). The complaints i made to their customer service department – for this cheap method they used to shorten my one year subscription by 2 months – were left with no answer. I know many magazines take advantage of their readers by sending them an older issue with the new one, but Smart Money takes the crown, sending me issues published last year!
Overall, if you can go past this, this magazine can be worth getting, especially for beginner investors. Otherwise, get Forbes or Fortune.
An update: I also e-mailed Amazon about this problem and – to their merit – they solved it immediately. While Smart Money still hasn’t replied to my original e-mail, once Amazon contacted them, they added 2 more issues to my subscription. Big thanks goes again to the exceptional customer service from Amazon!
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