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Every Amateur Investor Should Subscribe; Information You Can Actually Use
Date of Review: Jul 31, 2006
The Bottom Line: Money Magazine is my new personal financial advisor and hopefully its sage advice will help me navigate the pitfalls of personal investing.
Okay, I'll admit it my latest job move left us with a little more disposable income, and a pay raise last month helped immensely. So we now have more money to invest, but I do not want to pay someone to do it for me, I want to keep my hands on my own stash thank you very much. But I will admit I need practical advice on where to invest my money, not only for retirement, but for my 11-year-old's college education.
I briefly though about subscribing to Fortune Magazine, but quickly dismissed the magazine: too upscale with little practical advice to the average middle class American. I have long read the Money Magazine section on CNN.com, and found the information timely and utilitarian in the extreme. So I decided to subscribe to the print edition.
Money Magazine, which bills itself as the magazine "For you, your family, your future," is a monthly rag published by Time Warner Inc. The magazine covers a broad swath of personal money matters from investing in education to sound retirement advice; from which stocks and bonds are the best long range pick, to the best places to live in America.
Checking in at 156 pages (this issue), Money Magazine is refreshingly free of endless pages of wall-to-wall advertising, though every other page does tend to be an advertisement; I guess they have to pay the bills somehow. But the advertisements contained within do not interfere with information presented in the magazine, nor do they compromise the quality. From cover to cover, page-to-page Money Magazine has proven a very useful reference source on all matter concerning personal finance.
Regular sections in the magazine include:
o Features: feature length articles;
o Start: tips and helpful shorts on money management;
o Plan: planning for retirement, and other financial planning articles;
o Home: tips and articles dealing with the home;
o Invest: investment tips and stock, bonds, and mutual funds;
o Spend: smart ways to spend your money.
The latest issue featured the magazines seminal "America's Best Places to Live" issue, in which the periodical lists the best place to bring up a family based on certain criterion, including Education, Jobs/Economy, Safety, Ease of Living, Arts/Leisure, and Park Space. I was pleasantly surprised to find two cities I used to live on the list.
Other articles in this months (August 2006) magazine include
o The Last 401(K) Guide You'll Ever Need; five rules that really matter.
o America's Best Places to Live
o Everything You Know About Kids and Money is Wrong; teaching kids about money doesn't work. Here's what needs to be done.
o Hidden Assets; that dusty folder with the old savings bonds, forgotten gift certificates and yellowed insurance policies may hold some real treasures.
o Can Money Buy Happiness; research sheds light on how you can (and can't) spend your way to a sunnier outlook.
o Quest For The Simple Life; the Edels have raised frugal living to an art. In our consumer culture, that's anything but simple.
The articles for the most part are well written, concise, and comprehensive. The most useful part is the detailed advice on stock, bonds, and mutual funds picks. There is never a hard sell; the information is presented in a well laid out and easy to read format. For instance in the Invest section of this months magazine, Money laid out a listing of (70) blue-chip growth stock one could invest in the long haul. For each stock the magazine listed the name of the stock, including ticker symbol, Price, 1-Month Return, 12-month Return, P/E Ratio, Earnings Growth, and Yield of the particular stock. The same format is repeated for bonds and mutual funds throughout the magazine.
But not all is sunshine and glossy pages. Though I found the recent article on The Best Places to Live in America useful; it was short of a lot of pertinent information. Cary, NC caught my wife's eye as a possible retirement spot, but the print article was short on detail. On-line however, a lot more information was to be had including the median family income for the area, as well as median home price, and tax information. The content on-line was much more involved; this is both a curse and a blessing; a curse for those who lack Internet access and a blessing for those who don't mind gleaming more information on-line. I have Internet access and I would have preferred to get the information from the magazine' print edition, or both places.
Other than that one decidedly minor quibble, I have no qualms recommending Money Magazine to anyone who asks. The magazine is my new personal financial advisor and hopefully its sage advice will help me navigate the pitfalls of personal investing.
