Does anyone think any of the financial magazines are worth a subscription? I'm not sure I do. I have subscribed to Forbes, Fortune, Worth and Smart Money and dropped them all.
I'm with W2R-- it's hard to find a magazine worth paying for when you can read it on the Web.
The
ONLY financial magazine that I enjoy reading is Highline Media's "Wealth Manager". It's free if you [-]lie[/-] claim to be a financial professional. (The reality is that they're begging you to [-]receive their junk mail[/-] bulk up their mailing lists & advertiser rates.) The reason I enjoy reading it is because it usually has the unvarnished truth about how you're perceived by financial-management firms along with a rational discussion of their expenses & concerns. It's a great "know thine enemy" insight into what's running through their minds while they're talking to us. They get into the nitty-gritty of financial products, taxes, and estate planning without sales talk. And if someone does something slimy or sleazy it's usually exhaustively analyzed for a summary of how to reassure the customers and how to avoid being taken the same way.
We ditched Business Week because [-]I'm presbyopic[/-] I've usually read it all on their website before the magazine arrives 4-5 days later. The same problem is becoming readily apparent with Scientific American (let alone their tendency to see political conspiracy everywhere). I'd ditch Family Handiman if it wasn't for their [-]ads[/-] new-tool articles.
I keep a subscription to the U.S. Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS monthly because [-]I bought a life membership in 1982[/-] I get an illicit thrill from deciding not to read articles instead of worrying that the chain of command would want us to be able to discuss them. I subscribe to the alumni magazine, despite their mailing-list problems, because I like reading the history articles and looking at [-]how fat & old my classmates are getting[/-] our class photos.
Otherwise we'd be magazine-free.
As for those real-life retiree articles, let me tell you about mine. Fortune's reporter, who is actually pretty good compared to other interview stories I've heard, spent about 30 minutes on the phone with me and a couple of followup e-mails through an assistant. If she understood why military retirees want a high-equity portfolio, she didn't ask about bonds or volatility. If she understood the concept of SWR, she didn't ask about it. For all she attempted to engage on financial issues, if I'd blathered on about beever cheeze futures it would've shown up in print without any sort of credibility check or common-sense filtering. If she made any attempt to verify any details other than spelling & military terminology, I was unable to tell. While the fact-checking was minimal, the verification was absolutely unidentifiable-- I could've been a [-]14-year-old from Missoula[/-] convicted felon or even H0cus. And that's the
best conversation I've had with a reporter from a financial magazine.
As for "value reporting", the money they spent on me was absolutely bewildering. I could've e-mailed JPEGs for them to include in their article, although admittedly most people's photos aren't suitable for that use. I was interviewed by phone from Manhattan about two weeks before I was actually scheduled to
be in Manhattan, so they could've easily snapped a mugshot in their lobby. Instead they flew two freelance photographers to Hawaii for one photo. To get that one photo we spent four hours in Waikiki surf and another two hours at my taekwondo dojang and snapped at least 800 film exposures. Every roll was developed (via overnight express to FORTUNE) and most of it was printed. I was just one of five people interviewed for one article.
I don't know how they charge enough in advertising to stay profitable, let alone pay their reporters enough salary to tempt them to do a proper job of research.
