topolski's Full Review: SmartMoney Magazine Subscription
Sooner or later, I always subscribe to Kiplingers Personal Finance Magazine. The articles are short and to the point, there's something there from soup to nuts, and the magazine was easy to read.
Was.
About a year ago, they changed the format of the magazine. The print seems smaller, it's harder to thumb through and browse, and it just seemed to be a less-rewarding read.
Meanwhile, I love reading The Wall Street Journal. But I never have had the time or the patience for reading a big, bulky and dirty newspaper every day. I've been a subscriber, twice, and dropped it both times. I also subscribed to the website, loved it but hated the annual fee and the daily spam. So I dropped that.
Now, finally, SmartMoney is the best of both worlds. It has the world-class editing of the Wall Street Journal and the variety and readability of my old Kiplingers.
I bought it off the rack in the airport in Portland, while enroute on a business trip to San Francisco. The rack price is only $2.95, an excellent deal for a $5 magazine (I thought the clerk made a mistake).
When I got to the hotel in San Francisco, I dialed up the web site on my trusty laptop and subscribed for the longest available term.
On the con side...
In the June issue that I bought the last week of May was an article about Priceline. I've had a lot of good experiences with Priceline but the SmartMoney article was a pan. I found a lot of the quotes in the article came from right here on epinions.com but it was clear that the reporter had contacted these people further and gathered more information about their cases. But if you look up Priceline here on epinions.com, it's not hardly as bad as SmartMoney claimed it was.
I got my first subscription magazine, the July issue, around June 20th. This was great. However, I got the June issue in the mail the next day, the same issue I had in my hands when I subscribed. The label indicates that my last issue will be "APR02" which I translate as April 2002. It should be June 2002. A call to customer service, which was answered politely and promptly, fixed both problems.
On the pro side...
The July issue is better than the June issue, and I'm only halfway through it. It contains one article about Stock Screens that talks about a new way of looking at the Dogs of the Dow strategy. Not only did it explain it simply enough for me to grasp it, it was very appropriate for the style of investing that I'm interested in -- unemotional, screen investing. This is pretty boring stuff, usually, but SmartMoney approached it very well.
12 issues - SmartMoney Magazine presents practical, yet highly imaginative strategies for investing, spending and saving. Reporting on a wide range of...More at SuperMagDeals.com
12 issues - SmartMoney Magazine presents practical, yet highly imaginative strategies for investing, spending and saving. Reporting on a wide range of...More at Subscription Addiction
SmartMoney magazine features spending and investing advice from the Wall Street Journal. Find articles on personal finance, lifestyle, business, techn...More at Magazines.com
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