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Kiplinger's Review

Cost:
1 year: $12.00

Published: monthly

Web site:
www.kiplingers.com

Kiplinger's is a monthly personal finance magazine that has been published since 1947 under different names. About 2/3rds of their content is about personal financial and about 1/3 of their content is about investing. The magazine focuses on a few areas (the share of their content in each area is in parenthesis):

Personal Finance - Money (45%)
These are articles that deal with financial issues, like: saving, budgeting, retirement, taxes, and credit cards. This also includes any content related to spending money on items that: are necessities (your gas bill), require financial planning (e.g. college, healthcare, real estate), or are products that protect or enhance your wealth (e.g. insurance, real estate).
Personal Finance - Spending (20%)
These are articles that profile discretionary consumer products which people don't really need and don't benefit your wealth.
Investing - Outlook (20%)
These are outlooks, analysis, or specific recommendations on different markets. Most of the recommendations are for mutual funds but there are a decent number of individual stocks profiled, as well as an occasional mention of less-mainstream choices, like commodities.
Investing - Method (15%)
These are profiles of different investment strategies and investment products that investors can use. Some topics they have covered are: popular blogs to read, trying to time the market, tutorial on index funds and ETFs.

My Opinion

Kiplinger's is a much more advanced personal finance magazine than others on the market - like SmartMoney. They write with a higher level of intelligence and delve into some elements of personal finance that are not as obvious but central in a personal financial plan (like how to educate kids about money). They also have more timely information about the latest changes regarding taxes, regulations, and investment products. Many of these are found in their one-paragraph sidebars.

Unlike SmartMoney, they don't devote too much time to spending money. And the articles that they do have on discretionary spending deal with practical items, like: how much to tip, how to lower moving expenses, advice about gift cards, or their annual auto-buying review.

The investing outlooks they give tend to be balanced between specific recommendations on individual stocks and broad recommendations on different asset classes or mutual funds. They also have a decent number of articles about individual stocks.

My Recommendation

I highly recommend Kiplinger's for personal finance. They have very insightful articles on all aspects of personal finance. For active stock investors and traders, Kiplinger's is similar to other personal finance magazines. You can skim the magazine to read profiles of different stocks to come up with new investing ideas to do further research on.

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Kiplinger's Review

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