Dear Smart Money Magazine Editors,
For three years, I’ve been a loyal subscriber and reader of Smart Money Magazine. It was always a well-written magazine with solid advice. The articles and stock picks were often winners, and the writers always gave compelling arguments and entertaining insight.
However, over these years, I’ve come to watch your magazine turn into a pile of non-technical financial fluff with egregious amounts of cardboard inserts, advertisement-fueled centerfolds, and consumer-driven spending spree recommendations.
I could handle the tripling of cardboard inserts and ads over the past year. My first mission upon opening a newly arrived Smart Money was to tear out all cardboard and throw it away. Seriously though, if I’m a subscriber to your magazine, how many damned business reply mail cards do I need to re-subscribe to the mag? Isn’t one enough?
I could also handle the annoying centerfold-style articles that span four pages so that Smart Money can sell monstrous ads to Genworth Financial and T. Rowe Price. But as much as I love looking like a complete jackass while gawking over an enormous centerfold on a crowded airplane, I prefer to keep my centerfolds in magazines that do NOT sport pictures of Ben Bernanke.
However, the tipping point for my frustration with your publication came in the December 2007, with the cover article Best of Everything — 9 New Splurges You Deserve.
Let me tell you Smart Money hypocrites something – if I am subscribed to something titled Smart Money Magazine, chances are that I don’t want to read your recommendations for a 3,450 dollar fucking watch. How dare you insult me with your half-assed third of a page to recommend plasma TVs! And I certainly don’t need you telling me where to get a road bike or silk scarves of all things. You call this SMART money?
If I want to find the best television, guess where the last place I’m going to look for advice is: that’s right, a financial magazine. If I needed a buying guide, I would go get Consumer Fucking Reports, not your joke of a monthly publication.
So essentially, the money I’ve paid you this past year to give me financial advice has gone towards receiving advertisements and learning how to piss away my money on your recommended product-placement-driven luxary goods?
Well guess what Smart Money – I’m done with you. My subscription ended with that December edition and you will not be receiving any more money from me. Good luck with your spa bathrobe recommendations to your moron customers who sit in debt while I read how to actually properly SAVE money from your competition.
Sincerely, Mike Roberto Hermosa Beach, CA
So I’m now on a mission to find a REAL financial magazine, something with real technical analysis, a worldview, written and edited by people who aren’t complete sell-outs. I’m currently thinking of getting The Economist, which is an England-based weekly news magazine. Despite being less financial-based, having four times the content will more than make up for Smart Money’s monthly blundering babble.
Any recommendations would be appreciated.
By Lon December 17, 2007 - 11:00 am
I have been s subscriber to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance for a couple years now. While they have also recently discovered the difficult to read on the can centerfold article, the content is actually finance based. I have picked up Money magazine on occasion and KPF kicks it’s ass every time. You may find them a little slow though as this month they are recommending Cemex which you were all about last month.