With 2013 rapidly approaching, it’s time to get both your holiday meals and your fiscal house in order. The following mags can help with one of these tasks.
Even in the economy’s darkest hours, Money always offers ways to help. Its year-end review explains why bets on old media — e.g., the handful of entertainment-news conglomerates — beat bets on new-media biggies like Facebook and others. Old-media shares are ahead 34 percent this year, triple the S&P 500, while Facebook is off more than 40 percent. The reason: Americans love watching TV, particularly sports and hot series, with fees from content surpassing ad revenue in many cases. Another tip: Don’t buy “certified” used cars; dealers will OK anything with four wheels, the mag warns. Money’s main premise for hope in 2013 is that jobs are returning, while consumer debt keeps shrinking. One article — “How to Plug 35 Money Leaks”— says you can save thousands with fixes such as getting annual quotes on home and auto insurance of rivals before renewing.
Kiplinger’s promises 6 percent yields in a tepid 1 percent world of yields, with a plan to invest in preferred securities — hybrids that are part bonds and part stocks. Some such funds Kiplinger’s cites get 6.5 percent yields. The magazine also ranks the 100 best values in private colleges, led by Yale and followed by Rice University and Princeton, all due to deep-pocketed aid to about half its students, and classifying families with $200,000 in annual income as “needy,” and eligible to tap campus poor boxes to slash college tabs. After-graduation debt for these top schools is about $6,000 versus $30,000 or higher at other campuses. Among some last-chance tax savings, no matter what Congress does, says Kiplinger’s, are paying 2013 real estate taxes this year, and maxing out your tax-deferred “catch up” contributions to 401 (k) plans. Among hints for home savings: Switch to LED bulbs rated to last 22 years, despite prices of $15 to $22 per bulb, because they use 80 percent less energy for the same illumination from incandescents.
It could be time to grab another housing investment. Personal Real Estate Investor is back in the limelight since housing has now bottomed out with a shortage of brokers, a shrinking glut of bargain homes and safer lending opportunities. The monthly magazine, once a bible for real estate entrepreneurs, says that this time around there are several big differences for the better. Technology is faster for home-hunting and deal-making, and government regulations are boosting the industry with the JOBS Act that slashes red tape and costs for deals. Smart money is starting to move into converting unsold homes into rentals, with demand rising in Sun Belt spots like Florida and the West Coast, the magazine says.
For those still struggling amid the economic “recovery,” Inc. confronts some tough truths. “Job creators don’t like creating jobs,” declares columnist Norm Brodsky. “I constantly search for ways to maximize the productivity of the people we have, rather than adding to the head count.” While the unemployed may bristle at that, the situation for small-business owners is equally tough. A couple of excellent pieces — one about an organic meat producer whose barn burned to the ground and another about successful businesses hit by tightened credit — point plausible ways out of the mess.
The New Yorker’s “Food Issue” usually gives us indigestion, with its fussy frippery and oversize helpings of fat-cat indulgence. This time around, however, we found a few things to chew on. There’s the piece on the growth of “legally questionable supper clubs and dinner parties in unofficial spaces,” and another about a delicious plate of samosas in Pakistan said to have been infused with a sinister magic spell. We particularly admired the heiress to Paris’ most famous bread bakery, who says she’s more interested in making “some very good quality bread” than in creating a baguette-based business empire.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, whose ability to crank out cover stories for New York has made us wonder whether he’s hopped up on meth himself (Joke!), writes in a thoughtful piece that the War on Drugs is giving way to a “negotiated surrender.” In addition to the votes to legalize pot in Washington and Colorado, law enforcement is loosening up in some cases, getting smarter in others. The cokehead population has been halved since 2006. But while speakeasies seamlessly converted back into bars after Prohibition, “there is no similar memory of the neighborhood marijuana cafe, no history of the harmless, corporatist transit of cocaine.” Get to work, America!
Concerned that tuna is being overfished to extinction? Dr. Oz counters in Time that “canned tuna is a marvel of food preservation and taste.” It’s all very well to be worried about animal welfare and other assorted queasy aspects of the food industry. But if you got confused by the environmentalists, Oz is here to point out that the canned, processed, hormone-injected stuff is cheaper and just as healthy, If slave-produced chocolate bothers you, “Organic, 100 percent fair trade is a top-shelf pick to satisfy cravings and ease guilt,” Oz admits. But a Hershey has “disease-fighting flavonoids” while costing less. As for eggs,“Cage-free is kinder but much pricier,” according to Oz. Lock ’em up, I guess.