Young Money, the Personal Finance Magazine for College Students
Monday, 10th September 2007 (by J.D.)This article is about Basics, Books
Todd Romer, excecutive director of Young Money magazine, recently sent me a couple of copies for review. Romer writes:
Young Money is published bi-monthly and is the only national money magazine for the college market. Our editorial objective is to inspire, inform and motivate today’s young adults to begin managing their money at an early age. We have increased our distribution now to nearly 140 schools.
I didn’t expect much from the magazine, but I’ll admit I was pleasantly surprised. Despite a couple of flaws, Young Money provides solid personal finance information aimed squarely at its target audience.
Each issue features a cover story profiling a celebrity. The April/May 2007 issue contained an interview with Cleveland Indians centerfielder Grady Sizemore. The June/July issue hooked up with “hip-hop’s new sensation”, Miss Issa. Each of these celebrity spotlights takes four of the magazines 32 pages. That’s too bad. While they’re mildly inspirational, they don’t have anything to do with personal finance.
Fortunately, the rest of the magazine is more focused, covering a variety of money topics. Each of the two issues I read included smart articles on entrepreneurship, one of the most-overlooked aspects of personal finance. Each issue also included information on cards, internships, and travel.
The April/May issue included an introduction to money market funds, information on maximizing your scholarship eligibility, and a seemingly irrelevant piece about the Macworld Expo that introduced the iPhone. The June/July issue offered two great articles on job hunting — one on résumés and one on interviews — three stories on entrepreneurship, and a special section on how to buy a car, including tips for responsible use of credit.
My favorite part of each issue was the last-page column from Sanyika Calloway Boyce, a financial fitness coach. In one issue she wrote about reaching financial goals, and in the other she described how to make the leap from living on a college budget to maintaining a real-world salary.
I didn’t find any bad advice in Young Money, and I found one or two things that could be of use for future stories at Get Rich Slowly. My only real complaint is with the celebrity profiles. Perhaps these are used as bait. Perhaps they’re the best way to attract a student’s eye. Perhaps a young woman will pick up Young Money to read about Miss Issa and then stick around to read about responsible use of credit. If this is the intention, I have no complaints.
Also, the layout is confusing at times, at least for an old guy like me. In more than once instance, the header information for an article — the title and author, etc. — were at the bottom of the page, which left me scratching my head.
Ultimately, I think Young Money does a good job of presenting personal finance topics in a way that’s accessible to college students. If you have a kid in college, the magazine would make a fine gift. If you’re a college student who has read Young Money, what are your thoughts?
You can learn more about the magazine, as well as sample actual articles, by visiting the Young Money web site.
looks like an interesting read. thanks for the heads up
Impressed with the concept, I decided to check out their Web site. I was greeted by an in-your-face, “Learn to Trade Currency,” advertisement! This is probably the last thing a young, college-age kid needs to get mixed up in and seems out of place on the home page of a magazine promoting responsible personal finance for young people. They would be smart to adopt an advertiser policy similar to yours, J.D.
I similarly like Young Money’s aims, and they had it at U Arizona, where I’m from. I was always disappointed by how simplistic it was. That said, I think it did a service to help bridge the gap between those college students with no financial-savvy, and those who would read something more advanced.
Would the mag be appropriate for a slightly younger audience too? I’m all for college kids getting the info, but I feel, quite rabidly, that personal finance is best introduced in early high school (if that late)– before kids have a chance to believe that they’re poor and student-endebted and “can’t” save, before they think of buying a car, or moving out, and especially before they see their first credit card offer.
And those celeb features? I wanna know what the young celebs are doing with their money. (or, shudder… maybe I don’t!)
Yikes, who designed their website. The article links and descriptions have the same formatting as Google ads. And the “contests” — I can’t tell if they’re site-sponsored or just really sneaky ads.
I picked up the copy with Sizemore on it because they had a stack of them for free on campus. I was drawn to it since it was called “young money” and I’ve been on a bit of a personal finance obsession for the past few months.
Overall, the magazine was a rather quick read, and had some good articles. I don’t know if I’d pay for it, seeing as it’s such a short magazine, and some of the articles were similar to many seen on pf blogs and in books, but I do think it would be a nice thing to have if you’re just starting out, getting used to college or the “real world” afterward.
I’m a college student, and I have gotten this magazine free as an insert to the campus newspaper for a few years. The celebrity profiles on the cover make it look stupid, and most of the copies end up in the bottom of the newspaper distribution bin. That said though, I usually look through it and the quality of the other articles is surprisingly good.
[...] Young Money, the Personal Finance Magazine for College Students @ Get Rich Slowly. This magazine was new to me (probably because I no longer qualify as young), so I thought I’d pass it along. [...]
Appreciate the variety of feedback to Young Money magazine and youngmoney.com. All very helpful as we continue to make tweaks to the magazine and website to be a leading source of information for today’s young adults when it comes to earning, managing, investing and spending money.
Hmm. On their site, I found an interesting article by pastors offering advice. On the one hand, most of it was good advice. Not too pushy, though it touched on topics like remembering your families traditions and faith tradition. At the same time, I wonder if having pastors tell people not to have premarital sex (or the previous stuff) is really appropriate for a financial magazine. Waiting for sex isn’t a bad idea in my book, but this sounds a lot more like Christian teen mags than secular (?) personal finance ones.
After reading the site a bit more, I found something else that was a bit disturbing.
http://www.youngmoney.com/entrepreneur/student_entrepreneurs/139
This tells the story of a guy who financed his own startup by putting $14,000 of expenses on his credit card. He makes t-shirts.
It could work. He says he had $14,000 available because he’s done a good job financially in the past, has good credit, etc.
Either it’s a great story of someone starting his own business….or a colossal flop. But I wonder if others will have the bright idea to finance their bright ideas using their credit card…which doesn’t seem like something a finance mag should be promoting.
I don’t know about “disturbing” Mrs. M– credit cards are a fairly common source of funding for new, very small businesses. That’s a pretty standard piece of bootstrapping advice. What rates he’s getting on his credit cards, and what kind of business plan he has might be a more important components of the equation.
Excellent point about the rates. I had been assuming a less-than-ideal rate, because most of my college-age friends and recent-grad friends have them.
At least it’ll be a learning experience for him.
Great posts. With full disclosure that I am with Young Money magazine, I would have to say that 99% of our content is not disturbing. Within our entrepreneurship content channel we will have many stories of young adults taking risks to begin and fulfill some of their dreams. Certainly not advisable to fund a start up on a credit card but I admire the courage and the risk taking knowing that in the end $14,000 is not much risk in the big picture of one’s life. Hope you have had a chance to read our other 900 articles that promote solid aspects of personal finance, of which, include the need to begin investing now and not wait until you are 30, 40 or 50 years of age.
I thought Young Money was decent when I read it in college. I found that the layout slightly cluttered and the stories a bit trite, but all in all, not bad.
[...] copies of Young Money magazine to check out recently. I first saw a review of the publication on Get Rich Slowly and I was intrigued with the prospect of a personal finance magazine targeted towards college [...]