Email: Should you pay for personal-finance advice?

3 comments — written on July 12th, 2005

My friend JRK writes in asking if it’s worth it to pay for newsletter subscriptions.

Ok, with all the talk of friends asking you financial questions that make you want to scream, here’s another one:

What do you think of the value of newsletter subscriptions (the
various Motley Fool services being foremost among them)? They are
fairly expensive. At $200 they equate to 4% of a hypothetical annual
savings of $5000. That’s a lot. But it’s not the same as a 4%
annual fund load or something equally exorbitant, as it’s only 4% of
the annual investment (not 4% off all return on prior investment for
every year going forward, like a mutual fund load/fee).

At more than double the annualized S&P return over the last ten years
for some of their template portfolios, clearly it would have been
worth it over the last ten years. But it seems two problems remain:

1. Past success of course does not guarantee future success
2. Even if they are well intentioned and uniquely capable (unlike
most Wall Street advisors), they have reached a point of such great
respect and influence that it seems there is a risk that their advice
will loose value as their recommendations come to influence such a
huge segment of the investing public

Still, their free content and approaches seem so fantastic, it seems
possible that their paid services really are all they’re cracked up
to be.

So, what do you think? Or, to phrase it as a question for which you
can yell about how stupid I am:

HEY RAMIT I”M THINKING I”M GONNA START PAYING FOR A MOTLEY FOOL RULE BREAKERS SUBSCRIPTION? IS THAT A GOOD IDEA OR SHOULD I JUST HAVE MY PARENTS SCHWAB ADVISOR THROW MY MONEY IN WITH THEIRS?? TNX!!

Thanks.
-jrk

My take:
1. They’re not worth it almost ever
2. The problem is you don’t know which are good and which are not
3. They necessarily encourage you to focus on short-term goals because it would be boring to say “Hey just go w/the same ones i picked 5 yrs ago!!”

By the way, I talked to a couple friends about this and they said “You shouldn’t say that because if you ever decide to start a paid newsletter, you won’t be able to charge for it.” My friends are always looking out for me. So let me be the first to say that, while I might one day start a paid service, it will NEVER EVER be a newsletter about which hot stocks you should buy.