Kiplinger


Kiplinger is an American publisher of business forecasts and personal finance advice which is a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing.
Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc., was a closely held company managed for more than nine decades by three generations of the Kiplinger family, until its sale in February 2019 to Dennis Publishing, a U.K.-based media company.

History

, a former AP economics reporter, founded the eponymous Washington, D.C. company in 1920. With his son Austin H. Kiplinger he co-founded Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine in 1947. Grandson Knight A. Kiplinger continued the dynasty until the 2019 sale to Dennis Publishing.

Products

Its best-known publications are The Kiplinger Letter, a weekly business and economic forecasting periodical for people in management, and the monthly Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.
Kiplinger also provides custom publishing services to a variety of companies and associations.
Kiplinger answers the queries of its readers as a regular feature of their subscriptions, filling requests for additional information on any subject its publications covers, by phone, mail or email.

The Kiplinger Letter is a four-page weekly that tries to alert its clients to what is likely to happen in business and the economy, legislation and regulation in Washington and the state, demographics, technology, world affairs, politics and investing.
Launched in 1923, The Kiplinger Letter pioneered a terse, colloquial writing style in which the key points of each topic are underscored for easy scanning. In a technique W. M. Kiplinger devised and dubbed "sweep-line," each line of copy—the full width of the page—ends in hard punctuation at the right margin, not breaking awkwardly to wrap around to the next line.
It continued during the Great Depression, when W. M. Kiplinger and his staff had contacts within FDR’s "brain trust." The newsletter doesn't quote or cites sources, both to save space and to encourage sources to speak candidly without the risk of being identified in print; longer versions in Kiplinger.com may identify these sources.

''Kiplinger's Personal Finance''

The monthly Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine advises its readers on managing their money, covering investing, retirement planning, taxes, insurance, real estate, buying and leasing a car, health care, travel and financing college. It has a paid average monthly circulation in 2017 of 600,000 copies per month, sold mostly by subscription but also on newsstands.
Founded in 1947 as Kiplinger Magazine, it was the first magazine to offer money management advice to the American people. Kiplinger Magazine changed its name to Changing Times in 1949, and it was known by that name until 1991, when it renamed itself Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. For 33 years after its founding, it existed entirely on subscription and single-copy revenue, but in 1980 it began carrying advertising within its pages.
The second magazine of personal finance, Money from Time, Inc., was started in 1973. Money ceased print publication in 2019, and Kiplinger's Personal Finance acquired roughly 400,000 of the remaining subscribers. Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance, now defunct, was launched in the 1980s. The 1990s saw a proliferation of new personal finance periodicals, including SmartMoney, and such now-defunct magazines as Your Money, Family Money, and Bloomberg's Personal Finance. Worth magazine started out as a personal finance publication but later repositioned itself as a lifestyle guide for the very rich. Following a shake-out after the recession of the 2000s, the personal-finance magazine category was down to two--Money and Kiplinger's. As of August 2019, Kiplinger's Personal Finance is the only remaining monthly personal finance magazine published in the United States.
Editorially, Kiplinger's magazine has championed over the decades a number of personal finance strategies and investment products that later became popular "conventional wisdom": the superiority of systematic investing over market timing; growth stocks that paid little or no dividends but invested in new technologies; mutual funds, especially no-load funds; stock index funds; term life insurance, rather than whole-life; and global investing.

Kiplinger.com

Kiplinger's Web site, launched in 1996, is the home of both its personal finance and business forecasting content, including current coverage and archived material. It features an array of money management tools, calculators, columns, quizzes, slideshows, infographics, features, and videos. Popular channels include Wealth Creation, Investing, and Retirement. Single-subject Special Reports cover taxes, mutual funds, smart shopping, college finance, auto buying and ownership, small business, and travel, among other topics.

''Kiplinger's Retirement Report''

This 75,000 circulation monthly periodical, begun in 1993, covers all the key concerns of affluent older Americans—investing, taxes, estate planning, Social Security, health, long-term care, leisure and travel, housing.

''Kiplinger's Investing for Income''

This monthly newsletter from Kiplinger provides advice to 14,000 subscribers looking for cash yield from their investments, often to supplement a fixed income. It covers less well-known cash yield investments such as stocks and mutual funds as alternatives to more traditional CDs and US Treasury bonds.

Special issues and products

Kiplinger publishes an array of single-topic newsstand issues and special products, including a mutual fund annual, Success with Your Money, and the Retirement Planning Guide.
The Custom Publishing Division creates house-branded newsletters, pamphlets, and web features for a variety of enterprises, including banks, associations, and military organizations.