Magazines

[judith_s]

Someone whose livejournal I read regularly because of here interesting views on language ozarque just said: "If you've been reading this journal a while you're aware that I read every issue of Forbes, in order to get an idea of the worldview of the prototypical Rich Person -- and that I've learned a tremendous amount about the way an RP defines his or her terms."

Now I know that folks who really are well off don't particularly care for Forbes. But is there another, more real, magazine that is targeted at the person who is really rich, and not just a wannabe?

Comments

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Forbes is not a magazine for them, it is a magazine about them.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

Right, but the attitude it represents (how much debt you can acquire indicates how rich you are) is not that of a rich person, but of someone who wants to pretend to be rich.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you could expand on how it represents that worldview..

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I'd guess you're mostly right, but you might be skewing slightly by the advertising found in Forbes (and, gaaaah, The Robb Report): that of companies seeking to serve price elastic conspicuous consumers, and thereby separate them from (some of) their money (just what is it about watches with complications?).

I read Forbes for quite a number of years (both before and after Malcolm S. Forbes died), and have let the subscription lapse for a number of reasons. Steve Forbes is rather a bland character, and the magazine has suffered as a result. They have always been champions of the notion that the fortunes of a company are directly the result of the CEO and thus are a cheerleading section for that notion and the individuals who inhabit it. However, prior to Malcolm S. Forbes' demise, they were also not afraid to print articles saying, "this guy is a crook; avoid doing business with him" and dare the object of the article to sue them. Those articles are gone. They also don't cover things in as much technical depth as they used to.

By contrast, The Economist published a piece by Ben Bernanke about a month before he was appointed to be chairman of The Fed (on a global savings glut - I'm not sure I believe that and they seemed a touch skeptical too). I don't always agree with them, but they're a much more interesting read than Forbes, and have been for many, many years - that magazine was floating around the house when I was growing up; I remember reading it (and the late, lamented Punch) in my teens (though I understand it a lot better now than I did then).

I don't consider myself rich, although I am reasonably well off. For me, the amount of debt I can immediately incur is more useful for immediate needs (oh, dear, I need to go to NYC, right now so I whip out the credit card and charge airline tickets, hotel, etc.), rather than as a means to live beyond my means.

neonchameleon said that s/he considered the amount of time it would take to not work and thus fall into penury as a measure of being rich; if the period was measured in years, then you're rich. The catch with that measure is that it depends entirely on your run rate. Carefully done, I should be able to avoid any requirement to work for a living for the rest of my life, however, that doesn't mean I have no budget; if I wanted (or were foolish), I could probably blow it all within a month or three, living very profligately. The two things that prevent me from doing that are that conspicuous consumption for its own sake holds little or no appeal for me, and, damnit, I want value for my money! (odds are that those two attitudes are related).

One other data point that is tangentially related: my father once told me that of the characteristics crunched on in credit scoring, income bore absolutely no relationship to creditworthiness, i.e. ability to repay debt does not correlate to willingness to repay debt.

[r-wolfcastle.livejournal.com]

A magazine whose stated mission is to serve, in their own words, the "truly wealthy" is Worth. "Worth covers the philanthropic, personal finance, business and lifestyle issues faced by individuals whose focus has shifted from obtaining wealth to the challenges of managing it."

http://www.worth.com/About-Us/Index.asp

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Where is their annual survey of the best cities/countries to live in from a value of services rendered to tax bite ratio perspective? Or the list of best citizenships to have, and the cost to buy them? How about an optimal list countries/tax jurisdictions to spread your wealth around in, such that a grab in any one jurisdiction doesn't tax you into penury?

I understand that The Economist Intelligence Unit has (rather expensive) reports on these sorts of questions ...

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

I take this to mean that you wouldn't consider Worth particularly useful in representing what you care about. Is Forbes any better? Is there a magazine that is?

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The list of articles I found on their web site is interesting fodder, but consider that once you reach a certain level, you don't deal with these issues directly - you hire other people to do it for you, who are experts because they do this for a whole lot of people just like you (or even people who are worth a whole lot more). So, I do business with an accountancy, and I have an investments manager, both of whom I pay to have answers to the questions that I have, the concerns I fret about, etc. At some point I should also add a private banker...

You want another magazine subscription that I bet "rich people" have? How about Consumer Reports? I subscribe, and to the extent that other well off people also want value for their money as I do, bet the demographics of their subscriber base would be interesting to know.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

To carry my previous thought a little farther, the magazines to read if you really want the details would likely be things like Modern Accountancy, Investment Manager Monthly, and Large Estate Planning Quarterly, i.e. publications targeted at those who serve the really rich (those titles are just guesses). Such publications are likely to have news about what's changing in terms of customer expectations and concerns, changes in the law, suggested techniques, etc.

Rich people don't need a magazine.

[learnteach.livejournal.com]

It's like real playboys: They don't have time to focus away from what they're doing to read a magazine about what people think they're doing. They're doing what they do. This is not as precise as I'd like it to be, but the idea seems clear.

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't know about business magazines aimed at the rich, but you may like to check out Architectural Digest and Town & Country (at least it used to be).