Wednesday, July 16, 1997

Many finance sites have articles plus much, much more

By R.F. SHARP / Knight-Ridder Newspapers

If you're shopping around for new financial magazines, the World Wide Web offers you the opportunity to preview a few of them, free of charge, and with none of those annoying subscription cards falling into your lap.

Many of the sites offer perks you won't find in the magazines - things like stock quotes, links to other investment sites and breaks on subscriptions to the hard-copy versions.

Of course, one of the disadvantages of these sites is it's hard to access the Web while you're waiting at the dentist's office.

Fortune

http://pathfinder.com/fortune/

In addition to much of the magazine's content, this site also features market updates and online forums to discuss topics raised in the magazine.

Money

http://money.com/

The Money site offers you investment headlines, the chance to set up a personal portfolio and guides to investing, retirement, taxes and other financial topics.

Mutual Funds

http://www.mfmag.com/

This site requires that you register prior to using it - a simple matter of filling out a short form - but once you've registered, you have access to a wide variety of fund-related tools, including ticker symbols and phone numbers for funds, the previous day's winning and losing funds, a glossary, fund performance calculators and much more.

Smart Money

http://www.dowjones.com/smart/

One of the better magazines actually has one of the lamer Web sites, by comparison to its peers, featuring only a few articles from the magazine, promos for the current issue and little else of interest.

Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/

The Forbes site offers a number of nice features, including current and past issues of the magazine and online forums to discuss the topics raised in the magazine. Most useful, the site also features a searchable archive that allows you to search past issues by either keyword or concept.

Kiplinger's

http://kiplinger.com/

Like the magazine, this site packs a lot of useful information in one small package. Here you'll find daily tax tips, tools to help you figure out your mortgage payments and other financial calculations, retirement planning advice, stories from the current issue of the magazine, stock quotes, answers to frequently asked financial questions and much more. This site is well worth a visit.