Porter, Sylvia F(ield)

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PORTER, Sylvia F(ield)

Born 18 June 1913, Patchogue, New York; died 5 June 1991, Pound Ridge, New York

Wrote under: Sylvia Porter, S. F. Porter

Daughter of Louis and Rose Maisel Feldman; married Reed R.Porter, 1931 (divorced 1941); G. Summer Collins, 1943 (died 1977); James F. Fox, 1979; children: Cris, Summer

Sylvia Field Porter was well known as a syndicated financial columnist, whose guides that helped middle-class Americans learn to save and invest their money became bestsellers in the 1970s and 1980s. Putting the complicated terminology and procedures of economics into plain language, Porter provided a rare service for those with no access to a personal financial adviser. Although the advice was necessarily superficial and not adjusted to an individual's situation, Porter's investment guides were valued as advice suitable for beginning investors.

Porter was born in Patchogue, New York, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia. When she was twelve, her father, a physician, died of a heart attack. In 1929 Porter switched her major from English and history at Hunter College to economics after her mother, a milliner, lost $30,000 invested in the stock market crash that triggered the Depression. Graduating magna cum laude in 1932, Porter then worked for a bond dealer for $15 a week and later worked at many different Wall Street firms, while also managing to take a few graduate classes at the New York School of Business Administration.

Porter's writing career began with occasional financial columns in the American Banker and the New York Post. In 1936 the Post appointed her financial editor and gave her a daily column, "S. F. Porter Says." Originally, she used the byline S. F. Porter to conceal her gender. In 1939 she published her first book, How to Make Money in Government Bonds. When her second book, If War Comes to the American Home: How to Prepare for the Inevitable Adjustment, came out in 1942, its relative success caused the Post editors to run her photograph and change her byline to Sylvia Porter. Once the public learned she was female, she obtained a lecture circuit and got writing assignments in women's magazines and general publications.

The columns on bonds she had written for the American Banker led to her becoming editor of Reporting on Governments…Weekly Fixed Income Market Analysis in 1944. A weekly newsletter for banks, it covered interest-rate trends, fiscal policies, money markets, and investment strategy in the bond market. Porter's column, "Your Money," was first syndicated in 1947. She stayed with the Post until 1977, when she switched to the New York Daily News. From 1961 to 1978 she served on the Board of Editors of the World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook and wrote the annual economics survey article for the publication. As a contributing editor of the Ladies' Home Journal she wrote the monthly column "Spending Your Money."

Porter continued writing columns and books over the next several decades, garnering numerous awards and over a dozen honorary doctorate degrees. In 1943 she won the National Headliner's Club Medal for best financial and business reporting of 1942. The General Federation of Women's Clubs awarded her a medallion in 1960 for outstanding achievement in the field of finance. In 1964 she received the Meritorious Public Service Certificate from the Internal Revenue Service for an outstanding contribution to the greater understanding of the federal tax laws.

Porter's popularity was confirmed in 1975, when Sylvia Porter's Money Book: How to Earn It, Spend It, Invest It, Borrow It, and Use It to Better Your Life, a compendium of her syndicated newspaper columns, sold over 1,000,000 copies. Readers favored her ability not only to make economic jargon clear but also to write in a conversational, sometimes humorous, prose. The book provided advice on planning budgets, choosing work, purchasing, and making decisions about insurance, banking, housing, and credit. Some female critics, on the other hand, deplored its lack of understanding concerning divorced women's small alimony and child support payments and its ignorance about women's credit ratings. Porter was known, however, to criticize in her column government fiscal policies she considered to be unfair. Her column went on to be syndicated by Field Newspaper Syndicate in more than 400 newspapers that had a combined readership of over 40,000,000. Sylvia Porter's Income Tax Guide, published annually, also proved popular.

In 1984 Porter started a magazine, Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance. At the time, it was the third largest periodical in the finance field, behind Time, Inc.'s Money and Kiplinger's Changing Times. A stock market plunge in 1987 forced the magazine to fold, and in 1989 Kiplinger bought the list of 400,000 subscribers.

On 5 June 1991 in Pound Ridge, New York, Porter died of complications from emphysema. Her legacy of providing simple economic advice to laypeople was a forerunner that many now imitate. Her name continues to appear on a wide number of financial advice guides well into the 1990s.

Other Works:

The Nazi Chemical Trust in the United States (1942). How to Live within Your Income (with Jacob Kay Lasser, 1948). Money and You (1949). Managing Your Money (1953). How to Get More for Your Money (with Jacob Kay Lasser, 1961). Sylvia Porter's New Money Book for the 1980s (1979). Sylvia Porter's Your Own Money (1983). Sylvia Porter's Love and Money (1986). Sylvia Porter's Four Hundred and Forty-Two Tax Saving Tips (1988). Sylvia Porter's A Home of Your Own (1989). Sylvia Porter's Your Financial Security: Making Your Money Work at Every Stage of Your Life (1989). Sylvia Porter's Your Finances in the 1990s (1990). Sylvia Porter's Guide to Your Health Care: How You Can Have the Best Health Care for Less (1990). Sylvia Porter's Planning Your Retirement (1991).