In Memory of Jonathan Clements

As many of you have surely heard, financial columnist Jonathan Clements died last week as a result of the cancer he was battling for the last year.

On a personal level, I did not know Jonathan well. I only had the pleasure of meeting him in person once, at a White Coat Investor Conference several years ago in Park City, Utah.

But, like many of you I’m sure, I felt like I knew Jonathan well through his writing.

In college, as a business major, we were encouraged to read the Wall Street Journal regularly. As a student in general, I diligently did as I was told. But I soon realized that, to put it bluntly, the Journal was mostly a flood of useless information. What was I supposed to do with the knowledge that some company was planning to open a new facility somewhere — or that a major executive had been hired somewhere?

Jonathan’s writing was an exception. Here was somebody selecting a relevant personal finance topic, sharing how he navigated it in his own life, discussing valuable research on the topic, and then closing with a bit of humor that poked fun at the financial industry (or in many cases, at himself or at financial journalism in general). It was useful. It was fun to read.

And not so many years later as I stumbled into a career of personal finance writing myself, I came to have an even deeper appreciation for Jonathan’s writing. It was clear, with as little jargon as possible. It was a lesson in brevity. And it was directly relevant. This was the good stuff.

If you appreciated Jonathan’s work as I did, you may appreciate the articles below, especially the one that he himself wrote for this occasion.

And if you’d like to do something in his honor, Jonathan himself already told us what he’d like, when he came up with the idea that has become the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative. Please consider making a donation. And thank you, to all of you who already have.