“Fellow investors, I have just lost a friend, and so have you. Jonathan Clements, the Wall Street Journal’s longtime, peerless personal-finance columnist, died of cancer on [Sept. 21, 2025]. He was 62.
“In his nearly two decades at the Journal, Jonathan wrote more than 1,000 columns in which he crusaded against high fees, lousy financial advice and mediocre investment management — and explored even bigger topics, like how to raise financially responsible children and how to use money to find happiness....
“His pen was sharp as a needle, but he wielded it with humor, grace and a confessional, personal touch. Readers felt they knew him — because they did. More than any commentator before or since, Jonathan made personal finance personal....
“He also mocked Wall Street’s jargon and empty verbiage. What does “We’re cautiously optimistic” mean? It means ‘We can’t figure out what’s going on,’ Jonathan wrote. What about “The stock market was down on technical factors”? That, he explained, means ‘We have no idea why shares fell.’
“His definition of futures? ‘Trade these too much, and you won’t have one.’
“Jonathan also repeatedly wrote about the importance of spending money not on possessions, but on experiences with friends and family and on causes you care about. To him, money wasn’t the end all and be all, but only a means to an end...
“From the first words Jonathan wrote as a WSJ columnist, he knew who he was and how to reach people: the lead paragraph that smacks you between the eyes; the clear, calm, confident prose and impeccably sensible advice; the logic and empathy that registered with readers like the words of a wise, fair and loyal friend.”
From a 9/23/25 “Intelligent Investor” column by Wall Street Journal writer Jason Zweig.
