The influential personal finance journalist reflects on his recent cancer diagnosis, what he wants his legacy to be, and the two things that have brought him the most joy.
Today on the podcast, we welcome back Jonathan Clements. Jonathan was one of our first guests when we launched this podcast, and today marks his third appearance. He’s the founder and editor of HumbleDollar, and he has written or edited several books about money and investing, including My Money Journey and How to Think About Money. Earlier in his career, Jonathan spent almost 20 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he was the newspaper’s personal finance colonist and six years at Citigroup, where he was director of financial education for the bank’s US Wealth Management arm. This past June, Jonathan shared his devastating recent cancer diagnosis, and he’s been writing candidly about the experience on HumbleDollar. We’ll link to those posts in the show notes. I wanted to conduct today’s interview solo because Jonathan’s work has been hugely influential to me personally, and he also wrote the foreword to my forthcoming book. I couldn’t be more grateful.
Background
“Jonathan Clements: ‘It’s in Wall Street’s Interest to Make Everyday Investors Think That They Are Stupid,’” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, July 31, 2019.
“Jonathan Clements: ‘Humility Is a Hallmark of People Who Are Financially Successful,’” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, Dec. 26, 2023.
Books
My Money Journal: How 30 People Found Financial Freedom—And You Can Too
From Here to Financial Happiness: Enrich Your Life in Just 77 Days
Articles
“Turned Upside Down,” by Jonathan Clements, humbledollar.com, Oct. 5, 2024.
“Never Quite Enough,” by Jonathan Clements, humbledollar.com, Sept. 21, 2024.
“Opinion: Living Was Easy. Dying Is Harder,” by Jonathan Clements, washingtonpost.com, Aug. 28, 2024.
Other
How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement, by Christine Benz, Forward by Jonathan Clements
EGFR Exon 20 Insertion Mutation and Lung Cancer
“FDA Approves Amivantamab-vmjw for EGFR Exon 20 Insertion-Mutated Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Indications,” fda.gov, March 1, 2024.
“Jonathan Guyton: What the Crisis Means for Retirement Planning,” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, June 17, 2020.
“Bill Bernstein: Revisiting the Four Pillars of Investing,” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, July 11, 2023.
“Jason Zweig: Temperament Is Everything for Most Investors,” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, June 29, 2021.
Christine Benz: Hi, and welcome to The Long View. I’m Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.
Today on the podcast, we welcome back Jonathan Clements. Jonathan was one of our first guests when we launched this podcast, and today marks his third appearance. He’s the founder and editor of HumbleDollar, and he has written or edited several books about money and investing, including My Money Journey and How to Think About Money. Earlier in his career, Jonathan spent almost 20 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he was the newspaper’s personal finance colonist and six years at Citigroup, where he was director of financial education for the bank’s US Wealth Management arm. This past June, Jonathan shared his devastating recent cancer diagnosis, and he’s been writing candidly about the experience on HumbleDollar. We’ll link to those posts in the show notes. I wanted to conduct today’s interview solo because Jonathan’s work has been hugely influential to me personally, and he also wrote the foreword to my forthcoming book. I couldn’t be more grateful.
Jonathan, welcome back to The Long View.
Jonathan Clements: Christine, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me back on.
Benz: Well, of course. There’s so much that we want to discuss with you, and we wanted to start by talking about your recent cancer diagnosis. You’ve been writing about it, and you wrote about kind of stumbling upon it, how you went in for a prescription for an antibiotic and came out with this devastating diagnosis. That must have been so shocking. Can you discuss that experience?
Clements: Yes. So, what happened in late May was out of the blue, I started having balance issues, and this went on for four or five days. At the time, there were seasonal allergies going around that I just thought I had an ear infection. I knew I had a busy week coming up, so I headed to the urgent care clinic in the city. Not something I would normally do. I’d normally wait to see my primary care physician. But hey, time is more valuable than money, and I’ll pay to go to the urgent care clinic.
So, I went, and I described what was going on, and the doctor just looked at me quizzically and obviously did not think it was an ear infection and dispatched me to the emergency room. I got to the emergency room, and they did a brain scan and other tests and so on. We got there about 1 p.m., and after eight or nine hours in the emergency room, they pronounced that they thought I had had a minor stroke. I ended up in the stroke unit of the Jefferson Hospital system. There in the hospital ward, there were 15 people who were intubated and me sitting on the edge of my bed wondering what the hell is going on. I immediately had a brain MRI, I had a full body scan, and within 36 hours they pronounced that I had stage 4 lung cancer that had metastasized to my brain. I have a few spots on my liver and a couple on my chest cavity. Stage 4 cancer for those who are not aware means—it cannot be cured.
They, then the following day, sent me off for a bronchiectomy and they went into my lungs where there is a golf ball-size growth, and they took a small piece of that and sent it off for testing. This testing, molecular testing, takes some time. Eventually we got the results. It took about 10 days. What I have is something that has become more common, which is I have lung cancer caused by a defective gene. This is not the result of smoking, it’s not the result of exposure to asbestos, it’s the result of a defective gene. This is going to affect me, it’s not going to affect my children, it won’t affect my siblings.
But unfortunately, the defective gene that I have is relatively uncommon. There are some common defective genes that result in lung cancer and there are wonderful treatments for those. People can take a pill a day, they don’t have to go in for chemotherapy or anything like that. I have—people who care to Google—something called EGFR Exon 20, which is relatively rare. The treatment for it—well, there is one. There is one treatment plan approved by the FDA, which I am now on. The research suggests that people who have my version of lung cancer—this defective gene—the average life expectancy is 16 months. So, that was the discussion that I initially had with my oncologist. She said that without treatment I would have been dead in three to six months. With the treatment I can expect one year.
Since then, I have been on this chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment for a number of months. At the first check-in, which came in at the end of July and early August when I had another brain MRI and another abdomen scan, it seems that the initial treatment has worked to the extent that the cancer has stopped spreading, which means that I may get somewhat more than the year I was initially predicted. How much more? I don’t know. My oncologist is leery of making predictions. But I said, well, if we are planning travel for April of next year, would you book? She said yes, you should book. So, I figure that I will still be in reasonably good shape come spring of next year.
That’s essentially what my life is today, which is, every three weeks I go for chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Every three months I get a check-in with a brain MRI and an abdomen scan, and I hope the results are good. If they are not, then I am going to need a new treatment plan. If that new treatment plan is not effective, then it’s game over. At some point, the game will be over, but as you might imagine, I would rather it was later rather than sooner.
Benz: Of course. How are you tolerating the treatment?
Clements: It’s a great question. One of the things they always say about cancer is that the treatment—it’s not really a cure—the treatment is almost as bad as the disease. So, there are a whole series of side effects: insomnia; constipation; I get skin cracking at the tip of my fingers; I get the swelling of feet; I never had acne as a teenager—I have acne now. There is always a 24-hour period after the chemo sessions when I get mouth sores. In the four or five days initially after chemo, I tend to tire very easily and then things improve. I have actually chemo tomorrow. Right now, I feel as good as I feel during the three-week cycle, and then tomorrow it will be back into hell. But it’s not really hell. It’s just the side effects are unpleasant.
One of the things I have written about and talked about over the years is discovering that I had a certain amount of athletic talent late in life. When I was a schoolboy, I despised sports. But I started running in my 30s and biking fairly seriously in my 40s. I spent a lot of my life feeling physically very good. I no longer feel physically good all the time. In fact, it is relatively rare that I feel physically good, and that’s certainly a change.
Benz: Yeah. I wanted to ask about that because you have always been notably health conscious as long as I have known you. That’s been a big part of your identity. Does that tilt the odds in your favor toward getting a longer life expectancy, the fact that you have just been so attentive to diet and exercise throughout your adult life?
Clements: I am hoping that’s true. I continue to exercise every day. Even on the days when I feel like crap, I get up and I try to stretch and lift for 20 minutes and then I get on the bike for 40 minutes. Every afternoon, I try to take a half an hour walk. The exercise itself, along with drinking lots and lots of water, seems to help with tolerating the treatment. I am hoping it will give me a little bit of extra time. As it is just doing those things, drinking lots of water and exercising regularly just make me feel physically better. It makes me feel a little bit more in control of my life. It is one of the things I can do to improve the odds.
One of the funny things that goes on I’ve discovered when you have cancer is it seems everybody has advice for you. I can’t tell you, Christine, how many emails I have got from people offering advice on what I should be doing. As I mentioned, there is only one treatment plan for what I have that is approved by the FDA. It has been proven to be effective. And yet, people, total strangers, think that they are experts on my version of cancer. There have been suggestions that if I am not flying all over the country visiting every possible cancer treatment, I am basically asking to die. I am doing exactly what I need to do to live as long as I can. I have had people suggesting that I eat this diet. Most recently, this past week, I had an email from somebody saying, what you need to do is listen to this particular type of music while meditating. Come on, give me a break. Let’s live in a world of science here. Let’s think about who we are writing to and what their condition is before I send random suggestions to somebody who may only have months to live. Don’t waste my time. Even when I say that, which I did in a recent article for The Washington Post, people write to me and say, I saw you said that people shouldn’t be wasting your time by sending treatment suggestions. Well, here is my treatment suggestion.
Benz: Oh my gosh.
Clements: It’s like … did you not read? It’s bizarre. But yes, I get those emails all the time.
Benz: Well, I wanted to ask a question about just sharing your diagnosis so candidly. I have found it incredibly helpful to hear from you, to hear what you are going through. But can you discuss that? Because I know there is the opposite school of thought, like what Nora Ephron did, for example, where she is dealing with a very serious diagnosis and really didn’t tell anyone as far as I can tell except her very close family. Why did you decide to talk about it and share what you have been going through?
Clements: To be honest, Christine, I didn’t think about it. It’s what I have been doing my entire career. So, it was the most natural thing in the world to write about. I have written about so many other aspects of my life. Why wouldn’t I write about something so important?
One of the things I have discovered through this is just how taboo dying is. Now, of course, most people don’t get to write about their process of dying because either they slowly lose their cognitive faculties at the end of their life and they’re just not up for writing about what’s going on or talking about what’s going on with them. Similarly, there are others who die very suddenly. They have a heart attack. They have an accident and suddenly they are gone. Not many people are going to end up in my shoes where not only are you given a death sentence, but you are told that your time is finite.
So, I am in something of a unique situation. But nonetheless, I have had countless emails from people telling me that I am so brave for writing about my diagnosis. I don’t feel brave at all. What it does make me realize is that talking about your own process of dying is indeed a taboo topic. We talk a lot about death. We talk a lot about people who are dead, but we don’t personally talk about the process of dying. The analogy I use is that we talk a lot about sex, probably way too much about sex, but fortunately people don’t generally talk about their own sex life. And I think we should all be grateful for that.
Benz: Me too.
Clements: You don’t want people talking about their own sex life, particularly if it’s your parents. But when it comes to dying, I think it is helpful for people to talk about what’s going on. It is a taboo topic, and it’s one of those things where it would be helpful if we did rip the Band-Aid off and talk more about it because it’s going to happen to all of us and it may help to ease some of the fear about death if it becomes more of an open discussion.
Benz: Well, I agree that the things you’ve been writing have been incredibly helpful and clarifying, I think. I love that you are making it part of the discussion. One of the things you’ve been writing about is figuring out how to manage your time in this period. You’re incredibly productive. You’re still working on HumbleDollar. You’re doing interviews like this one. But it sounds like you’re also spending a lot of quality time with family and close friends. Can you talk about threading that needle where you’re managing those two sets of priorities?
Clements: So, a lot of people have said to me, well, aren’t you angry about your diagnosis? Don’t you feel cheated? And I guess I might be angry, and I might feel cheated if I dwelled on it, but I actually refuse to dwell on it. I can’t change my diagnosis by being upset about it. I’m not going to give myself more time by sitting here and thinking, why was I picked out? And I am—to go back to what I said before—I’m not going to get myself more time by flying around the country and visiting cancer centers and asking, do I have the right treatment plan? Instead, I want to take the time that I have left and squeeze as much happiness out of those days as possible. And essentially that means doing what I’ve done up until now, which is to do work that I love and spend time with those that I love. Nothing is more important to me than those two things. And that’s how I plan to spend whatever time I am given from here.
I think that what makes us happy throughout our life, being with those we love and doing what we love, are the same things that will make us happy at the end of our life. I certainly have no thoughts of doing anything else. One of the things that I’ve mentioned is that while I have been doing some traveling, and I will be doing some traveling—I’m sort of going to aim to do a retirement’s worth of traveling in the few months that I have left or whatever I could squeeze in. But mostly, I like my life. I like the way I spend every day. Life is full of small pleasures. That first cup of coffee, exercising, going out to lunch with friends, working, writing and editing that I do, sitting down in the evening and having a glass of wine with Elaine. That’s what makes the days enjoyable for me. And again, I’m not inclined to change that at this late stage.
Benz: Yeah, I love the balance between those big-ticket things on your bucket list that you might want to do as well as the day-to-day daily pleasures. I think that’s such an important insight.
So, flying around the country, looking for different treatment plans isn’t on the docket. What other things have kind of gone by the wayside as you’ve been going through this experience? What things have you said, OK, life is short, now I know maybe how short, what will I not bother with?
Clements: I guess what aggravates me the most is whenever anybody wastes my time. I’ve always been a little bit impatient and none of us like being stuck on hold with customer service. But my tolerance for that has got even lower.
Benz: Yeah, naturally.
Clements: And I’m not proud to admit this to you, Christine, and to anybody who is listening to this, but I have on occasion played the C-card. I will get on the phone with customer service, or I’ll be dealing with a contractor who is screaming around and not turning up. And I’ll say, look, I have cancer. I have very limited time left. Can you really do something about this now?
Benz: And does it work?
Clements: And it works. Oh, trust me, nobody, nobody wants to be mean to the guy with cancer. And so, yeah, I play the C-card occasionally. As I said, I’m not proud about it, but I have done it.
Benz: One thing that I thought was interesting, you mentioned that you’re pondering a fairly significant home remodeling project, doing this bathroom remodel. You’re not personally doing it, I don’t think. But you said that seeing a project like that feels like something you might want to do. Can you talk about that?
Clements: I think as humans one of the things that brings us great happiness is making progress. I love working. I love running the website that I do. I love it when I go to the end of an article, load it into publishing system, seeing it come out. All of that brings me great pleasure. So similarly, doing things around the house and seeing those projects through to completion, brings me great pleasure. We did a major remodeling of the downstairs last year, put in a brand-new kitchen and had some other work done. Now, of course, all I did was the heavy lifting of writing very big checks. The one thing that really remains to do is to remodel the upstairs bathroom. We have this ridiculously large bathroom upstairs and joining it is a very small bedroom. And by getting the bathroom to a reasonable size, we can expand that additional bedroom. And I would like to get it done partly because I want Elaine to be able to enjoy that space in the house after I’m gone. But also, I want the pleasure of progress. I want the pleasure of seeing that through to fruition. I’ve spoken to the contractor. I’ve explained my medical condition. I’ve said that I would like this project to be done in a reasonably fast manner so that we’re not disrupted for too long. And he said yes. So, we’re on deck to have that happen. I’m not sure when it will start. I’m still waiting to get the schedule. But I hope we can get it done before the end of the year.
Benz: In the realm of travel, I had to laugh a little bit. You wrote that you were about to purchase some business class tickets. You were looking at the price and maybe not about to, but you were sort of wavering. Even though you realized you should splurge, you pulled back because of the expense. Can you talk about a decision like that, how you’re marrying your thrift with your desire to really make sure that you enjoy the time that you have?
Clements: For those listening carefully, they probably detect something of an English accent. I was born in London, and I still have some remnants of an English accent left. Trust me, when I go to England these days, everybody thinks I’m American. So that means that most of the time when we’re traveling, we are flying to Europe and most flights to Europe are overnight. And as I’ve got older, sitting up upright in economy on an overnight flight has become agonizing. I don’t know how they’d manage to design those seats so they’re so uncomfortable. But I spend the entire night trying to figure out where to put my feet and falling asleep and then twitching away. It’s really an unpleasant experience.
Benz: The sore neck.
Clements: Yeah. Actually, the neck is OK. It’s I just can’t find the right place to put my feet. So, in recent years, I have splurged on premium economy, which typically comes with a footrest and that’s something of an improvement. But I’ve struggled to take the additional step of upgrading to business class. I’ve seen crazy prices for that upgrade—$15,000, $20,000, depending on how full the flight is, which no way I’m going to do that. I did see $5,000 recently. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. But my son is getting married in London in December. And after I booked the flights, I went back into the British Airways site to see all the details were there were correct and so on, and I clicked on the button that said upgrade cabin and I could upgrade from premium economy to a flatbed for $1,064 a person, $1,064. And for me, the price was right. So, a couple of weeks ago, I did indeed the upgrade to a flatbed for the trip to London. Now, we’re also going to Paris and right now they’re asking $3,300 for the upgrade to the flatbed for the trip to Paris. And yeah, I can’t get over that hurdle, unfortunately. The price is not right.
Benz: But you’ll arrive in London well rested and that sounds lovely, and the price was right.
Clements: Yeah. So let me just add. Obviously, probably many people listen to this podcast. The reason I have healthy portfolio today is not because I was a brilliant investor. I’ve spent my entire life as an indexer. The reason I have healthy portfolio today is because I have historically been a great saver—the number-one financial attribute for financial success. And so, spending rather than saving is difficult to do. And when you decide to spend rather than save, you’re really weighing a number of different options. There’s the option to not spend and the financial security that comes with having a reasonably large portfolio and that is something not to be discounted. There is great happiness to be had in feeling financially secure. There is also the pleasure from spending itself.
And then of course, there is the pleasure from giving. So today, even though I have more than enough money to get through whatever time I have left, when I spend, I’m really weighing spending against giving. And more than anything at this late stage, I want to make sure that my two children and Elaine are OK financially. And so, while the $3,000, or $5,000, or $20,000 flatbed are certainly affordable given where I stand, every dollar that I spend on that is our dollars that will not go to Elaine and my two kids. And that’s what, in a sense, holds me back and people say, well, your kids will save for their own retirement. But that’s not the way I’m wired. I want to be able to leave them a decent amount of money. I want to give them the gift of financial security. I know my kids. They are not spend thrifts. They’re not going to be going out and buying the Bentley. They will save those dollars and put them toward their own retirement. And I do believe that it’s important if you have kids to pay it forward. And I very much want to pay it forward and make sure that they are OK financially.
Benz: Yeah, that makes sense. You’ve written that you’ve been accelerating your giving to your children. Can you talk about that? And it sounds like that it has something to do with Pennsylvania, but maybe share your broad mindset on that idea.
Clements: So, I have been giving more to my kids. I’ve also been funding 529 plans for my two grandsons. And part of it is for tax reasons. There is an inheritance tax in Pennsylvania. My wife Elaine can receive the money without worrying about that inheritance tax, but my kids will pay 4.5% on every dollar they receive from me. But if I give it to them now and I manage to live another year, the inheritance tax does not apply. And so, the biggest gift I’ve made this year is to my daughter Hannah. She lives nearby and when she bought her house nine years ago, I wrote a private mortgage for her, and that private mortgage was a little over $300,000. I forgave that loan a couple of months ago. And as long as I live till July 2025, she will not have to pay inheritance tax on the $300,000. So, I’m hoping I last that long, and she will dodge that tax. It also just makes things simpler—easier to hand over the money now than to do it upon death. All those financial paperwork loose ends have been tied up at this point.
Benz: Yeah. You mentioned that even prior to this diagnosis, you had been in this mode of trying to streamline and skinny down your number of accounts and so forth. It sounds like you have accelerated that process too. Can you talk about that?
Clements: Certainly. For instance, I used to have, prior to my diagnosis, four credit cards. I’ve taken that down to two. I may actually take it down to just one. Meanwhile, Elaine has a credit card. She made me an authorized user. So that will give me a second backup credit card if something goes awry. Similarly, I’ve reduced the number of bank accounts in recent years. But post-diagnosis, I’ve been trying to take this even further. I’ve been throwing out financial papers. Our shredder is on the verge of exhaustion with everything that I’ve been pushing through it. I used to have tax returns going back to 1986. I now only have seven years of tax returns and supporting materials. So, I’ve been making adjustments like that.
It is surprising to me what a mess I would have bequeathed if I had gone on to the next bus. I’m glad I have the time to sort this out for my family. But you would be surprised what a hassle it is to close out these credit card accounts, to close out these bank accounts, to deal with all this paperwork after somebody has died. So, it’s much better if the person involved can get it done while they’re still alive. And my goal is to do as much of that as I can. I really consider as much as giving the money to my kids and to Elaine is important, I also believe the bequeathing them a well-organized estate is equally important.
Benz: Well, absolutely. That’s a lovely way to think about it. One thing that surprised me was that you wrote that you didn’t have powers of attorney designated until quite recently. Can you talk about that? Why that was something that you kind of dragged your feet on or is it inexplicable?
Clements: That’s very kind, Christine. I’m not sure it’s inexplicable. I simply did not get it done. Part of the reason I hadn’t got it done earlier was because I moved states four years ago from New York to Pennsylvania. I moved down here in part to be closer to my daughter and grandsons. I have had a will for years. I have been pretty clear about my intentions with my kids, but I never did get the financial power of attorney. I did not get the healthcare power of attorney. Yeah, it’s a case of the, what is it—the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Well, the cobbler himself didn’t have any shoes.
Benz: I have things like that in my own financial profile. Do you think that maybe we don’t talk enough about that sort of inertia? Because I think we all have these things that—maybe some people have every box ticked. But we talk about all these other behavioral foibles, but it strikes me that some of these matters of inertia are the most powerful behavioral force, and we hardly talk about them at all.
Clements: It’s true. It’s so much easier to sit still than to move. Sometimes, of course, sitting still is the right thing to do. When it comes to your portfolio, if you’re reasonably well diversified and you have a reasonably low-cost collection of investments, then sitting still is a great thing to do. But when it comes to things like estate planning, making sure that you make adjustments along the way, when you move state, when you have children, when you get divorced, whatever it is, clearly that’s important. And a lot of people just don’t make those adjustments.
I would say that the other thing that we don’t do nearly enough is talk to our families about things like estate planning and about our financial affairs. Two days after I got my diagnosis, I sat down with my kids, with Elaine, and I talked about my estate. And it was all very clear to me. I thought it was very easy to understand, really. I don’t have that complicated a portfolio. My beneficiary designations, my will, they are all very simple. And yet, what followed were countless conversations with my two kids and with Elaine about what was involved to those of us who are financial nerds, things like Roth versus traditional IRA, beneficiary designations, what goes through probate, and so on and so on. All seems very straightforward. But to people who don’t make a living paying attention to this stuff, it can be pretty damn complicated, and you won’t be able to explain it all in a single hourlong conversation. For people to fully understand what’s going on, it takes multiple conversations. And so, I would encourage you to talk to your family about your finances and then plan on talking to them again and again about it because that’s the only way they’re really going to come to understand what’s going on.
Benz: Yeah, that’s such great advice. I wanted to ask about HumbleDollar, which is your main work project these days. It’s a wonderful source of information on financial and nonfinancial but related matters. You have a plan to keep the site going with the help of Elaine and others. Can you talk about your vision for HumbleDollar over the long haul?
Clements: So historically, meaning for the past seven-and-a-half years, the site’s bread and butter have been articles that have appeared as frequently as three times a day. And I’ve been the principal editor as well as an author of many of those articles. But writing and editing articles is labor-intensive and nobody in their right mind is going to work as hard it as I am. So, I cannot expect the site to continue in that fashion after I’m gone. But I would like to see it continue. To the extent that I have a legacy, it is part of it. It is the site that I built, and a lot of people seem to really enjoy.
And so immediately after the diagnosis, I scratched my head and said, well, how can I keep this going? What I came up with was what I call the forum where readers and the site’s existing writers can post articles directly to the site, which other readers can then comment upon. And so, I launched that in June. It’s actually been surprisingly successful. The amount of comments, the amount of new threads that are launched each week is impressively large. I don’t know whether it will sustain itself after I’m gone. I’m hoping it will. But I can’t be sure. But it’s my best shot at keeping the site alive.
Benz: Can you reference any recent posts that you thought were especially useful that came up in the forum?
Clements: There are all kinds of questions that come up that sometimes even I don’t know the answers to. For instance, there was a recent very active thread on getting Medigap policies and how they’re priced and what’s best type of medigap policy to get and so on. Sure, this is financial nerd stuff, but it’s nerdy stuff that’s really important. It comes to another issue, which I think is important for people who are managing their own money, which is we spend way too much time, way too much time thinking about the financial markets and try to make sure that we have exactly the right collection of investments. Meanwhile, there are all these other financial issues out there, like Medicare versus Medicare Advantage, which Medigap policy to get, when to claim Social Security, whether you have the right collection of insurance and so on and so on, that don’t get nearly enough attention.
You’re not going to make a whole lot of difference by buying this total market index fund rather than that total market index fund, but you can make substantial difference to your finances by focusing on issues like health insurance, on having the right estate planning documents, on buying the right-sized home and so on and so on. And these are the topics that tend to get the most traction with the forum discussions. And I love to see that. Because this is real money. This is not Wall Street money worrying about which stock to buy or whether the market is overvalued and what will happen when the Fed raises rates or lowers rates. This is what people worry about. Should I try Medicare Advantage or am I going to not be able to see the doctors I want to see? Should I claim Social Security now or roll the dice and assume I’m going to live a longer life? This is real money. This is real money issues for real people. And I love to see that discussed in the forum threads.
Benz: Yeah. I was emailing with Jon Guyton, the financial planner, a few weeks ago, and he made the point to me that you very much pioneered personal finance. He said it really wasn’t a thing until Jonathan. And I think his point was that you addressed a lot of these issues in your columns that no one else was talking about. Can you talk about stumbling—maybe you didn’t stumble on it—and do you agree with that perception that you kind of blazed that trail? How did you find your way there?
Clements: Well, it’s very kind of Jonathan to give me credit for that. I’m not sure I deserve that credit. There was Jane Bryant Quinn out there as well writing about these issues.
Benz: True.
Clements: I would say that if I blazed any trail in my career, it was pounding the table for index funds in the 1990s. I got to the point where I was writing about indexing so much and pounding the table so hard that many readers, I think a lot of my colleagues at The Wall Street Journal thought that I was sort of a repetitive idiot. Stop already. People have got the message. But I was early on that. Of course, Jack Bogle was even earlier, but I was early on that. And obviously, we’ve seen that pounding of the table proved prescient. We’ve seen indexing take off to an extraordinary degree. I do feel a little bit, Christine, like, I’m having another 1990s moment now. I became relatively well known as an advocate of indexing in the 1990s. And now I seem to have a sort of belated celebrity for talking about dying. It’s a strange bookend to my career.
Benz: Are there any issues that in hindsight you feel like, oh, I probably made too much of X during my career than warrants the attention?
Clements: Well, before I became an advocate for indexing, I used to write about actively managed funds. And I even for a while wrote about individual stocks as one of the authors of The Wall Street Journal‘s “Heard on the Street” column. So that was obviously not time well spent. But that was part of growing up as a financial journalist.
In terms of other stuff, I would say it was more about the things that I didn’t write about or started writing about relatively late in my career that I should have focused on more early on. I should have focused more on insurance issues and on estate planning issues and on the Social Security decision, which is so crucial. I came to that stuff relatively late. But those financial-planning issues are super important, as I said before in this podcast. And I wish I’d done more on that early on. I think it was a matter of not being as comfortable with the subject matter as I was with index funds and behavioral finance and some of the other stuff that I put a lot of emphasis on early in my time as a Wall Street Journal columnist.
Benz: Do you feel like there’s a sense among some people who steep themselves in their financial matters that they tend to think of some of the decisions they make about, say, their retirement, that they tend to think of it as a math problem, that they really focus maybe disproportionately on the numbers and don’t give enough thought to quality of life, softer considerations—what am I going to do with my time, what will bring me happiness—all those sorts of things? Do you think that there’s maybe a little bit too much of a focus on the numbers than the financial piece?
Clements: I think there probably is. Certainly, you find that people make decisions for reasons of self-knowledge. They know what makes them happy. They know what their risk tolerance is, and so on. And then people declare, well, that’s suboptimal. Well, it may be suboptimal, but if it makes me happy or it’s a financial plan that works for me, who are you to say it’s wrong? And yet, I do see people writing as though the numbers can answer all the questions, and they clearly can’t.
One of the things that I’ve seen recently on HumbleDollar, which amuses me, is a debate about retirees and travel. One of the things that people seem to get quite belligerent about is whether in your early retirement years, you should be traveling a lot or not. Clearly, this is a personal preference. Some people like to travel, some people don’t. And yet, I’ve seen it pretty much claim that if you’re not traveling early in your retirement, you’re wasting your time. It’s like, well, what if I don’t want to get on a plane and fly to Europe, and I’m not going to enjoy it? Is it OK that I don’t do that?
Benz: Right.
Clements: That’s the sort of stuff that I find head-scratching. As a general rule, if my behavior is not harming you or anybody else, get out of my life and leave me alone. There’s too much judgment of other people’s behavior, I find. If I want to spend my money on eating out or I want to spend my money on travel, or I want to spend my money on raising dogs or whatever it is, and I’m not harming you, who are you to judge? And yet, I feel like there is so much judgment on these things.
Benz: I wanted to go back to that whole discussion about giving to your family during your lifetime. I know older adults very much wrestle with this: How much to give during their lifetimes versus how much to leave after they’re gone. Can you share any wisdom on that front on maybe seeing some of these gifts really make a difference? I think the mortgage that you forgave for your daughter is a great example of that. But maybe share some wisdom on that front.
Clements: So actually, just let me make a quick digression, Christine.
Benz: Sure.
Clements: So, for those people who know about estate taxes, they’ll realize that forgiving a $300,000 loan is much more than the $18,000 gift-tax exclusion for 2024. So, I will have to file a gift-tax return, and that will reduce the amount that I can leave tax-free upon death. But given that the size of my estate is nowhere near the size of the federal estate tax exclusion, it’s not a big issue.
Benz: $15 million. Yeah.
Clements: Yeah. Well, I don’t think it’s quite that high, but it’s getting there quickly.
Benz: Yeah.
Clements: So, I should have mentioned that. But yes, I will have to file a gift-tax return but given that I’m never going to eat through that exclusion, it’s not a big deal for me. For somebody who is my age and has a reasonable life expectancy, and the few million dollars that they have set aside may grow that large over the rest of their lives, it’s more of a consideration.
Anyway, coming back to your question, thinking about when to give—obviously, you don’t want to give away money and imperil your own retirement. You shouldn’t be giving away money thinking that you may have to ask for it back. But the other thing that you obviously need to think about, and I certainly think about with my kids, is are they ready to handle the money now, or would it be better to give it to them later when they are more financially mature? In the case of my kids, they are super financially responsible. So, I have no fears that they’re going to run out spend the money right away. I’m pretty sure that they will set it aside and use it to ensure that they themselves have a comfortable retirement.
But it’s only by making gifts during your lifetime that you can see how financially responsible your children are. You can view it as a test, give them some money and see what they do with it. But I would also say that there’s a lot more happiness to be had by giving away money now rather than waiting until death. It’s nice to give money to your kids and see the smiles on their face and see that you can give them a sense of financial security today. And while we’re talking about family here, the same holds true for charity. There’s great pleasure in giving money to charity now, much more pleasure than waiting until death and not really having the fun of writing that check and getting the thank-you note from the charity and so on. So, to the extent that you can give with a warm hand rather than cold one, I would encourage you to do so. But it really depends on who you’re dealing with.
Benz: Of course. I wanted to ask about legacy. I’m curious. I would guess that you’ve been hearing from a lot of readers who have been positively affected by your work. I am one. But I would imagine that puts quite a spring in your step. And I would imagine that the intensity of those emails and letters has probably accelerated during this period. Can you talk about that?
Clements: So, first of all, it doesn’t put quite as big a spring in my step as you might imagine, Christine. When I left The Wall Street Journal in 2008, I announced I was leaving, and I had a couple of more days at the paper before I was basically locked out of the email system. During those two, three days, I received thousands of emails. And do you know what I remember among those thousands of emails? There was some reader who wrote in and said, “I’m glad you’re leaving.” I don’t remember all the positive emails. I remember that turkey who wrote in and said, “I’m glad you’re leaving.” I don’t know whether everybody else is wired that way. But I have inbuilt a filter that discounts praise and remembers criticism. And what I remember is that criticism.
So, while I have not had anybody writing and saying, “I’m glad you’re dying.” People, as I mentioned before, tend to be nice to the guy with cancer. I do discount those emails. And there have been many, many of them saying that I transformed people’s lives. I’m glad that I’ve had that effect. But it doesn’t really swell my ego. I still think, well, I could have done it better. I could have done more. And in terms of legacy, and I think this is one of the things that comes with age, we can all think back to people who were esteemed when we were younger, who have since died and have since been forgotten. And we will all be forgotten, except by friends and family. There is no immortality in this world. We will not be remembered generations from now.
I do like to think, for those of us in financial journalism, that we are part of a conversation that started hundreds of years ago and will continue long after our death. And while who said this or that maybe forgotten, what we said will become part of that conversation. And that is our legacy. It is a legacy that will not be attached to our name, but it is a legacy that we have contributed to this conversation. But in terms of actually being remembered, I wouldn’t bet many dollars on that. I think that if you are still remembered by people other than friends or family five or 10 years after your death, that would be surprising.
Benz: I have spoken with so many people in this general field over the past couple of months about you and about your influence on me personally, but on others as well. Bill Bernstein really will say that he owes his whole career in investments to your work. Jon Guyton, similarly, was effusive, and Jason Zweig, and everyone else. Does that seem like a heartening thing that your work was so influential, and I think will continue to live on in a lot of ways, at least in the decades ahead?
Clements: As part of that conversation, but Christine, let’s have a reality check here. Jason and Bill and Jonathan Guyton are super smart people, much smarter than me. And they would have been successful with or without any help from me. So, I’m not being falsely modest. Those are super-talented people, and they would have got there on their own. In terms of Bill, I figure I probably got as more from Bill than he’s got out me. Bill was this strange guy who started emailing me in the 1990s, like many people did, but his emails actually were interesting and made sense. And reluctantly, I started thinking, well, maybe I should call up this guy and perhaps even quote him, this neurologist from North Bend, Oregon. And that became, for me, one of the defining friendships of my career. But Bill is a super-talented guy. If I hadn’t had the good fortune to get to know him, other journalists would have picked up on him, and he would have got the publicity and the accolades that he truly deserves.
Benz: For people who want to honor you, what would you want them to do? And here I’m thinking about what actions—say, I’m an individual investor listening to this, a financial advisor, what would you want them to do to honor what you’ve tried to do in your life and your work?
Clements: Well, as you know, Christine, there was a suggestion some months ago after I announced that I had this terminal diagnosis, a suggestion that they would establish a journalism award in my name. The world does not need another journalism award. And I had suggested that if there was going to be anything like that, what I would like to do is try to help younger people get started as investors, particularly those who come from poorer backgrounds. And so, my idea, which I’m hoping will take off, is to have a scholarship program where those who are 18 or older and have at least the $1,000 in earned income can apply to get a Roth IRA funded on their behalf up to that $1,000. And the plan currently is trying to have some fundraising around that and build up a sum of money that can then be used for this sort of matching program to fund Roth IRAs for kids from poorer backgrounds. And if that can start these kids on a lifetime investing, I think that would be wonderful. There’s every chance that the kids will just cash out the accounts. In fact, I’ve suggested that it might be interested to track people’s behavior and see whether the accounts stick or not. But if I had that sort of impact, if I managed to get some younger people started in the financial markets earlier rather than later and on track for retirement earlier rather than later, I would be very pleased to see that happen.
Benz: Well, it’s a lovely idea, I think more to come on that front. And I think it’s very telling that you didn’t immediately gravitate to this award with your name on it, but instead thought about, well, how can we actually try to help here. And this seems like such a powerful illustration of that.
Clements: Yeah. Well, let’s hope it comes to pass. A number of people actually including Bill Bernstein are working very hard to make this happen. So perhaps some magic will occur.
Benz: I hope it will. And it sounds like we’re on the way. Jonathan, it’s been such a privilege to me to know you through your career, through my career. Thank you so much for being here today.
Clements: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Christine. I feel very fortunate in numerous ways. I’ve been able to spend my career doing what I love. And not many people can say that, but I have been able to spend my career doing what I love. And I feel fortunate—and this sounds strange—I feel fortunate to know that my time is finite because it really makes you focus on what’s important to you. And it’s given me this chance, I hope, to help other people who will eventually walk the path that I’m walking on. In other words, people will eventually die, and I hope that the things that I’m learning through this period will also help others.
Benz: I love that. Thank you so much for being here, Jonathan. I know for a fact that you’ve made a difference in many different ways. So, thank you.
Clements: It’s been my pleasure. Nice talking to you, Christine.
Benz: Thank you for joining us on The Long View. If you could, please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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George Castady is our engineer for the podcast and Kari Greczek produces the show notes each week.
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