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 Sunday.

He was 62. He and I became friends the third week of March 1987.

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.

Lots of people who write about investing boast about their honesty. Nobody but Jonathan would have dared to write something as honest as this:

Fortunately, Jonathan did have the truth on his side. He knew, from painstaking reporting and exhaustive research, that the claims that were central to the financial industry in the 1990s and 2000s were not only bogus but bad for investors. In today’s investing landscape, where you can own the entire stock market for 0.03% in total annual costs, it seems incredible that investors used to be told:

• index funds are for losers;
• mutual funds sold by brokers charging commissions of at least 5% outperform funds that don’t charge commissions at all;
• investments with high annual expenses outperform those with low costs;
• newsletters and market-timing services can beat the market;
• you always need more insurance coverage, no matter who you are;
• high-cost annuities are the key to a safe retirement;
• paying commissions for financial advice is better than paying an annual or hourly fee;
• individual investors are “the dumb money.”

When Jonathan started writing for the Journal, those claims weren’t just common. They were treated as gospel, chanted into the ears of every investor by the entire financial industry.

Jonathan was having none of it. When a company publicized a “study” claiming that individual investors underperformed the stock market by a pathetic 10 percentage points annually over two decades, brokers and financial advisers touted the results ad nauseam. To them, it was proof that investors are dolts who desperately need to pay for advice. Jonathan ripped the study to shreds, concluding that “fund shareholders— instead of looking like clods—appear to be fairly savvy.”

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.

Brokerage and fund executives hated what Jonathan wrote. He persisted through a nonstop blizzard of complaint and criticism.

Readers, however, knew whom to believe, as their outpouring of love for him this week testifies.

Other than my parents, Jonathan had the biggest impact on me as a young adult just starting out in the world, commented Sandra Conte.

Jonathan Clements’ advocacy of “low load” and “index funds” were the key reason that I am comfortably retired today, Ed Wong emailed me. His advocacy for experiences over possessions pushed me further along in the direction of really not worrying about what other people think (of how I live my life). I owe him a debt that can’t be repaid.

Jonathan's passing is a great loss for all of us. His columns were far more than just good, timely information, commented Kevin Keegan. They truly were a near-continuous series of sage advice. Advice that I took seriously and based my finances and retirement plan upon.

Clements’ teaching led me to a secure retirement free of financial stress, Scott Henriksen emailed me. I'm far from the only example!

His wisdom and advice helped me retire before my 48th birthday, emailed Richard Lorenz. Thank you, Jonathan, from a fellow cancer patient. Rest in peace.

In the final year of his life, Jonathan became a voice for normalizing conversations about dying. He wrote extensively about his impending death and his financial, organizational and emotional preparations for it—speaking, as always, as a trusted friend to his readers.

“Talking about death is a taboo,” he told me last year, “and writing about it—the only way I know how—seems to have touched people in a way I never would have expected.” He received countless emails from strangers who were dying or whose loved ones had died, thanking him for his practical advice, for showing how to act and for making them feel less alone.

To those who knew him well, Jonathan’s most characteristic trait was his laughter. Somehow, he was able to joke repeatedly about his own death. Last July, when we were trying to sync our calendars for a visit, he said, “Come down and see the corpse while you still can!” At lunch when I visited him last fall, he pondered the menu, then decided to order a beef dish. “I certainly don’t have to worry about my cholesterol anymore,” he cackled. I had to laugh, even as my heart sank.

One of my favorite writers is the 16th-century essayist Michel de Montaigne. In his essay “To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” Montaigne wrote:

For Montaigne, this wasn’t a morbid thought. It was a joyous one, because it signaled that we should live every day to the fullest, as if it were our last, so that we won’t look back on our final day and feel we frittered away our life. In that spirit Jonathan filled every day of the last year of his life with meaning, as he had done for thousands of readers for decades.

Here’s Jonathan’s first WSJ column (on mobile, turn your phone sideways for better viewing):

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.

And here's a link to his last column, "Some Final Personal-Finance Advice From Jonathan Clements."

Farewell, friend.

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But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In The Intelligent Investor, Jason Zweig writes about investment strategy and how to think about money. To send feedback, reply to this email or send a note to intelligentinvestor@wsj.com. Sign up to get an email alert every time Jason publishes a column. Got a tip for us? Here’s how to submit.

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