For 15 years, Jonathan Clements wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of investing prudently. Now facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Clements is looking beyond his readers to the next generation, collaborating with the city of Boston and Northeastern University’s Summer Youth Employment Program to provide cash grants to young people from low-income homes to open investment accounts.
“This is going to add another tool for young people, another skill that they’ll be learning through the Summer Youth Employment program,” says Alicia Modestino, associate professor of public policy and urban affairs and economics at Northeastern and research director of the summer jobs program. “We already know that the program’s really impactful in increasing academic aspirations, developing soft skills and work readiness, increasing high school graduation rates and reducing criminal-justice involvement,” Modestino continues. “Now, alongside that, we’re going to put skills around financial capability.”
Clements is a longtime reporter and columnist at the Wall Street Journal, penning more than 1,000 “Getting Going” columns from 1994 to 2008 and from 2014 to 2015. Columnist Jason Zweig — Clements’ successor at the Journal and longtime friend — called Clements the “voice of reason.”
“In a crazy market full of propaganda, and bad ideas, and crummy logic, and negative emotion at the bottom of the market and euphoria at the top of the market, he always just counseled people to be prudent — watch costs, don’t take crazy risks, diversify, buy index funds, etc.,” Zweig says. “He’s probably helped hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of people achieve greater financial security through the advice he’s given.”
