Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in
Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: This week on the podcast, I get to sit down
Speaker 2: with Jason Swig and William Bernstein remembering their friend Jonathan Clements.
Speaker 2: Jonathan was a Wall Street Journal personal finance columnist and
Speaker 2: author for almost twenty years. He's beloved by those people
Speaker 2: in the industry. In many ways, Jonathan has done as
Speaker 2: much as anybody to push the idea of indexing, at
Speaker 2: least anybody since Jack Bogel. I thought this conversation, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that we know Jonathan received a terminal diagnosis
Speaker 2: and we already know how it ended, I thought this
Speaker 2: conversation was interesting, uplifting, and fascinating. I think you will
Speaker 2: also with no further ado, my remembrance of Jonathan Clements
Speaker 2: with jason's Wig and William Bernstein.
Speaker 3: Thanks Barry, glad to be here.
Speaker 2: So let's start out with the beginning. I want to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about who Jonathan was. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about his two most recent books, including the one coming
Speaker 2: out in May of twenty twenty six. But how did
Speaker 2: each of you meet Jonathan? What were your early impressions
Speaker 2: of him like, let's start with you.
Speaker 3: You want me to go first.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Jonathan and I met the third week of March
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven when I joined Forbes Magazine and
Speaker 3: he was already there, and we almost instantly became good friends.
Speaker 3: I would say we probably went out to lunch at
Speaker 3: least twice a week for the next four years, certainly
Speaker 3: every Wednesday, fish cakes and spaghetti at the New Courtney
Speaker 3: on Urteenth Street in Manhattan, which I think was I
Speaker 3: want to say was four dollars in ninety five cents.
Speaker 2: That's right. The Forbes office is right over there on
Speaker 2: was eighteenth and fifty. All the Faberge eggs were there
Speaker 2: the whole the whole building was kind of uniquely.
Speaker 3: Situated Fifth Avenue and twelfth Street, very close. And Jonathan
Speaker 3: had a he had a really unusual sparkle. He always
Speaker 3: had a twinkle in his eye. He thought almost everything
Speaker 3: was funny, because of course, almost everything is funny if
Speaker 3: you think about it the right way. And you know,
Speaker 3: he might be writing about some con artist who was
Speaker 3: stealing people's money, or some mutual fund that was overcharging people.
Speaker 3: But he always found the humor in the situation and
Speaker 3: I loved that about him, and we were friends from
Speaker 3: that moment on ever since.
Speaker 2: Bill, How'd you meet Jonathan?
Speaker 4: I met him a little later. It wasn't until about
Speaker 4: the mid nineties when I was still practicing medicine and
Speaker 4: I was finding my feet in finance and I was
Speaker 4: starting to write. And I did what edny aspiring financial
Speaker 4: writer does, which is you start chatting up financial journalists,
Speaker 4: and he responded and he started quoting me on the journal.
Speaker 4: And for many years I was just a source until
Speaker 4: you know, maybe the late the early twenty tens, the
Speaker 4: late aughts, and then we became friends personal friends after that.
Speaker 4: And you know, he did think that everything was funny,
Speaker 4: and he just had such a pleasing personality. He had
Speaker 4: a high hedonic set point. He was always in a
Speaker 4: good mood, and he always thought that everything was funny,
Speaker 4: which is a fabulous combedy. And the other personal characteristic
Speaker 4: that he had which just powered his career, I think,
Speaker 4: was that he was willing to talk about the hard
Speaker 4: things in his life, his struggles with money, and he
Speaker 4: was willing to talk about his divorces, and of course,
Speaker 4: in the end, his impending demise. And so it was
Speaker 4: those three things together. I think that really made him
Speaker 4: such a unique financial journalist and human being.
Speaker 2: So when I was doing preparation for this, I learned
Speaker 2: a lot of things I was wholly unaware of, including
Speaker 2: a quote from you, Bill, which was, you owe your
Speaker 2: entire career investments to Jonathan's work. You have to explain
Speaker 2: how a neurologist in North Bend's, Oregon ended up having
Speaker 2: a career change by a personal finance journalist.
Speaker 4: Well, I happened to live in a country that doesn't
Speaker 4: have a functioning social safety net, and so I realized
Speaker 4: I was going to have to vest on my own
Speaker 4: if I wanted to survive my retirement financially. And so
Speaker 4: I approached it the way I thought anybody would scientific
Speaker 4: training would do, which is I read the peer review literature,
Speaker 4: the basic textbooks, and I collected data and I built models.
Speaker 4: And when I was done with all that, I had
Speaker 4: actually had something that was useful to small investors and
Speaker 4: in a couple of instances even too professional investors. And
Speaker 4: so I started writing about it. The Internet came to
Speaker 4: my community about that time. I put the stuff on
Speaker 4: the web, my material on the web, and Jonathan picked
Speaker 4: it up, and so he started quoting me in the
Speaker 4: in the in the Wall Street Journal. And then that
Speaker 4: was that opened the door to getting my books published
Speaker 4: and also to you know, a financial advisory business as well.
Speaker 4: And so it's like a lot of a lot of
Speaker 4: things in a complex life. It was just serendipity, one
Speaker 4: thing leading to another.
Speaker 2: Huh, really really interesting, Jason, You're you're with Jonathan at
Speaker 2: Forbes and then you're together at the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: But I'm struck by nineteen eighty seven, starting not only
Speaker 2: the year of the Great Crash, but long before indexing
Speaker 2: was the dominant intellectual framework, certainly in terms of money
Speaker 2: flows into mutual funds and ETFs. What was it about
Speaker 2: Jonathan's writing that seemed to reshape a lot of the
Speaker 2: conversation about investment.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say, I don't think this is an exaggeration.
Speaker 3: I would say more than any other individual except Jack Bogel,
Speaker 3: Jonathan put index funds on front and center for American investors.
Speaker 3: And you know, he realized very early on, I'm that
Speaker 3: active management in the aggregate was not earning its keep.
Speaker 3: It was charging more than it could possibly deliver for clients.
Speaker 3: And Jonathan realized there's an alternative and I'm going to
Speaker 3: keep telling people that's what they should do. And he
Speaker 3: wrote he must have written two or three hundred columns
Speaker 3: telling people that they should buy Index ones and a
Speaker 3: lot of his readers, particularly professional readers, hated that because
Speaker 3: he was essentially saying, don't hire them, you know, hire
Speaker 3: Vanguard or State Street or another Index. Lack rod.
Speaker 2: Think about the Big three, the three biggest mutual fund
Speaker 2: of ETF companies today really derive the lion's share of
Speaker 2: their assets, certainly half at black Rock, probably over half
Speaker 2: at Vanguard from Index.
Speaker 3: And you know, you can eat the math is not
Speaker 3: hard to do. You know, investors have saved hundreds of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars in superfluous management fees by moving from
Speaker 3: active to passive investing. And Jonathan deserves a lot of
Speaker 3: credit for that because I can attest coming sort of
Speaker 3: coming to it. I don't know what would I say
Speaker 3: two or three years behind him, the amount of hate
Speaker 3: mail I used to get and hate phone calls. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not easy to tell people that they should not
Speaker 3: have a right to make as good a living as
Speaker 3: they have been. They don't like hearing that. But if
Speaker 3: it's in the best interest of the larger part of
Speaker 3: your audience, and that's the message you have to deliver.
Speaker 3: And that's the choice Jonathan made really before any other
Speaker 3: investing or personal finance journalist in the country. And once
Speaker 3: he made that choice, he would not be moved.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, Bill, Yeah, I mean fortune favors the prepared,
Speaker 4: and I think what prepared Jonathan for that was from
Speaker 4: about what nineteen ninety to what nineteen ninety four he
Speaker 4: covered mutual fund managers, and boy, that's an awful sandbox
Speaker 4: to have to play. And because how do you get
Speaker 4: into that sandbox, Well, you take a lot of risk
Speaker 4: and you get lucky, and going forward the track record
Speaker 4: is not so good. And he saw that often enough
Speaker 4: that I think it drove him to the conclusion that
Speaker 4: Jason was just talking about.
Speaker 2: I think it was Professor French at Dartmouth of FAMA
Speaker 2: French fame said it takes about twenty years to figure
Speaker 2: out if a fund manager is skillful or lucky. At
Speaker 2: least two or three years of returns certainly only doesn't
Speaker 2: tell us anything.
Speaker 4: Yes, he has one example that just stays in my memory,
Speaker 4: which is that if you have a hedge fund manager
Speaker 4: who can beat the market by five percent per year,
Speaker 4: and the extendard deviation of stocks is twenty percent per yeer.
Speaker 4: If you grind through statistics on that, it takes sixty
Speaker 4: four years to get the statistical significance.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's quite amazing. He called the at his own
Speaker 2: advocacy for index funds an obsession that some readers found irritating.
Speaker 2: And when I read that line, I thought of your quote,
Speaker 2: which is your job is to write the same column
Speaker 2: week after week after week, but in a way that
Speaker 2: neither your readers or your editors figure out. So how
Speaker 2: do you continually write about indexing if your readers are
Speaker 2: finding it irritating?
Speaker 3: Well, I think Jonathan arrived at the same place I did.
Speaker 3: And of course, even though he was slightly younger than me,
Speaker 3: he was a couple of years ahead of me because
Speaker 3: he just started on this topic earlier than I did.
Speaker 3: But we both ended up in the same place, which
Speaker 3: is you you keep your message consistent, but you frame it,
Speaker 3: you tell it, you ornament it in different ways every
Speaker 3: single time. And Jonathan was an unparalleled master at writing
Speaker 3: what some people you know, disparagingly call listicles. He would,
Speaker 3: you know, come up with twenty five funny things that
Speaker 3: active managers say to justify their underperformance. And you know,
Speaker 3: he would run through all these bullet points, each one
Speaker 3: of which would be very funny, and then at the
Speaker 3: end he would say, and that's why I think you
Speaker 3: should put all your money in next ONNDS.
Speaker 2: I wonder how many of those lines came from angry
Speaker 2: emails from fund manager.
Speaker 3: Probably a lot of them.
Speaker 2: So so one of his core principles is that successful
Speaker 2: investing should be comprehensively, almost aggressively boring, which is kind
Speaker 2: of ironic. Both asset management and financial journalism are unusually noisy,
Speaker 2: fomo based industries. So how do you make a message
Speaker 2: stick as an island of rationality in a sea of
Speaker 2: noise and emotional driven stimulus.
Speaker 4: Silence. That's that's that's a tough one. You've become what
Speaker 4: Jason has become a master of, which is saying the
Speaker 4: same thing and in so many different ways that your
Speaker 4: editors and your readers don't notice that you're saying the
Speaker 4: same thing over and over again.
Speaker 3: No doubt about and very sorry if I can jump in.
Speaker 3: You know, I think one thing that is underappreciated about
Speaker 3: somebody like Jonathan is the amount of integrity and courage
Speaker 3: it takes to stick to a simple message. You know,
Speaker 3: the job of the job of an investigative journalist is
Speaker 3: to get people who don't want to talk to you
Speaker 3: to tell you things they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: The job of a mainstream journalist is to tell your
Speaker 3: readers things that they need to know, whether they want
Speaker 3: to hear them or not. And that's what Jonathan was
Speaker 3: brilliant at.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's again, the word integrity comes up so
Speaker 4: many different times when you're talking about Jonathan because here
Speaker 4: he is working in a sandbo you know, active fund managers,
Speaker 4: that's how he pays, he's paying his mortgage, and he,
Speaker 4: you know, wakes up one morning and he says, this
Speaker 4: is intellectually dishonest. I've got to find something else. I've
Speaker 4: got to find some other message. And very few journalists,
Speaker 4: i think, make that choice. They just keep on plugging
Speaker 4: away and don't question what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Really interesting, and you know, we're talking about investing in money,
Speaker 2: but Clements emphasized this wasn't about getting rich, it was
Speaker 2: about building a good life. So when do you think
Speaker 2: his thinking shifted from simple building a portfolio to something
Speaker 2: a little more philosophical.
Speaker 4: I think that that happened in the early two thousands,
Speaker 4: when I think all three of us started to come across,
Speaker 4: and maybe all four of us started to come across
Speaker 4: the well being research that academic neuropsychologists were doing. What
Speaker 4: makes people have money is a very small part of that.
Speaker 4: And that's what Jonathan you made into. I think his
Speaker 4: mission and financial journalism was it was exploring the connection
Speaker 4: between money, money and happiness, and that's not something of
Speaker 4: very many financial journalists venture into.
Speaker 2: I know, there is more money when you're broke is
Speaker 2: better than less money, but it plateaus holding steady for
Speaker 2: things like divorce and illness. It plateaus surprisingly rapidly. So
Speaker 2: let's channel Jonathan for a moment. What is the purpose
Speaker 2: of money and how does it help one live a
Speaker 2: rich fulfilling life.
Speaker 3: Well, so Jonathan really explored that research into hedonic psychology,
Speaker 3: particularly the implications of does money by happyiness? How can
Speaker 3: you use money to achieve happiness? And there's an enormous,
Speaker 3: voluminous amount of research on this in very very obscure
Speaker 3: academic journals, and when Jonathan started working on this, very
Speaker 3: few non academics were even aware that this research existed.
Speaker 3: But I would say there's a handful of takeaways from
Speaker 3: that work that research. One is that possessions don't generally
Speaker 3: make people happy. Now there's exceptions to that, but as
Speaker 3: a general rule, the bigger house, the fancier car, the
Speaker 3: painting on the wall, the bigger couch generally don't move
Speaker 3: people's happiness as much as they expect. And that's really
Speaker 3: the key is the difference. It's the gap between what
Speaker 3: you spend and what and the happiness you expect to
Speaker 3: get from the spending that causes the disappointment that people feel.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think everyone listening has had a
Speaker 3: similar experience. You know, you've been in a starter house.
Speaker 3: You see a new house you love, you talk about
Speaker 3: it with your significant other, you agree we're going to
Speaker 3: take the plunge. You buy the house and you move
Speaker 3: in and you're just thrilled. And then you know a
Speaker 3: year later you look around and the paint is chipping,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's like rats in the attic, and
Speaker 3: it's more money, more problems.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And the next level beyond that observation that possessions are
Speaker 3: not the key, is that you want to use your
Speaker 3: money to create experiences with people you love, shared experiences.
Speaker 3: You want to use money to create memories, and so
Speaker 3: you spend your money on things you can do with
Speaker 3: friends and family, joint vacations, commemorative events, family reunions, things
Speaker 3: like that. And then it's the final level that Jonathan
Speaker 3: explored more and more in the later years of his life,
Speaker 3: and especially after he got his terminal diagnosis, which is
Speaker 3: using money to create, meaning finding something bigger than yourself
Speaker 3: that you can support or promote or strengthen with your money,
Speaker 3: giving to a cause you care about, putting something front
Speaker 3: and center in your life. You know, supporting a nonprofit, volunteering,
Speaker 3: all of those activities can really move the needle much
Speaker 3: more than you would get if you bought a new
Speaker 3: table or some other possession you've had your eye on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the thing about Jonathan was he he lived
Speaker 4: that ethic every day of his life. And you know,
Speaker 4: he didn't make a lot of money as a financial journalist.
Speaker 4: I think he worked for a couple of years at
Speaker 4: citycarp and made a pretty decent salary, but you know,
Speaker 4: his lifetime earnings were not that high, and yet he
Speaker 4: amassed a significant amount of assets by hammering away at
Speaker 4: being frugal and amassing enough financial capital so that so
Speaker 4: that he didn't have to depend upon his human capitals.
Speaker 4: As he put it, I never saw him so happy
Speaker 4: as when he shows up at our place in Portland
Speaker 4: having spent two dollars to take the Max train in
Speaker 4: from the airport, you know. And then the other thing
Speaker 4: that so Jason just just explained very nicely the three
Speaker 4: levels that he climbed, and I think there was yet
Speaker 4: another level on top of that, which is to have
Speaker 4: enough assets to so that you don't have to worry
Speaker 4: about assets, in other words, to happen now. It's the
Speaker 4: only purpose of money, I think for Jonathan was not
Speaker 4: having to worry about.
Speaker 2: Money, right right, you know, he said something and I
Speaker 2: may even be lifting this from the headline of one
Speaker 2: of his early diagnosis articles, which was dying as easy,
Speaker 2: but a state planning and taking care of your loved
Speaker 2: ones after you're gone is hard. And that struck me
Speaker 2: just as such a quirky, matter of fact observation about
Speaker 2: something we all are going to face. That well, eventually,
Speaker 2: he just had to face a little earlier, and with
Speaker 2: the sense of humor dying, you know, the old joke
Speaker 2: about dying is easy. Coin is hard. No. No, estate
Speaker 2: planning and taking care of your loved ones, that's what's hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, if there's one thing that Jonathan didn't believe,
Speaker 4: it's that he who dies with the most toy wins, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we continue our conversation with William Bernstein and
Speaker 2: jason's Wig Remembering Jonathan Clements, discussing his most recent book,
Speaker 2: The Best of Jonathan Clements. I'm Barry Richolts. You're listening
Speaker 2: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Ridults.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio in
Speaker 2: an extra special edition of the show. This week is
Speaker 2: all about remembering Jonathan Clements, the Wall Street Journal personal
Speaker 2: finance columnist and author. And my special guests are William
Speaker 2: Bernstein and jason's Wig, who know and have worked with
Speaker 2: Jonathan for many decades. So let me pull on one
Speaker 2: little thread, which is the idea of delayed gratification. And
Speaker 2: I already know what your answer is going to be,
Speaker 2: but I have to pose the question. So here's somebody
Speaker 2: who's diligent about saving, diligent about postponing that sort of gratification,
Speaker 2: and then, unfortunately doesn't get the full fruits to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Give us, give us your explanation as to how and
Speaker 2: why he was perfectly fine with that.
Speaker 3: Well, So I talked a lot with Jonathan the last
Speaker 3: year of his life. I'm you know, I think he
Speaker 3: called me maybe two or three weeks after he got
Speaker 3: word of his terminal diagnosis. And the thing that struck me, Barry,
Speaker 3: was that, you know, having been his friend for decades,
Speaker 3: I could instantly tell that none of this was an act.
Speaker 3: You know, most of us if we got a terminal diagnosis,
Speaker 3: particularly one like Jonathan's where he was given five to
Speaker 3: originally five to twelve months, I think is what they said,
Speaker 3: right Bill, we would put on a brave face, we
Speaker 3: would like be faking it for our friends and family.
Speaker 3: But Jonathan was from the very beginning, he was totally
Speaker 3: at peace with it. And I can't tell you that
Speaker 3: I can totally explain that. I think he meant what
Speaker 3: he said, which is he felt he had lived the
Speaker 3: best life he could have, and he had done everything
Speaker 3: he wanted, He accomplished most of what he wanted to achieve,
Speaker 3: and he was somehow he was okay with the news
Speaker 3: that would just absolutely devastate most people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean. Neuropsychologists use a personality scale as a
Speaker 4: five item scale, and one of the items is something
Speaker 4: called neuroticism, which is basically how much you focus on
Speaker 4: the problems in your life. And he had a very
Speaker 4: high Haydonic set point. He was always in a good
Speaker 4: mood most of the time, and so his neuroticism score,
Speaker 4: as far as I could tell, was zero, and he
Speaker 4: was in a good nude most of the time. So
Speaker 4: he dealt with his own mortality as as well as
Speaker 4: he could. A sense of humor. My gosh, you know,
Speaker 4: he joked to everybody what a great marketing strategy terminal
Speaker 4: diagnosis was. If you're trying to flog a book.
Speaker 2: Don't recommend it. You only get to use it once.
Speaker 2: But that is only someone with the sense humor can
Speaker 2: say that. So let's talk about the book the best
Speaker 2: of How did this book come together? Whose idea was it?
Speaker 2: What was it like working on a project with Jonathan
Speaker 2: under his awareness of his terminal diagnosis.
Speaker 4: Who's who'se I well, I think I was going to
Speaker 4: look at you and say, whose idea was it? I
Speaker 4: think it was. I think I think it was Jonathan's idea. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 4: he just decided he wanted to put together a compilation
Speaker 4: and I think his his main goal was to raise
Speaker 4: funds for a charitable purpose, which it took us a
Speaker 4: while to evolve. Uh and and and that was that
Speaker 4: was the project.
Speaker 2: And so let me just interrupt you. The Jonathan Clements
Speaker 2: getting going on savings initiative funding roth Ira contributions for
Speaker 2: young adults from low income households. That sounds less like
Speaker 2: a book torn more like a policy intervention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. And that was It turned
Speaker 4: out that that translating that idea into something practical was
Speaker 4: a bit harder than everybody had than anybody he realized,
Speaker 4: but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Speaker 4: And so Jason and I and Jonathan put together a
Speaker 4: list of his columns on I think it was Jonathan
Speaker 4: who basically gave us the list, and Jason helped me
Speaker 4: organize it, and we self published it through through Amazon,
Speaker 4: and it has raised a substantial amount of money for
Speaker 4: the initiative which we eventually arrived at, which I don't
Speaker 4: know if we want to talk about that, just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure we could talk about it. Let's talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about how much money did it raise and
Speaker 2: did anyone have any targets in mind? Was this was
Speaker 2: this all upside surprise?
Speaker 4: Yeah, all in the order of about sixty thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: which a substantial amount of money. We actually raised a
Speaker 4: lot more money through the through the Bogel Center, through
Speaker 4: personal donations that came into the John C. Bogels and
Speaker 4: our financial literacy, So you know, even that that raised
Speaker 4: a whole lot more money, and that money is going
Speaker 4: into a research project. You know, Jason, I nevermember what
Speaker 4: JPAL stands for. So that's that's that's the group, the
Speaker 4: research group is doing this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So JPAL is behavioral economics research institute based at
Speaker 3: MIT in Boston and it's run part partly by Esther
Speaker 3: Duflow who shared a Nobel Prize in economics and I
Speaker 3: want to say twenty twenty three. And j PAL does
Speaker 3: all kinds of interventions based on behavioral economics research trying
Speaker 3: to encourage people from low income households around the world,
Speaker 3: by the way, to form more construction of savings habits,
Speaker 3: to borrow more prudently, to become long term investors. And
Speaker 3: we partnered with them because we really felt that getting
Speaker 3: Jonathan's vision from an idea into an actual program was
Speaker 3: beyond us. We needed help, and so JPOW works with
Speaker 3: academics at universities all around the world, and between Boston University,
Speaker 3: University of Chicago, and some other Northeastern Northeastern we were
Speaker 3: able to round up some great economists and researchers to
Speaker 3: make the program a reality, and it last summer. It
Speaker 3: was piloted with some basically high school kids in Boston
Speaker 3: from poor families who were randomly selected to get money
Speaker 3: to open a roth ira. And we're testing whether there's
Speaker 3: particular kinds of messaging or other techniques that can not
Speaker 3: only encourage them to invest, but then to turn them
Speaker 3: into investors by changing their own behavior over the long term.
Speaker 3: And it's still very early. We don't know whether it'll work,
Speaker 3: but we hope it will, and even if it fails,
Speaker 3: we're pretty confident we'll learn some useful things about how
Speaker 3: to encourage good long term investing behavior here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it turns out it's really hard to give away
Speaker 4: money to kids for a roth ira.
Speaker 2: Yep, this is before we passed. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you want to call them baby bonds or Trump accounts
Speaker 2: or whatever. That thousand dollars initial tax.
Speaker 4: To parity predates that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so, and by the way, that dates back
Speaker 2: to I'm drown a blank on his name, but he's
Speaker 2: a VC out in California who might as well first
Speaker 2: first proposed this, you know, a decade ago, and it
Speaker 2: was slogging away trying to get it accepted. So let's
Speaker 2: let's those are what the proceeds are going to be
Speaker 2: used for. Let's talk about the book itself. Sixty sixty
Speaker 2: columns out of over a thousand. That has to be
Speaker 2: a tough list. Anything on the list surprise you make
Speaker 2: you scratch your head. What how do you think of
Speaker 2: the arc? Now that you guys helped structure and organize this,
Speaker 2: which really is half the battle. Once you have it structured,
Speaker 2: it becomes a whole lot of ease.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't think that Jonathan had an organizing principle. I
Speaker 4: think he just went through his his thousand and nine
Speaker 4: columns actually was more than that two and he picked
Speaker 4: out just his favorite ones and then it fell to
Speaker 4: the three of us to organize the book, which which
Speaker 4: took some took some work, and you know, they were
Speaker 4: organized according to you know, the things that Jonathan wrote
Speaker 4: about I mean, you know, the principles of indexing, the
Speaker 4: importance of saving, how to calculate how much money you need,
Speaker 4: and then all of the behavioral issues that we that
Speaker 4: we talked about, and so I think we came up
Speaker 4: with seven or eight basic chapter headings.
Speaker 3: But also Jonathan did something else that was unusual and
Speaker 3: frankly risky, which is he wrote really often about his
Speaker 3: family and their issues with money. Particularly he I don't
Speaker 3: think Hannah and Henry would mind my saying this. He
Speaker 3: sort of used his kids as guinea pigs to test
Speaker 3: out how do you motivate children, to say, how do
Speaker 3: you get them to become long term investors? And we
Speaker 3: did not do this in my household. And on the
Speaker 3: one hand, I'm glad we didn't, because I think it
Speaker 3: can make your kids a little crazy if you turn
Speaker 3: them into lab rats. But on the other hand, his
Speaker 3: kids probably have a probably have healthier finances than my kids.
Speaker 4: Do, and healthier financial outlook too. I mean, Mike, I'm
Speaker 4: about a decade older than more than that than than
Speaker 4: Jonathan was, and so are my kids. In fact, you're
Speaker 4: considerably older than his because I had my kids later
Speaker 4: than he did. And a couple of the tricks that
Speaker 4: he came up with. I just like, God, damn, I
Speaker 4: wish I had thought of that. You know, when your
Speaker 4: kid asks for a soda, you know, the four dollars
Speaker 4: soda at the restaurant, it's like, I'll give you a
Speaker 4: buck if you take the water. You know, I'd be
Speaker 4: richer if I, you know, I brought to have a
Speaker 4: couple of grand I'd be a couple of grand richer
Speaker 4: if I'd thought of that one first.
Speaker 2: That's a great parenting hat. Share some others. What other
Speaker 2: financial tricks was he using that ended up having a
Speaker 2: good impact on the on the children either of you.
Speaker 4: Well, the bank of Mom and Dad. He closed that
Speaker 4: so instead of you know, you know, opening your wallet
Speaker 4: for the endless supply of five and tens and twenties
Speaker 4: when they wanted something, you know, at age eleven or twelve,
Speaker 4: he gave them ATM cards that he would load up,
Speaker 4: you know, at the beginning of the month, and then
Speaker 4: when the money was gone, the money was gone, and.
Speaker 2: That's until the next month.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's that's that's a great trick.
Speaker 2: I got to imagine a lot of parents are listening
Speaker 2: to this and saying closing the bank of mom and dad.
Speaker 2: What happens when they burn through the ATM in week one?
Speaker 2: Now you have three weeks of whining? How do you
Speaker 2: how do you manage around that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? That's that's tough. That's tough, monkies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you ignore the whining.
Speaker 2: Apparently, plan better next month and we won't be having
Speaker 2: this conversation, right that that's really that's really pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: So it appears to me that Jonathan spent a big
Speaker 2: part of his career and I always hate this word,
Speaker 2: but democratizing good financial advice. It sounds like this initiative
Speaker 2: is the culmination of all of that, and and maybe
Speaker 2: further because he's trying to reach people that are normally
Speaker 2: completely ignored by the wealth management and mutual funds world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we you know, part of the problem
Speaker 4: that we have is is the behavioral problem of getting
Speaker 4: people to save. And hopefully, you know, this initiat, this
Speaker 4: research project will shed a little bit of light on that.
Speaker 4: That will that will help people you know, save in
Speaker 4: their own for their for their own retirement, both through
Speaker 4: employer plans and on their own.
Speaker 2: So, so let's talk a little bit about the behavior
Speaker 2: gap both of you have written about this. Jonathan has
Speaker 2: written extensively about it. Essentially, it's what people know they
Speaker 2: should do and then what they end up doing despite
Speaker 2: knowing what they should do. How do we, uh, how
Speaker 2: do we contextualize this behavior gap from Jonathan's perspective?
Speaker 3: Well, I think Jonathan did something really important, which is
Speaker 3: there was a firm which I won't name, that in
Speaker 3: the nineties used to say that the behavior gap was
Speaker 3: oh seven or eight percent a year for people who
Speaker 3: didn't use stockbrokers to buy their mutual funds. And in
Speaker 3: other words, if you were willing to pay an upfront
Speaker 3: sales charge to buy a mutual fund, you would end
Speaker 3: up earning a much higher return than somebody who didn't
Speaker 3: go through a stockbroker.
Speaker 2: Does the math bear that out?
Speaker 3: The math does not bear that. No, No, the behavior
Speaker 3: gap is real, but it's in nowhere near that big two.
Speaker 2: To three percent. Something along those lines are.
Speaker 3: Mostly a little smaller.
Speaker 2: I remember a Vanguard's study that specifically said for people,
Speaker 2: for people who have behavior issues, it's worth paying half
Speaker 2: a percent of one percent to somebody if it prevents
Speaker 2: them from making three four percent in eras I'm talking
Speaker 2: my book, they were talking their book. How do you
Speaker 2: perceive the ability for someone to talk and invent or
Speaker 2: off the ledge when every instinct in their body is like, no, no,
Speaker 2: we want to sell now because in March o nine
Speaker 2: or March twenty twenty, this is going to get much
Speaker 2: worse than this right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's that's a completely separate issue than what
Speaker 4: we're talking about. I mean, you know what we're talking
Speaker 4: about is what is the gap? And the answer is
Speaker 4: it's not seven or eight percent. It's closer to one
Speaker 4: percent or one or one and a half percent, which
Speaker 4: is less than the cost of engaging conventional advice, certainly
Speaker 4: through a full service financial institution. The other issue, what
Speaker 4: you're asking is how do you prevent people from jumping
Speaker 4: off the ledge? And the answer is that's very hard
Speaker 4: to do because you have to be able to impart
Speaker 4: a sense of financial history to people, which is something
Speaker 4: that maybe one out of fifty investors takes.
Speaker 2: Seriously, that's a low the numbers are that low because
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about your quote about managing your own Olympics system.
Speaker 2: If you can't do that, you're going to die poor.
Speaker 2: Tell us about how all these columns and the book
Speaker 2: from Jonathan.
Speaker 4: Well, the Olympic system, very very crudely is system one.
Speaker 4: It's the fast moving system that you know, engages when
Speaker 4: we when we see that, when we hear the hiss
Speaker 4: of the snake or the see the yellow and black
Speaker 4: stripes in our peripheral vision on the African savannahs. We
Speaker 4: overcome it with our system two, which is our our
Speaker 4: thinking part of the brain, the neocortex basically, and the
Speaker 4: neocortex has to learn something about financial history, and good
Speaker 4: luck with that.
Speaker 2: Well, good luck with not only teaching it. But it
Speaker 2: seems that half life of financial literacy is really short
Speaker 2: that even if you teach people stuff, you got to
Speaker 2: keep drumming it in because events seem to move so fast.
Speaker 2: People kind of forget pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people, people you know, do learn when they get
Speaker 4: hit over the head by two by four, which they did.
Speaker 4: And wait two thousand and you know, Einstein is supposed
Speaker 4: to have said that the most powerful force in the
Speaker 4: universe has compound interest, which of course he never said.
Speaker 4: But the most powerful force in the financial universe is amnesia.
Speaker 4: People forget it.
Speaker 2: But what's the Galbrith quote? The one thing we learned
Speaker 2: about financial history is no one learns from financial history.
Speaker 2: So it's really true. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about this book, starting with first of all, who gets
Speaker 2: a terminal diagnosis and says, I know I will write
Speaker 2: a book. I mean, every one of us at this
Speaker 2: table have written more than one books, and I think
Speaker 2: we would all admit they're kind of a slog. Where
Speaker 2: did this come from? What was the motivation here?
Speaker 3: You know, Jonathan never told He didn't tell me he
Speaker 3: was doing it. I don't know if he told you.
Speaker 4: Bill, No, he did not.
Speaker 3: I only found out about it several months after he died,
Speaker 3: and I think it was part of how he coped
Speaker 3: with knowing that, you know, his time was limited. He
Speaker 3: just wanted to make the most of the time he
Speaker 3: had left. He spent a large part of every day
Speaker 3: with family and friends and you know, creating new memories
Speaker 3: that the people who remained behind when he was gone
Speaker 3: would be able to cherish. But I think he also
Speaker 3: spent part of every day doing what he liked best,
Speaker 3: which was writing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where you ask Jonathan who he was and what
Speaker 4: he did, he would say, first of all, it's about
Speaker 4: my family, and then secondly, who I am is a
Speaker 4: writer and he could no sooner stop writing, as if
Speaker 4: he could stop breathing.
Speaker 2: So the book Money and Me combines a lot of
Speaker 2: writing he did at the Humble Dollar, as well as
Speaker 2: some fairly personal reflections on his diagnosis. Is this book
Speaker 2: very different in tone and goals and ambitions and his
Speaker 2: earlier writings. What are your thoughts on this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a biography. It's a not a biography.
Speaker 2: It's a biography, but I, having not read it yet,
Speaker 2: I suspect it's a biography with a lot of insightful
Speaker 2: lessons learned along the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We covered a lot of those in the first
Speaker 4: segment of the interview, which is, you know, what's what's
Speaker 4: money for? What's life all about? What's the meaning? What's
Speaker 4: the meaning of life?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: That's that's that's what he wanted to approach. He wanted
Speaker 4: to put a coda onto his life, and I think
Speaker 4: that's that's what the book was, for a CODEA.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 3: this because I mentioned Jonathan and the writing he did
Speaker 3: at the end of his life in a book I've
Speaker 3: just finished of my own, and the way I sort
Speaker 3: of came out was that I think Jonathan took heart
Speaker 3: from giving heart. He gave heart to so many people
Speaker 3: in the last year of his life by writing incredibly
Speaker 3: candidly about what is it like to know you're dying?
Speaker 3: You know, what do you have to do before you're done?
Speaker 3: And how do you go about accomplishing everything you want
Speaker 3: to achieve in the very limited time that's left to
Speaker 3: you while retaining your dignity, while spending time with the
Speaker 3: people you love, And how do you set those priorities
Speaker 3: and how do you put all that in context? And
Speaker 3: Jonathan got not hundreds, but thousands of emails and letters
Speaker 3: from people who were dying, people who were taking care
Speaker 3: of loved ones who were dying, people whose loved ones
Speaker 3: had died, people who were afraid of death, people who
Speaker 3: had gotten a terminal diagnosis and then gone into remission
Speaker 3: or been cured completely, and over and over again, those
Speaker 3: people just it was this incredible outpouring of gratitude and love.
Speaker 3: And you know, the thing that I think is the
Speaker 3: biggest tribute to Jonathan is, you know, in the writing
Speaker 3: that I did about him in the last year of
Speaker 3: his life in my column and also in the newsletter
Speaker 3: I do for The Wall Street Journal, got. I easily
Speaker 3: got three four hundred emails myself. And the single most
Speaker 3: common thing that readers said about Jonathan was he was
Speaker 3: my friend. And they said that even though none of
Speaker 3: them had ever met him. They all said he was
Speaker 3: my friend. And it was true. He was because he
Speaker 3: really cared about the average person. He loved his readers,
Speaker 3: even the ones he'd never met, and he understood that,
Speaker 3: you know, when you're an individual investor, you're just like
Speaker 3: this little piece of plankton in a sea of sharks
Speaker 3: and barracudas, and you're at the bottom of the food chain.
Speaker 3: And Jonathan was their advocate. And then when he got
Speaker 3: that terminal diagnosis, he realized he could be an advocate
Speaker 3: for an entirely new group of people, you know, those
Speaker 3: who have been touched by by terminal illness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had an ability that almost no journalist has,
Speaker 4: which is that you read him and you say, this
Speaker 4: man knows my life. And even before he got his
Speaker 4: terminal diagnosis, you know, he quits City Corp. Around two
Speaker 4: thousand and eighteen or no, twenty fourteen or so, and
Speaker 4: he says, well, what am I going to do? I'm
Speaker 4: going to give back, And so he founds Humble Dollar,
Speaker 4: which you know, continues publishing even after after he's gone.
Speaker 4: So he's created something that's still you know, was very
Speaker 4: useful while he was publishing it, and it's still providing
Speaker 4: a service. So you know, I mean that his life
Speaker 4: was service more than anything else.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we continue our conversation with William Bernstein and
Speaker 2: jason's Wig discussing Jonathan Element's forthcoming book, Money and Me.
Speaker 2: I'm Barry Rittolts. You're listening to Masters in Business on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Riddolts. You're listening to Masters in
Speaker 2: Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guests today are
Speaker 2: Jason Zwig and William Bernstein. We are remembering Jonathan Clements,
Speaker 2: the Humble Dollar and Wall Street Journal personal finance columnist.
Speaker 2: He has a new book coming out posthumously, Money and Me.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about service, not just
Speaker 2: to his readers, but to his family. So if you
Speaker 2: preach delayed gratification and then you realize, hey, that window
Speaker 2: is only small, you then want some of that gratification.
Speaker 2: When I interviewed him after his diagnosis, he was planning
Speaker 2: a number of events and travel and other sorts of
Speaker 2: things with his family. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: what he got to do in the last year of
Speaker 2: his life that he might have postponed under different circumstances
Speaker 2: until years later.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, we should be
Speaker 3: respectful of Jonathan's privacy, but I think I can share
Speaker 3: most of this.
Speaker 2: He did, He did discuss a lot of it, and
Speaker 2: I'm assuming some of this is in the book, so
Speaker 2: I'm not asking for secrets. No, no, tell us what he
Speaker 2: was public.
Speaker 3: I mean, his son was planning to get engaged, and
Speaker 3: got engaged and got married, and Jonathan and his wife, Elaine,
Speaker 3: got to travel to London to you know, go the wedding.
Speaker 3: Jonathan himself accelerated his engagement and marriage to Elaine, his wife.
Speaker 3: He did, he did. He organized those things knowing that
Speaker 3: they were important to him and his family. And he
Speaker 3: also went on a bunch of trips with his mom
Speaker 3: and and his siblings, and you know, he had to
Speaker 3: cancel a couple of trips because he was at various
Speaker 3: points he was too sick to travel. But his siblings
Speaker 3: and kids would meet in Philadelphia, they would meet, they
Speaker 3: went to a couple other places together, and he just
Speaker 3: maximized the amount of time that he spent with his family,
Speaker 3: but also with his friends. I mean I visited him twice.
Speaker 3: An another mutual friend of ours from our days at
Speaker 3: Forbes Magazine went with me on one of those visits.
Speaker 3: Is this, to London, No, No, to Philadelphia huh unfortunately
Speaker 3: to Philadelphi. Philadelphia is great, Don't get me wrong. I
Speaker 3: love Philly, but London is maybe more is more fun,
Speaker 3: maybe for an American anyway. But he and I guess
Speaker 3: the thing I would point out, because I saw this firsthand,
Speaker 3: is that that may not sound like that being a
Speaker 3: deal to most people listening or watching us, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of like, oh yeah, your time is limited, so
Speaker 3: speed stuff up and make it happen. Making it happen
Speaker 3: isn't as easy as it sounds. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: you're getting chemo, you're getting radiation therapy, you're getting you know, uh,
Speaker 3: surgical cement squirted into your spine, You're you know, you're
Speaker 3: getting cut open for this thing or that thing. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, your hair is falling out eventually. You know,
Speaker 3: walking is difficult. And through all that, Jonathan was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: come on, you know, come next Tuesday. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I got nothing but time.
Speaker 2: No, nothing but nothing but time when you we all
Speaker 2: have limited time, and and he knows pretty pretty realistically
Speaker 2: how short that is. It sounds like this could be
Speaker 2: a morbid or depressing category. But uh, but knowing how
Speaker 2: he discussed things after his diagnosis, I have a sneaking
Speaker 2: suspicion that this book is more uplifting than depressing. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about the tone he takes in
Speaker 2: what most of us would think of as really difficult circumstances.
Speaker 4: Well, most of the book doesn't cover his his terminal illness.
Speaker 4: That's maybe five that's maybe ten or fifteen percent of
Speaker 4: the book. And he does a beautiful job of describing
Speaker 4: just what Jason did. What he's really describing is his
Speaker 4: journey through the relationship between money and happiness and how
Speaker 4: he arrived at the place that he that he that
Speaker 4: he did. You know, the thing that that struck me
Speaker 4: when when I would go to visit him was and
Speaker 4: talk to him on the phone, was you know, I've
Speaker 4: been in the practice of medicine, I spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time talking to dying patients, and he was just
Speaker 4: the easiest person to talk to. You would you would
Speaker 4: you would get off the phone with him, you would
Speaker 4: come off away from a visit with him, you would
Speaker 4: feel uplifted. That's I can tell you that's not true
Speaker 4: most of the time.
Speaker 2: And does that translate into the book.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I mean what I would jump in with
Speaker 3: Barry is that I think the I mean it may
Speaker 3: sound like a strange word, but the word I guess
Speaker 3: I would use his joy. I mean, Jonathan talked about,
Speaker 3: talked and wrote about dying from the most positive perspective
Speaker 3: you could possibly imagine. And you know, it's as if
Speaker 3: he really felt that he had lived the life he
Speaker 3: wanted to live, and above all, he wanted to go
Speaker 3: out on a high note, and he wanted to bring
Speaker 3: everybody along with him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was his great gift and his great endowment.
Speaker 4: We talked a bit about hedonic set point. You know,
Speaker 4: he just wasn't a glass half full kind of guy.
Speaker 4: He was a glass seven it's full kind of grind.
Speaker 2: Well, just that headline I remember it was the Journal
Speaker 2: or the Times piece Dying as easy, planning for death
Speaker 2: as hard, just is filled with that sort of mischievous
Speaker 2: sense of humor about something that everybody else takes very
Speaker 2: seriously and when confronted with it, it's like, hey, you got
Speaker 2: no choice but to laugh and plow ahead, And that
Speaker 2: seems to be what he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, one of the lines he used that
Speaker 3: I'll never forget is and it was maybe the second
Speaker 3: to last phone conversation I had with him. He said,
Speaker 3: you know, when when I got my original diagnosis, they
Speaker 3: told me I had five to twelve months to live,
Speaker 3: and that was I want Now. I may not be
Speaker 3: remembering correctly. I think I think at the time he
Speaker 3: was talking with me, it was maybe thirteen months prior.
Speaker 3: And he said, so, you know, I'm I'm already playing
Speaker 3: in time. And I mean, I burst out laughing just
Speaker 3: the way you did. My friend is dying, and I'm laughing,
Speaker 3: but I'm laughing with him as he jokes about him. Yes,
Speaker 3: And and he wasn't. It wasn't like if that if
Speaker 3: that had been me, I might have been joking, but
Speaker 3: I would have been joking to like cover my fear
Speaker 3: and whatever. And he was joking because he thought.
Speaker 2: It was funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so there's a line from Howard Marx that I
Speaker 2: suspect reflects a lot of what's within this book. And
Speaker 2: I'm just curious as to your thoughts experiences, what we
Speaker 2: get when we don't get what we want and in
Speaker 2: the journey of the overlap between happiness and money and
Speaker 2: that then diagram which has I suspect less overlap than
Speaker 2: most people realize until they get that experience which might
Speaker 2: not be what they wanted. How, How has his journey evolved?
Speaker 2: How has his perspective Jonathan's perspectives changed about his thoughts,
Speaker 2: his thoughts about money, happiness, and the purpose of living
Speaker 2: a rich life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think he started out as a
Speaker 4: young man the way he describes in the book, with
Speaker 4: a conventional view of money, which is that, you know,
Speaker 4: money is to to buy things and to help you
Speaker 4: get by in life. When he started out his his
Speaker 4: career in journalism, he had credit card debt, he had
Speaker 4: student debt, and you know, probably all that he was
Speaker 4: thinking about was getting out from from under that. And
Speaker 4: unlike most people, he evolved beyond that very very very quickly.
Speaker 4: Uh to you know, get to the higher the higher
Speaker 4: uses of money that we've been talking about.
Speaker 3: Anything to add to that, I mean, I guess maybe
Speaker 3: the thing I would add, Barry is just that it
Speaker 3: takes a lot after all the years that I've been
Speaker 3: doing financial journalism to get me to feel I really
Speaker 3: learned something important because i've sort of, I guess I
Speaker 3: haven't seen it all, but I've seen most of it.
Speaker 3: And I really learned from Jonathan that, you know, how
Speaker 3: you live under sort of the ordinary conditions of daily
Speaker 3: life is one thing, but how you live when you've
Speaker 3: got a death sentence is something else. And he really
Speaker 3: shows that. I'm you know, you can still celebrate, and
Speaker 3: you should, and you should figure out how to comfort
Speaker 3: the people who love you in a way that will
Speaker 3: always console them after you're gone. And you know, the
Speaker 3: book really shows that, of course we're all afraid of dying,
Speaker 3: but we're probably afraid of it for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3: And I think what Jonathan really showed is the thing
Speaker 3: you should be afraid of about dying is going out
Speaker 3: the wrong way, like not giving the people who will
Speaker 3: live after you the positive things that you can give
Speaker 3: them as gifts. And that's what he did.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And the other thing which he was aware of
Speaker 4: is he he realized he was a very positive person
Speaker 4: and that he was dealing with his terminal illness as
Speaker 4: well as any person could, and he was much more
Speaker 4: acutely aware of how much harder it was for the
Speaker 4: people around him, and he talked about that a lot,
Speaker 4: about about how hard it wasn't, particularly on his kids.
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense. So so last question. If Jonathan
Speaker 2: were here, what do you think he would want the
Speaker 2: takeaway to be from the book about the relationship between
Speaker 2: money and a life well lived?
Speaker 4: He would tell you to figure out who the heck
Speaker 4: you are and what you really enjoy doing, and that's
Speaker 4: what the money is for.
Speaker 2: Sounds wise, Jason, you want to.
Speaker 3: I have I have nothing to add.
Speaker 2: Did we did we miss anything? Is there something I
Speaker 2: haven't brought up that you guys? Because I don't want
Speaker 2: this to be a morbid conversation. We're all solemn, but
Speaker 2: I know each of you have a long and positive
Speaker 2: relationship with Jonathan, So I don't want this all to
Speaker 2: come across as morbid, because just because it involves death,
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean it's said or morbid. What else do
Speaker 2: you want listeners to take away from Jonathan's life, his work,
Speaker 2: his books? What should people be aware that this isn't
Speaker 2: a downbeat book, This isn't depressing. We're being respectful, but
Speaker 2: at the same time, he was a happy, joyful person.
Speaker 3: We don't want to get into anything that's morbid, but
Speaker 3: you know, or when I was in My dad died
Speaker 3: when I was in college, when I was twenty two,
Speaker 3: and I remember the thing that he was most worried
Speaker 3: about as he like, as he lay dying, because he
Speaker 3: died of lung cancer. He kept saying to me, I
Speaker 3: don't want you to remember me like this, you know,
Speaker 3: as a sick person. And I kept saying to him,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to remember you like this. And I
Speaker 3: couldn't know that that was true, but it was. I
Speaker 3: don't remember my dad as a sick person. I remember
Speaker 3: him as this incredibly vital, physically strong, you know, mentally agile,
Speaker 3: impressive person. And what I will always remember about Jonathan
Speaker 3: is every time I think of him, I hear him laughing.
Speaker 3: That's the first thing that comes in my head. Is
Speaker 3: he didn't just laugh, He cackled, and his laughter was
Speaker 3: contagious and it never stopped. The last conversation I had
Speaker 3: with him, he was laughing at himself at how you know,
Speaker 3: dying with such a weird thing. And you know, if
Speaker 3: people only knew what it was like, could they, you know.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't fear it. They wouldn't well, they would fear
Speaker 2: it less. Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate you guys coming
Speaker 2: in to talk about the life and times of Jonathan Clements.
Speaker 2: It was a absolutely unique life, one that left behind
Speaker 2: a tremendous legacy for all of his not just friends
Speaker 2: and family, but readers, the ability to touch tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of people and in a very positive way. It
Speaker 2: is a very very rare thing. I hope people appreciate
Speaker 2: the conversation not as a morbid remembrance, but as a
Speaker 2: hopeful and uplifting one for somebody who left a very
Speaker 2: positive mark behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, gentlemen for being so generous with your time.
Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Jason Dwig and William Bernstein
Speaker 2: remembering the lifetimes and writings of Jonathan Clements in anticipation
Speaker 2: of his final book, Money and Me, coming out May
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, twenty twenty sixth. I would be remiss if
Speaker 2: I didn't thank the Cracked team that helps put these
Speaker 2: conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer.
Speaker 2: Sean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer.
Speaker 2: I'm Barry Ridolts. You've been listening to Masters in Business
Speaker 2: on Bloomberg Radio