You may not have heard of Jonathan Clements. He wasn’t a fund manager or a market guru. He was a journalist who tried to make sense of money in a way that felt real, not intimidating.
Between 1994 and 2008, Clements wrote more than a thousand columns for The Wall Street Journal. Later, he started his own site, HumbleDollar. A few days ago, he died at 62, after fighting a rare form of lung cancer for nearly 18 months.
Jason Zweig, his colleague and friend, wrote a remembrance of him. He spoke about Clements’ “obsession” with index funds and his stubborn courage in calling out the financial industry when it misled people.
Clements was one of the first financial writers to argue for index funds. Back then, professionals mocked them as boring and mediocre. He didn’t care. He said they were the simplest way to make sure you didn’t lag the market badly. Millions of investors in the US eventually came around to that idea.
Zweig also recalled how Clements attacked the games the financial industry played, which included fees that bled investors slowly, disclosures designed to confuse, and tricks like launching dozens of funds in secret and only keeping the ones that looked good. He saw through it and kept writing about it.
What set him apart, though, was that he didn’t stop at numbers and returns. He kept reminding us that money is not the goal. It’s just a tool. In his later years, he wrote more about using money to build a life on experiences and people, not on piling up things. For him, frugality was freedom, because it gave you the space to care about what mattered more.
Now look at what’s happening here in India. Our financial industry does almost the opposite of what Clements stood for. Instead of making life simpler, it keeps launching more and more products. Whether they call it hybrids, market-linked debentures, specialized investment funds, target maturity funds, arbitrage-plus-this-or-that, factor-based ETFs, multi-asset “solutions,” smart-alpha, smart-beta, smart-whatnot…
…the list is endless. Every pitch is dressed up as innovation. But most of it solves problems that were never there.
I don’t get angry often, but this really does get to me. Money is supposed to give people a little peace and some sense of control. Instead, the way the industry works, it snatches that peace away. It buries people under jargon, fine print, and fancy names. It hands you a 300-page offer document and then puts the onus on you to read it carefully before investing. It feeds on fear and makes you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t buy the next “promising” product. I think that’s not serving investors, but unsettling them.
A simple equity fund, a fixed-income option, and plain insurance are enough for most of us. But the industry thrives on multiplying choice because that’s how assets are gathered. Each new fund or product adds jargon, adds fees, and adds confusion. Bad for the buyer, but wonderful for the seller!
And the irony is, even index funds, the very thing once celebrated for their simplicity, are no longer straightforward. There are now dozens of them, tracking different indices, with different strategies, factors, and fee structures. What was meant to be the plainest, cleanest product has itself turned into a menu that leaves the ordinary investor second-guessing what to choose.
The tricks Clements warned about in the US decades ago are alive here too. It’s painful to watch because it was so predictable. Left alone, the financial industry will always choose complexity. It sells better. But it rarely serves investors like you and me. Instead of peace, it creates anxiety.
But if I’m being honest, we can’t just point fingers at the industry. We, as investors, are part of the problem too. We chase what’s new and want higher returns without asking hard questions. The industry sells complexity because, somewhere deep down, we buy into it. Our own greed, fear, and impatience make us easy prey. And unless we accept that part of the blame, nothing will really change.
Clements would have shaken his head. We don’t need more products. We need more clarity. We need the guts to keep it simple and the humility to know when enough is enough. Most of all, we need to remember that money’s highest use is to buy us time, peace, and memories with the people we love. Nothing more.
And that’s what his lessons leave us with. A way to live with money without letting it rule us.
Keep it simple.
Ignore the noise.
Save more than you think you can.
Beware of complexity, as it usually hides someone else’s profit.
And use money to make your life lighter, not heavier.
Thank you, Jonathan. Rest in peace.
Two Books. One Purpose. A Better Life.
🎁 Now Available At Special Prices!
“This is a masterpiece.”
—Morgan Housel, Author, Psychology of Money
“Discover the extraordinary within.”
—Manish Chokhani, Director, Enam Holdings
