How Clements started writing his WSJ personal finance column

Former Wall Street Journal personal finance columnist Jonathan Clements, who died Sunday, wrote a farewell message on his Humble Dollar website.

Clements wrote, “Still, in 1994, Managing Editor Paul Steiger said he’d consider a few columnists for the Journal’s news pages. At age 31, and with some trepidation, I put up my hand. Thus was born the Getting Going column, which I wrote for the next 13-plus years, penning 1,009 columns for both The Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Sunday. The latter were branded pages that appeared in some 70 newspapers around the country.

“In retrospect, it’s astonishing that I was given my own column at such a young age. It took me a few months to hit my stride, but I was soon pounding away at the virtues of index funds, while also exploring new topics, often scouring academic research for insights I could share with readers.

“The decade and a half that followed are something of a blur. I was cranking out columns, commuting into New York City from the New Jersey suburbs, and raising two children. In my memory, the years have the monotony of a hamster wheel. But that wasn’t the reality: There were high points and low points, plus the joy of watching Hannah and Henry grow up. The low points included the World Trade Center attack, my father’s death and a libel suit brought against the Journal. I’d been involved in editing the story that triggered the lawsuit.”

Read more here.