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IT’S TIME TO PAY IT forward.
That’s a phrase I often use when talking about helping the next generation. But my efforts have been mostly focused on my children and grandchildren. What about others in future generations, especially those from less affluent families?
Welcome to the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative and the accompanying book, The Best of Jonathan Clements: Classic Columns on Money and Life.
The savings initiative aims to get young adults started in the financial markets with $1,000 contributions to Roth IRAs, with those contributions funded by both direct donations and the royalties from the book. The book consists of more than 60 of my old Wall Street Journal columns.
I’d love to take credit for all of this, but my involvement has been modest. After my cancer diagnosis, there was a move to establish a journalism award in my honor. I suggested the savings initiative instead.
The heavy-lifting was then done by five luminaries of the personal-finance world: Christine Benz, Bill Bernstein, Karen Damato, Mike Piper and Allan Roth. I consider all five to be friends, and all have some involvement with the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy. Also working on the initiative are two other groups: J-PAL North America and the City of Boston’s Summer Youth Employment Program.
Meanwhile, the fine folks at publisher Harriman House assisted with the book’s design, and The Wall Street Journal allowed my old columns to be reprinted at no cost. Indeed, the program is being supported by both the Dow Jones Foundation and News Corp., the Journal’s publisher.
You can read more about the savings initiative here, and also in Jason Zweig’s Wall Street Journal article from earlier today. Just to be clear, I’m not making any money from the book, and nor are any of the other participants. Want to pitch in? There are two ways:
I don’t know of any other program that takes young adults and gets them so directly involved in the financial markets, providing not just the money to get started, but also the investment vehicle as well. Will it lead some of these young adults to become regular savers and investors? If it does, lives will have been transformed. How cool is that?
Jonathan Clements is the founder and editor of HumbleDollar. Follow him on X @ClementsMoney and on Facebook, and check out his earlier posts.
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This is really interesting and I’m looking forward to reading more about it. One question: what kids will receive the donations?
The program is going to be piloted in Boston this summer and, fingers crossed, expanded from there:
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/page/building-retirement-savings-young-adults
As you’ll read, “the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program has aimed ‘to reduce inequality of opportunity by increasing access to early employment experiences for disadvantaged youth’.” My assumption is that most of the kids who benefit will be from poorer families.