May 20, 2025
Congratulations
Zongze (Victor) Li (co-Major Professors: Drs. Kristy Archuleta and Lu Fan) on successfully defending his dissertation.
Dr. Yilang Peng on receiving the 2025 UGA Charles B. Knapp Early Career Scholar Award. Dr. Peng was honored in the 2025 UGA Research Awards Banquet on April 3rd, 2025.
Undergraduate students Cancan Xie and Aidan Marjoram on receiving CURO Scholarship to present their research in the 2025 CURO Symposium in Athens during April, 2025.
In the news…
Graduating Master’s student Naomi Hill has been busy! She was invited to present on financial literacy to the UGA TRIO (https://ossa.uga.edu/trio/) students in April, 2025. Naomi also presented at the FPA Neuro-Divergence Cirlce in March, 2025. Her presentation will be published in the Journal of Financial Planning.
Other news…
Prof. Sherle Brown served as the Speaker for the FACS Convocation and as the Marshal for FHCE during the Undergraduate commencement. In addition to Sherle Brown, huge thanks also to pprofessors Dee Warmath, Deborah Lacey, Kimberly Watkins, and Lance Palmer, for attending the FACS Convocation this year. Many thanks to Melissa McBride and Matthew Orsag for their tremendous help during the convocation.
Doctoral students Mary Akinde, Ravisha Chutani, Francisco Diaz, Ben Hampton, Juha Lee, Sebastian Sandoval, and Lin Sun presented their papers and participated in sessions at the 2025 ACCI Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.
The Spring 2025 Financial Planning Celebration was held in the UGA Botanical Gardens during April. The event was one of the best attended Financial Planning Celebration events. Kudos to our amazing SFPA Officers and advisor Dr. Michael Thomas for pulling this off!
Sherle Brown and the H.O.U.S.E student leaders led the Spring 2025 RPM Career night, which was a huge success. Huge thank you to Melissa McBride! And to the doctoral students Katrina Goudlock, and Rebekah Carnes, and to Aimee Dowd of FACS SSAC for their contributions. Thank you also to Drs. Andy Carswell, and Anne Sweaney for their support at this event.
Dr. Lance Palmer, Wil Golden, and the VITA student volunteers led the 2025 UGA VITA celebration in April.
FHCE also collaborated with the FACS Love and Money Center for the 2025 Financial Literacy on the Lawn event. Several Financial Planning undergraduate and graduate students presented on the topic of financial planning and financial literacy. This event was led by Dr. Megan Ford.
Dr. HanNa Lim of California State University, Fullerton, presented her research on financial socialization in the Graduate Seminar class. Dr. Lu Fan helped organize this presentation.
Dr. Marlene Haupt of the University of Munich (Germany) visited campus in April, and discussed research with our doctoral students.
Research
Fan, L., & Zeng, Y. (2025). Financial Education Mandates and Financial Wellbeing of Young Adults: Examining Financial Capability Factors as Mediators. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 49(3), e70058.
“This study creates a framework to examine the interrelationship between financial education mandates and the financial wellbeing of young adults and the intermediary roles played by financial capability factors. Using a multi-year, multi-source, cross-sectional database in the US and structural equation modeling, this study examined the direct effects and mediated pathways between financial education mandates, the mediators, and financial wellness. The results demonstrated that implementing education mandates directly and positively related to young adults' financial knowledge and indirectly enhanced financial access, healthy financial practices, and financial wellbeing. Healthy financial behaviors were closely linked to improved financial wellness, while financial access showed an indirect positive association. However, independent financial decision-making was negatively associated with financial wellbeing”.
Kwak, E. J., & Grable, J. E. (2025). Electroencephalographic (EEG) Brain Wave Patterns as Descriptors of Financial Risk-Taking Behavior. Journal of Gambling Issues. https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/JGI-Jul-24-RES-479.R1_Kwak_Proof_Final.pdf
“This study was designed to evaluate brain wave (i.e., alpha, beta, and gamma) patterns as descriptors of financial risk-taking behavior using quantitative EEG. Specifically, ten healthy adults were asked to answer a series of financial risk-tolerance, risk aversion, risk-taking, and personal characteristic questions using a computerized survey and to engage in a financial risk-taking game of chance. Using the Dual-Process Theory as a conceptual framework, findings indicate that brain wave activation was not directly associated with the choice to engage in the financial risk-taking task. Brain wave activation was found to be more directly related to a study participant’s level of financial knowledge, financial experience, and willingness to take risks rather than the act of taking a financial risk. These factors may act in a way that primes someone to take risks. The use of EEG methodologies as clinical and research tools, as exemplified by this study, shows great promise in providing insights into the way individuals conceptualize risk and act when faced with financial choices that entail the possibility of uncertain gains and losses”.
Ouyang, C., Naveed, K., & Chatterjee, S. (2025). Poverty and Mortgage Delinquency: Unpacking the Mediating Role of Financial Overconfidence. Applied Economics Letters. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2025.2489781
“This study examines the association between poverty and mortgage delinquency, and the mediating role of financial overconfidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyses for this study are done using the geo-coded 2021 wave of the FINRA National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), combined with ZIP-code-level characteristics from the U.S. Census data. Results indicate that living in areas at 150% and 200% of poverty level was positively associated with mortgage delinquency. Notably, this relationship was mediated by financial overconfidence, suggesting that financial overconfidence can exacerbate household financial vulnerability in economically disadvantaged areas. These findings underscore the importance of financial capability, and emphasize the need to strengthen financial education and support initiatives for economically vulnerable communities to enhance financial resilience during times of economic uncertainty.”
Park, H., Jung, S. B., Byun, Y. H., Ahn, D., Park, C. W., Byun, S., & Huang, Y. (2025, April). Lessons from Real-World Settings: What Makes It Uniquely Difficult to Design Cognitive Training Programs for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Other Developmental Disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21).
“Despite the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other developmental disabilities (DD) worldwide, children with ASD and DD face tremendous difficulties receiving support due to physical, financial, and psychological barriers to onsite health and education clinics. As a result, researchers and practitioners have designed software solutions aimed at providing accessible support to meet users’ needs. However, we have limited knowledge of whether these solutions indeed work in real-world settings. To address this gap, we conducted a case study on a cognitive training program called Dubupang, designed by Dubu Inc. From in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders and field observations of children with ASD and DD, we identify Dubu Inc.’s internal development processes, the critical design issues that emerged through a series of field trials (e.g., instructional design and feedback), and the key implications (e.g., importance of caregivers’ strategic human interventions) for design that better supports both children with ASD and DD and their caregivers”.
Mar 31, 2025
April 2025 Just So You Know…
Congratulations
Doctoral Candidates Camryn Cobb (Major Prof. Dr. Dee Warmath), Rebekah Carnes (Major Prof. Dr. Dee Warmath), and Camden Cusumano (Major Prof. Dr. Dee Warmath) all successfully defended in their dissertation in March!
Doctoral student Francisco Diaz (major Prof. Dr. Kim Skobba) on being selected as a recipient of the UGA Graduate School Summer Doctoral Research Assistantship.
Francisco Diaz and Mary Akinde on receiving the UGA Graduate School Travel Grant for this semester.
Dr. Kimberly Watkins on receiving the 2025 Bobbi Meeler Sahm Service and Outreach Award.
Dr. Kimberly Watkins on receiving the 2025 FACS Inclusive Excellence Award.
Dr. Yilang Peng on receiving the 2025 Early Career Faculty Research Award in the category of Behavioral/Social Science.
Prof. Sherle Brown on receiving the 2025 Outstanding Undergraduate Faculty Advisor Award.
Dr. John Grable was recognized as Ewha Global Fellow by Ewha Womans University in recognition of his distinguished scholarship and extensive collaboration with faculty and students from the Ewha Womans University.
Dr. Kristy Archuleta and her colleague received the 2024 Best Research Award from the Financial Planning Association and the Journal of Financial Planning for their research entitled “Let’s Talk About Financial Stress and Anxiety: Is There a Difference?”
FHCE alumna and Yu (Yulia) Zhang and current doctoral candidate Jia Qi welcomed the arrival of their twin daughters Chloe and Iris in February. Doctoral student Mary Akinde also welcomed the arrival of her daughter in March.
In the news…
Dr. Lance Palmer and the VITA program was featured on wuga.org
Other news…
Sherle Brown led the Spring 2025 UGA RPM Board of Advisors Meeting in Atlanta this March! The event was also attended by Dean Zvonkovic, and other FHCE HMP faculty members including Drs. Andy Carswell, and Kim Skobba, and Dr. Bernard Green, Director of the FACS Student Success and Advising Center.
Schwab RIA Day was a huge success! Huge thank you to Dean Zvonkovic, Drs. Lance Palmer and Michael Thomas, Melissa McBride, Suzanne Griffeth, Cal Powell, Casey Crane, Brandi Herrin, Wil Golden, and all of our amazing UGA SFPA Student Officers, faculty/staff, colleagues and students who made this happen!
Dr. Kimberly Watkins led a group of our financial planning students to the 2025 AssetMark Conference in Phoenix, AZ during the Spring break.
Alumna Dr. Yingyi (Tracy) Liu, Morgan Stanley gave a talk on career opportunities in the Corporate Sector for doctoral students in the Graduate Seminar Class on March 12th, 2025.
Research
McCoy, M., Machiz, I., Johnson, P., White, K., Watkins, K., & Bennetts, C. (2025). Resilient Personality or Financial Resilience Framework for Coping with Physical and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Financial Services Review, 33(1), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.61190/fsr.v33i1.3628
“Crises events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have a profound impact on consumers’ financial, physical, and mental health. This study explores the role of two resilience frameworks, namely the financial resilience framework and the resilient personality, in coping with physical and mental health challenges during the pandemic. Findings from this study indicate that both the financial resilience framework and resilient personality may contribute to one’s mental and physical health. However, the financial resilience framework is a stronger predictor of a positive self-assessment for both health factors than a resilient personality.”
Schwarcz, D., Cude, B. J., Logue, K. D., & Marquez Alcala, G. (2025). Read But Not Understood? An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Comprehension In Homeowners Insurance. University of Virginia Law Review. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5120347
“Modern contract law assumes that consumers meaningfully assent to the standard forms that govern their daily lives. However, this assumption is widely regarded as a legal fiction for two key reasons: first, most consumers do not read standard forms, and second, even those who do often struggle to fully comprehend their terms and implications. While the lack of consumer reading has been well-documented through empirical research, consumers' ability to comprehend standard form contracts has received surprisingly little attention. This Article addresses the latter issue by empirically examining whether providing excerpts from the dominant standard form homeowners insurance policy improves consumer understanding of coverage…..Our main finding is that providing policy language only moderately improved consumer understanding in some scenarios, while affirmatively decreasing accuracy in others. Respondents often struggled with partial reading or misinterpretation of policy provisions, especially when broad coverage grants were later restricted by specific exclusions-a common structural feature of insurance policies. These findings carry significant legal and regulatory implications. Even if most consumers do not read standard form contracts, improving the readability and comprehensibility of standard form terms can limit firms' discretion in disputes, enhance regulatory oversight of unfair provisions, and empower markets to penalize firms relying on excessively one-sided terms. This Article argues that addressing these challenges is essential to fostering fairer and more effective consumer protections.”
Mar 04, 2025
Congratulations
Dr. Kim Skobba has been promoted to Full Professor
Dr. Yilang Peng has been promoted with tenure to Associate Professor
Dr. Jermaine Durham has been promoted with tenure to Associate Professor
Dr. Daehwan Ahn for receiving the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award in the Prestigious 2024 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2024) at Honolulu, HI.
Dr. Dee Warmath on being accepted to the 2025 UGA Active Learning Summer Institute
FHCE doctoral students Camryn Cobb and Rebekah Carnes (major professor: Dr. Dee Warmath) had their dissertation proposals approved by committees.
In the news…
Dr. Kimberly Watkins’ work on financial well-being was featured in UGA Today, Athens Banner Herald, and other news outlets
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/business/2025/02/24/uga-professor-helps-others-find-financial-well-being/79421307007/
https://news.uga.edu/assistant-professor-helps-others-find-financial-well-being/
FHCE doctoral candidate Camden Cusumano and Dr. Dee Warmath’s research examining the association between financial stress and job satisfaction was also featured in UGA Today and other news outlets:
https://news.uga.edu/burnout-from-financial-stress-may-lower-job-satisfaction/
https://athensceo.com/features/2025/03/burnout-financial-stress-may-lower-job-satisfaction/
Here is a link to the original research study:
Cusumano, C., & Warmath, D. (2024). Mind the gap: Investigating how financial well-being shapes job satisfaction through burnout. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 1-15. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15555240.2024.2441208
Other news…
FHCE H.O.U.S.E. organization had its kick-off meeting this February. Huge thank you to faculty advisor Sherle Brown and the H.O.U.S.E. officers and our students who made this event a success!
The spring iteration of the Financial Planning Connections meeting for financial planning students also took place in February. Dr. Kimberly Watkins led this meeting. Thank you to all of the students, faculty, and staff who attended and volunteered to make this event a success!
Spring Kick-off reception for doctoral students and FHCE faculty created an opportunity for students and faculty to get to know and interact with each other. Thank you to all the students, faculty, and staff who participated in this event.
During February, FHCE alumnus Dr. Wookjae Heo of Purdue University delivered a lecture (virtually) in the graduate seminar class on how to use AI and Machine Learning methodologies for large scale datasets in Financial Planning, Housing and Consumer Economics related research projects.
Dr. Kyoungtae Kim of the University of Alabama also presented a session in the Graduate Seminar class on professional development of doctoral students in Consumer Sciences. This session was led by Dr. Lu Fan.
Dr. Michael Thomas and the Student Financial Planning Association (SFPA) officers have been busy arranging for our corporate partners and guests speakers to present to the SFPA students. Guest speakers this year have included alumni and professionals from the following firms: Brooklyn Fi, Corient, Elwood & Goetz, Henssler Financial, John Hancock, and Merrill Lynch among others.
Research
Ahn, D., Almaatouq, A., Gulabani, M., & Hosanagar, K. (2024, May). Impact of Model Interpretability and Outcome Feedback on Trust in AI. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-25).
“This paper bridges the gap in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research by comparatively assessing the effects of interpretability and outcome feedback on user trust and collaborative performance with AI. Through novel pre-registered experiments (N=1,511 total participants) using an interactive prediction task, we analyzed how interpretability and outcome feedback influence users’ task performance and trust in AI. The results counter the widespread belief that interpretability drives trust, showing that interpretability led to no robust improvements in trust and that outcome feedback had a significantly greater and more reliable effect.”
Chatterjee, S., & Chang, Y. (2025). Utilization of Alternative Financial Services and the Role of Financial Capability. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 59(1), e12614.
“This paper examines the factors associated with use of alternative financial services (AFS) using a composite dataset comprising of geographic locations of AFS establishments and state payday policies merged with the geo-coded 2018 and 2021 pooled waves of the FINRA National Financial Capability Study. The results of this study provide mixed evidence of the association between the density of AFS providers in an area and the use of AFS. Objective financial knowledge was negatively associated with both the likelihood and frequency of AFS use. Perceived Money Management Ability (PMMA) was also negatively associated with the use of AFS but not with the frequency of AFS use. Controlling for financial access and capability variables, Black consumers and low-income consumers were more likely to use AFS.”
Kwak, E. J., & Grable, J. (2025). A Domain Specific Measure of Investment Risk Preference. Financial Services Review, 33(1), 165-178.
“Results of this study demonstrate that the proposed risk measure is positively associated with a modified version of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) self-assessed risk-tolerance item and negatively associated with cash-holding behavior. Compared to existing risk-tolerance assessments, this measure offers a practical advantage by allowing financial advisors to align investment products more accurately with a test-taker’s risk-taking comfort level. This direct applicability highlights the measure's unique value in enhancing portfolio personalization and advancing the precision of investment risk assessment tools.”
McCoy, M., Machiz, I., Johnson, P., White, K., Watkins, K., & Bennetts, C. (2025). Resilient Personality or Financial Resilience Framework for Coping with Physical and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Financial Services Review, 33(1), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.61190/fsr.v33i1.3628
“Crises events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have a profound impact on consumers’ financial, physical, and mental health. This study explores the role of two resilience frameworks, namely the financial resilience framework and the resilient personality, in coping with physical and mental health challenges during the pandemic. Findings from this study indicate that both the financial resilience framework and resilient personality may contribute to one’s mental and physical health. However, the financial resilience framework is a stronger predictor of a positive self-assessment for both health factors than a resilient personality.”
Ouyang, C., Crandall, T., & Chatterjee, S. (2025). The Impact of the COVID-19 Income Shock on Debt Management: A Mediation Analysis. Financial Services Review, 33(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.61190/fsr.v33i1.3615
“The results reveal that over one-third of households allocated their stimulus checks towards debt payments. Moreover, this relationship was significantly mediated by an individual’s perceived lack of financial control. The findings from this study shed light on the complex associations between experiencing an unexpected and large income reduction, perception of financial control, and debt management decisions of individuals. The significant role of perceived financial control in describing individuals’ debt management decisions found in this study suggests that perceived control is not just a reflection of a household’s financial situation but also a determinant of their financial decision-making in times of crisis.”
Park, H., & Ahn, D. (2024, May). The Promise and Peril of ChatGPT in Higher Education: Opportunities, Challenges, and Design Implications. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-21).
“A growing number of students in higher education are using ChatGPT for various educational purposes, ranging from seeking information to writing essays. Although many universities have officially banned the use of ChatGPT because of its potential harm and unintended consequences, it is still important to uncover how students leverage ChatGPT for learning, what challenges emerge, and how we can make better use of ChatGPT in higher education. Thus, we conducted focus group workshops and a series of participatory design sessions with thirty students who have actively interacted with ChatGPT for one semester in university and with other five stakeholders (e.g., professors, AI experts). Based on these, this paper identifies real opportunities and challenges of utilizing and designing ChatGPT for higher education.”
Park, H., Ahn, D., & Lee, J. (2024, May). Lessons From Working in the Metaverse: Challenges, Choices, and Implications from a Case Study. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-16).
“Although the metaverse workspace has the potential to solve some of the drawbacks of remote work while maintaining its benefits, there are few real-world cases of adopting the metaverse as a legitimate workspace and fewer subsequent studies on how to design and operate the metaverse workspace. Thus, questions exist about the organizational or sociotechnical challenges that may emerge and how decisions are made when adopting and operating the metaverse workspace in a real-world setting. To answer such questions, we scrutinized the startup company Zigbang, which has completely replaced their physical office with Soma— a metaverse platform they developed where thousands of people work and other cooperative companies have moved in as tenants. By conducting field observations and semi-structured interviews with various workers and Zigbang's stakeholders, we identify essential design challenges and decisions when adopting a metaverse workspace and highlight the key takeaways learned from the company's trials and errors.”
Zhang, Y., Naveed, K., & Qi, J. (2025). Crypto Investment: The Role of Investment Motivations, Investment Confidence, and Risk Perceptions. Financial Services Review, 33(1), 120–141. https://doi.org/10.61190/fsr.v33i1.3974
“Analyzing data from the 2021 National Financial Capability Study and the Investor Survey, the study employs two logistic regression models to investigate the effects of investment motivations, risk perceptions, and investing confidence on cryptocurrency investments in a sample of 1,653 American investors. The findings revealed that motivations and investment confidence positively correlate to the choice to engage in cryptocurrency investments and the propensity for future investments. The risk perception of cryptocurrencies acts as a barrier, discouraging current investment behavior and future investment intentions in this class of assets.”
Feb 05, 2025
Congratulations
Congratulations to our doctoral students: Juha Lee, Juan Sandvoal Hoyos (Sebastian), and Ravisha Chutani on receiving scholarships to attend and present their papers at the 2025 ACCI conference in Pittsburgh, PA this April.
Congratulations to doctoral student Camryn Cobb (mentor Dr. Dee Warmath) on her paper entitled “Dominance and Division: Zero-sum Thinking” being accepted for presentation at the 2025 Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference in Denver Colorado this February.
Dr. Dee Warmath on becoming the incoming editor for the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10834-024-09998-0
Other news…
Outstanding faculty in our department are chairing and leading two conferences this year:
The 2025 Financial Therapy Association (FTA) Conference will be in Athens Ga, and the call for papers are out. FHCE faculty Dr. Megan Ford is serving as the Conference Chair for the 2025 conference. If you are interested in attending the call for papers deadline has been extended to February 7th, 2025: https://financialtherapyassociation.org/education/conference-2025/#proposal
The 2025 VITA U Conference will be in San Juan, Puerto Rico this year, and FHCE faculty Dr. Lance Palmer is the Chair of this conference. https://www.fcs.uga.edu/financial-planning/vita-u-conference-2025. If you are interested in attending, the Call for papers deadline is Feb 28th, 2025: https://proposalspace.com/calls/d/1759
Dr. Kimberly Watkins led a group of our undergraduate and graduate students to the 2025 NAPFA South Conference in Atlanta, GA this year.
Dr. Lu Fan’s research on cryptocurrency and social media use was feature in UGA Today in January 2025: https://news.uga.edu/social-media-users-likely-to-invest-in-crypto/
Dr. Megan Ford was interviewed by vox.com on relationships and money. Here is a link to the article: https://www.vox.com/even-better/396354/merging-finances-partner-considerations-money-love-relationships-debt.
Research
Lim, H., Lee, J. M., & Fan, L. (2025). Retirement status change, social support and life satisfaction among older adults: differences by household income level. International Journal of Social Economics. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-03-2024-0209
“The study found that completely or partially retired individuals reported higher life satisfaction than those who continued working. Those who had returned to work also experienced higher life satisfaction, particularly among the low-income group. Among the middle-income group, individuals transitioning toward retirement reported greater life satisfaction than those still working. Across all subgroups, closeness with a spouse or partner and having close friends were positively related to life satisfaction. However, a lack of close relationships with immediate family members was linked to lower life satisfaction in the low- and middle-income groups, though this was not found in the high-income group”.
Qi, J., Zhang, Y., & Ouyang, C. (2025). Cryptocurrency Investments: The Role of Advisory Sources, Investor Confidence, and Risk Perception in Shaping Behaviors and Intentions. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 18(2), 57.
“The findings from this study indicated that investor confidence was positively associated with the likelihood and intentions to invest in cryptocurrency. Conversely, heightened risk perceptions associated with cryptocurrency reduced both the likelihood and intentions to invest. The findings from this study make a compelling case for financial professionals to enhance client education on cryptocurrency risks and for policymakers to strengthen regulations, ensuring accurate information dissemination through media and social networks. By providing a nuanced understanding of advisory influence and investors’ characteristics, this research offers valuable insights for financial professionals, policymakers, and investors navigating the complexities of cryptocurrency investments”.
Zhang, Y., Chatterjee, S., & Fan, L. (2025). Informed investment decisions: The role of fundamental and investment-specific financial knowledge on investors’ information source choice. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning. https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrjfcp/early/2025/01/08/jfcp-2023-0139.abstract
“This study uses the 2021 National Financial Capability Study State-by-State Survey combined with the Investor Survey to examine the relationships between investment-specific and fundamental financial knowledge and the associations of these two types of knowledge with investors’ reliance on three distinct information sources for investment decisions, namely, mobile trading apps, financial professionals, and social networks. The analysis reveals that objective investment-specific knowledge and objective fundamental financial knowledge negatively correlated with investors’ reliance on all three information sources and the number of sources used. On the other hand, subjective investment-specific knowledge exhibited positive correlations with the reliance on these three information sources and the number of sources used but subjective fundamental knowledge did not. The findings provide important implications for policymakers, financial planners, and counselors”.
Jan 27, 2025
January 2025 Just So You Know…
We are restarting the Just So You Know for FHCE. The first edition of this year begins with some highlights from last year:
Welcome
Welcome to our new faculty who joined the department starting this Fall of 2024:
Dr. Sharon Kane, Assistant Professor in Consumer Economics
Prof. Deborah Lacey, Lecturer in Financial Planning/Consumer Economics
Graduate Coordinator Assistant Jeanne Taylor
Condolences
FHCE lecturer Jim Pasztor passed away during the summer of 2024.
Congratulations…
Congratulations to all of our summer/Fall 2024 doctoral graduates: Drs. Gary Clement (Chair: Dr. John Grable), Heejae Lee (Chair: Dr. Dee Warmath), Hofner Rusiana (Dr. Patryk Babiarz), Jordan Bell (Chair: Dr. Dee Warmath).
Congratulations to the following FHCE alumni whose firms made it to the 2025 Bulldog 100:
- Ryan DeLettre (Consumer Econ ’06)
- Spencer Sutlive (Financial Planning ’20)
- Will Scott (Housing ’04)
- Emily Poole (Consumer Journalism ’00)
- Stephen Womack (Consumer Econ ’05)
Congratulations also to FHCE Alumna Katrina Bowers (Financial Planning, Housing and Consumer Economics ’84) on receiving the FACS Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award.
Dr. Kimberly Watkins on receiving the Financial Therapy Association 2024 Outstanding Community Outreach Leader Award.
Congratulations to FHCE doctoral candidate Jia Qi (co-authors: FHCE Alumna Dr. Yu Zhang (Kansas State University) and Dr. Swarn Chatterjee) on receiving the AFS Best Paper Award in the 2024 Academy of Financial Services Conferences in Columbus, OH.
Dr. Daehwan Ahn participated in the 2024 UGA Teaching Academy Fellows program.
Dr. Effie Antonoudi was selected to the UGA Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Lu Fan was selected in the 2024 cohort of the UGA ASPIRE Fellows program.
FHCE Faculty Drs. Daehwan Ahn, Effie Antonoudi, Lu Fan, and Kimberly Watkins were inducted as Owens Institute of Behavioral Research (OIBR) as new affiliates. Drs. Andy Carswell and Dee Warmath are also current affiliates of the OIBR.
Other news…
Under Dr. Lance Palmer's leadership and with tremendous support from Wil Golden and other members of the VITA team the VITA-U Conference was hosted by UGA in 2024. Dr. Palmer's efforts also resulted in the starting of the Online Graduate Certificate program and Endorsement in Financial Literacy.
Under Dr. Kristy Archuleta's leadership, the Graduate Certificate in Behavioral Financial Planning and Financial Therapy also brought in its first cohort in the spring of 2024.
Enrollment grew across all of the FHCE undergraduate and graduate programs!
Dr. Jermaine Durham successfully organized the 2024 GICH Fall Retreat at the Georgia Center, along with Dr. Kim Skobba and other members of the GICH team. The Fall retreat had record attendance, and was a tremendous success all around.
Dr. Michael Thomas was invited by the following organizations to deliver keynote addresses: 2024 AFCPE Annual Conference, Columbus, OH; 2024 J.P. Morgan and Chase Speaker Series: “A Holistic View of Financial Socialization.”; 2024 CFP® Board Connect Conference: “Compassionate Financial Guidance for the Mass Affluent.”; Department of Defense (DoD): “The Top Five Things to Consider When Taking Care of Your People: Cognitive Exploration of Human Behavior”.
Research
Adams, K., Skobba, K., & Tiller, L. (2024). “I Would Make This Place Mine” : Photo Voice Reflections of Youth with Foster Care Experience in a Precollegiate Program. Child Welfare, 101
Bell, J., Jurgenson, J., & Warmath, D. (n.d.). The Role of Objective Financial Situation and Psychological Outlook in the Relationship Between Personal Life Shocks and Financial Well‐Being. Journal of Consumer Behaviour. doi:10.1002/cb.2437
Cusumano, C., & Warmath, D. (2024). Mind the gap: Investigating how financial well-being shapes job satisfaction through burnout. Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 1-15.
Fan, L., & Henager, R. (2025). Generational differences in financial well-being: Understanding financial knowledge, skill, and behavior. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 49 (1), e70011.
Fan, L., & Ryu, S. (2024). Young women’s financial satisfaction: The roles of financial decision-making power, spousal relative resources, and personal financial characteristics. Journal of Family and Economic Issues. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-024-09996-2
Fan, L., & Ryu, S. (2024). Young women’s financial satisfaction: The roles of financial decision-making power, spousal relative resources, and personal financial characteristics. Journal of Family and Economic Issues. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-024-09996-2
Fan, L., Green, L. E., & Park, N. (2024). Financial stressors and alternative financial service use: Extending the ABC-X model of family stress. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 48 (1), e13002.
Gawrys, M. R., & Skobba, K. (2024). The socialization of adolescent housing awareness. Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 52(4), 314-326.
Grable, J., Rabbani, A., & Heo, W. (2024). The Complementary Nature of Financial Risk Aversion and Financial Risk Tolerance. Risks, 12(7), 109.
Grable, J.E., Watkins, K., & Archuleta. K. (2024). To bank or not to bank: describing the banking status of black households. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 43(1), 62-81.
Green, L., Betz-Hamilton, A., Albright, B., Lee, S. -J., Vasquez, K., Cantrell, R., . . . Carswell, A. (2024). Home Modification for Older Adults Aging in Place: Evidence from the American Housing Survey. Journal of Aging and Environment, 38(2), 97-108.
Heo, W., Grable, J. E., & Rabbani, A. G. (2024). An Analysis of the Discrepancy Between Elicited-and Revealed-Portfolio Risk Among Individual Investors: Understanding the Role of Financial Advisors. Journal of Behavioral Finance, 1-15.
Heo, W., Kwak, E. J., Grable, J., & Park, H. J. (2024). Ownership of Cash Value Life Insurance among Rural Households: Utilization of Machine Learning Algorithms to Find Predictors. Mathematics, 12(16), 2467.
Heo, W., Kim, E., Kwak, E. J., & Grable, J. E. (2024). Identifying Hidden Factors Associated with Household Emergency Fund Holdings: A Machine Learning Application. Mathematics, 12(2), 182
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