2013 Conference

Financial Services

Financial Services

The study of financial anxiety, relationship satisfaction and financial satisfaction is a noted topic of interest among many fields, including financial planning, financial counseling, and marriage and family therapy. If the goal of these professional service providers is to help consumers become less anxious about their financial situation and more satisfied with their financial situation or intimate relationship - depending on the type of service being provided - then exploring if having shared financial goals can be a intervening factor to increasing satisfaction is important. Structural equation modeling was used to test how having shared financial goals mediates the relationships between financial anxiety and relationship satisfaction and between financial anxiety and financial satisfaction. Missing data was handled using full information maximum likelihood; bootstrap procedures (2,000 bootstraps) were used to test for mediation. The model resulted in acceptable fit with the data. A significant direct relationship was found between financial anxiety and financial satisfaction (β = -.01, p < .01); however, a significant direct relationship between financial anxiety and relationship satisfaction was not supported. Shared financial goals was found to be a significant mediator between financial anxiety and financial satisfaction (β = -.01, p<.01) as well as significant mediator between financial anxiety and relationship satisfaction (β = -.02, p<.01). Overall, shared goals accounted for 4% of the overall variance in the model, relationship satisfaction accounted for 18% of the overall variance, and financial satisfaction accounted for 48% of the overall variance in the model. The results suggest that having shared financial goals does intervene in the relationships between financial anxiety and financial satisfaction as well as relationship satisfaction. In order to enhance consumers of financial and mental health services, this finding is significant because it implies that a practice standard among both financial and relationship practitioners should be to help couples get on the same page in regards to their financial goals.