FCP Journal editor’s notes, V. 9(1)


Hanna, S. (1998). The journal approaches
the millennium, Financial Counseling and Planning, 9 (1),
i.


The Journal Approaches The Millennium

Sherman Hanna(1)


Lest any reader think I am being premature in mentioning the millennium,
I am quite sure that some graduate students are working on research now
that will result in articles in the year 2000 or later. There are some
innovations and trends for the journal worthy of at least the next century,
although I will also mention some old challenges. Kerkmann’s article, Motivation
and Stages of Change in Financial Counseling
, is one of the few I have
published relating to counseling. As I have discussed in previous editor’s
notes, it is difficult to get anyone other than a graduate student or an
untenured faculty member to go through the long process leading to a scholarly
journal article, so it is not surprising that those engaged in financial
counseling rarely submit manuscripts. However, I would encourage anyone
interested in financial counseling to submit manuscripts, even short comments
on Kerkmann’s article, so we can have more items on counseling.

As has been the case for several years in the journal, we have articles
related to retirement planning and investing. The lead article by Yuh,
Montalto and Hanna asks the question Are Americans Prepared for Retirement?
Strangely enough, considering the attention this question has received
in the media, there have been few journal articles on the topic. The finding
of the article that roughly half of American households headed by a worker
aged 35 or older would not be able to maintain their current levels of
living based on their projected pensions and investment accumulations is
certainly important, although familiar. What is innovative in the article
is the use of a question in the Survey of Consumer Finances which asks
respondents to compare spending to income. The Yuh, Montalto and Hanna
article finds a huge effect of spending less than income on projected retirement
adequacy. DeVaney, Sharpe, Kratzer and Su also analyze retirement planning
in Retirement Preparation of the Nonfarm Self-Employed.

Brunson, Snow and Gustafson consider a population group rarely studied,
in Mid-Life Career Change: Career Military Versus Noncareer Military
Financial Well-Being and Financial Satisfaction
. Hayhoe and Wilhelm
add to the literature on gender differences in
Modeling Perceived Economic
Well-Being in a Family Setting: A Gender Perspective
.

Grable and Lytton analyze the effect of gender and other demographic
variables in Investor Risk Tolerance: Testing the Efficacy of Demographics
as Differentiating and Classifying Factors.
Lewis examines a topic
of importance for low income consumers in Home Service Distribution
System:
A Method of Marketing Life Insurance to the Poor. This
issue also has some articles with challenging statistical methodology.
Sprudzs’s Diversification or Concentration? An Empirical Analysis of
Household Portfolio Allocation Practices
uses cluster analysis and
presents a graphical illustration of results. Ewing and Payne analyze time
series data and some techniques I did not learn in my econometrics courses
25 years ago, in The Long-Run Relation between the Personal Savings
Rate and Consumer Sentiment
. Montalto and Yuh provide useful information
for researchers using the Federal Reserve Board’s Surveys of Consumer Finances
in Estimating Nonlinear Models with Multiply Imputed Data.

As always, I encourage submissions, both of regular research articles
and other types of items. Authors should submit as much as they think appropriate,
but I usually try to edit accepted articles down to reasonable lengths,
such as the 3,000 to 8,900 word range in this issue. Some extra material
is put on the web, as noted in selected articles.

1. Sherman Hanna, Professor, Consumer and Textile
Sciences Department, The Ohio State University, 1787 Neil Ave., Columbus,
OH 43210-1295. Phone: (614) 292-4584. Fax: (614) 292-7536. E-mail: hanna.1@osu.edu


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