Powercat Financial

Research

Powercat Financial strives to be a leader in clinical research by collecting pre-, post-, and follow-up data from clients. Some of the key findings of the research include the following:

Who is most stressed?

  • Freshmen experience higher financial stress levels compared to other students.
  • Students who feel that factors outside of their control influence outcomes in their life report higher financial stress.
  • Students with lower perceived net worth report higher financial stress.
  • Students with student loan debt of $12,000 to $30,000 experience higher financial stress than students with lower or higher debt levels.

See Financial Stress and Financial Counseling: Helping College Students for full study.

Is financial counseling effective?

  • Two months after their initial meeting, students who seek counseling from Powercat Financial feel more knowledgeable about personal finances, have increased investment knowledge and have higher financial satisfaction and lower financial anxiety and stress.

See Financial Stress and Financial Counseling: Helping College Students for full study.

How are psychological characteristics and money management behaviors related?

  • Students with higher anxiety are associated with behaviors such as spending more money than they earn, having difficulty paying bills, and maxing out their credit cards.

See The Correlation between Anxiety and Money Management for full study.

How do you maximize financial well-being?

  • Better financial behaviors are associated with greater financial well-being/satisfaction. To achieve better financial behaviors requires increased financial knowledge and feeling more in control of one’s situation (i.e., increased confidence in ability to manage one’s finances).

Full report forthcoming.

Does financial counseling help some students more than others?

  • Financial counseling seems to create balance in financial knowledge among males and females, business-oriented majors versus non-business majors, under- versus upper-class status, and first-generation versus non first-generation status. The significant differences in subjective and objective knowledge that existed among sub-groups before financial counseling largely vanished after counseling.

Full report forthcoming.

More Information

To request additional information about the Powercat Financial research projects, please contact us at powercatfinancial@k-state.edu.