From the Editor

This issue contains Volume 30 - Issue 1 of Financial Services Review (FSR). I would

like to thank the board and members of the Academy of Financial Services for their contin-

ued support. I continue to work in broadening the scope of articles, while still focusing on

individual financial management and personal financial planning. I encourage authors to

reach out when discussing the implications of their findings in a more comprehensive way.

As such, all articles in the Journal more appropriately relate to financial planning topics and

issues.

The lead article “Retirement Income Beliefs and Financial Advice Seeking Behaviors” is

coauthored by Alejandro Murguı́a at McLean Asset Management and Wade D. Pfau at

McLean Asset Management and The American College of Financial Services. This paper

investigates a series of salient behavioral finance and psychological constructs that influence

retirement income planning. The authors show how these scales are related to each other as

well as retirement income concerns and investment behaviors. They also describe how four

investment personas can be linked with the Advisor Usefulness and Retirement Income

Self-Efficacy scales to identify preferred financial implementation methods. This can assist

individuals in recognizing their relative strengths and weaknesses while financial professio-

nals can present advice in a manner that addresses a client’s concerns and preferred

implementation.

The second article “Mutual Fund Knowledge Assessment for Policy and Decision

Problems” is coauthored by Brian Scholl at the Office of the Investor Advocate and Angela

Fontes at NORC at the University of Chicago. In this paper the authors develop a measure

of mutual fund investment knowledge that complements existing financial literacy measures.

They validate the index with factor analysis identifying two latent components, and descrip-

tive regressions demonstrating the additive value of our index beyond general financial liter-

acy in explaining variation in financial well-being, investment ownership, and fee

calculation proficiency. Despite mutual funds’ importance in household savings, their index

suggests that the public lacks adequate understanding of mutual funds.

The third article, “Do As I Tell You, Not As I Do: Financial Advisors and Personal

Financial Decision-Making” is coauthored by Negin Azamian, Kristine Beck, Hsin-Hui

Chiu, and Inga Timmerman, all at California State University Northridge. The authors

describe the financial behavior of financial advisors and whether they follow the advice they

give clients. In doing so they focus on the following areas of comprehensive financial plan-

ning as they relate to advisor behavior: (1) cash flow, (2) debt, (3) retirement planning, (4)

1057-0810/22/$ – see front matter © 2022 Academy of Financial Services. All rights reserved.

Financial Services Review 30 (2022) v–vi



investments, and (5) estate planning. The authors find that financial advisors generally fol-

low their own advice; and as a group they are more likely to be prepared for retirement,

have less debt, higher liquidity, covered insurance needs, and have an estate plan in place.

The final article, “Financial Advisor Use, Life Events, and the Relationship with

Beneficial Intentions” is coauthored by Matt Sommer at Janus Henderson Investors, HanNa

Lim at Kansas State University, and Maurice MacDonald at Kansas State University. This

study investigates whether working with a financial advisor and experiencing a recent life

event were associated with having beneficial financial planning intentions. The authors

found no relationship between working with a financial advisor and beneficial intentions

over the next 12 months. Life events incurred within the prior year, however, were positively

related to beneficial intentions and when interacted with working with an advisor, had a pos-

itive moderating effect. The results suggest that planning for difficult life transitions is an

important benefit of working with a financial advisor.

Thank you to those who make the journal possible, especially the referees and contribut-

ing authors. Over the past year, the following reviewers provided excellent reviews of the

articles you enjoyed within the pages of Financial Services Review. I would like to send a

special thank you to the many reviewers that have significantly contributed to the quality of

our journal by providing timely and thorough reviews of the submissions to our journal.

Please consider submitting to the Financial Services Review and rely on the style infor-

mation provided to ease readability and streamline the review process. The Journal wel-

comes articles over the range of areas that comprise personal financial planning. While FSR

articles are certainly diverse in terms of topic, data, and method, they are focused in terms of

motivation. FSR exists to produce research that addresses issues that matter to individuals. I

remain committed to the goal of making Financial Services Review the best academic jour-

nal in individual financial management and personal financial planning.

Best regards,

Stuart Michelson

Editor Financial Services Review

S. Michelson / Financial Services Review 30 (2022) v–vi vi