Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Financial Behaviors, Financial Satisfaction, And Goal Attainment Among College-Educated Young Adults: A Mediating Analysis With Latent Change Scores, Xiaomin Li, Melissa Curran, Joyce Serido, Ashley B. Lebaron, Soyeon Shim, Nan Zhou

Faculty Publications

The aim of the study is to investigate how 2,084 U.S. college-educated young adults (61.9% female, and 69.5% non-Hispanic White) navigated the goal attainment process during the transition to adulthood. Using four-wave data collected across eight years, we examined how financial behaviors (self-regulating behaviors) predicted both depressive symptoms (affective goal attainment evaluations) and financial obstacles to goal attainment (cognitive goal attainment evaluations) via financial satisfaction (resources). Given the variability in developmental trajectories (i.e., initial levels and rates of over-time changes) among young adults, we conducted an exploratory mediational analysis with Latent Change Scores. The results revealed indirect-only mediation patterns, and …