Sonya Britt

Assistant Professor

Departments & Academic Units:

• Family Studies and Human Services

Contact Info:

317 Justin Hall
(785) 532-3541

Education:

• Ph.D., Texas Tech University
• M.S., Kansas State University
• B.S., Kansas State University

Short Biography

Dr. Sonya Britt is an assistant professor of personal financial planning with an emphasis in financial therapy at Kansas State University. She teaches courses in the undergraduate and doctoral degree programs. As president of the newly established Financial Therapy Association, she enjoys the opportunity to combine her skills in marriage and family therapy from her master’s degree with her skills in financial planning from her doctoral degree.

The Financial Therapy Association gathered for the first time in November 2008 with the goal of determining whether it was possible and ideal to try to build a bridge between and among financial planners and counselors and clinically trained therapists. The group decided to continue with the idea of “financial therapy” and accepted the following working definition of financial therapy: “To promote a vision of financial therapy, which is the study of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, economic, and integrative aspects of financial health.” It took nearly one year of additional effort to turn the outcomes from the Financial Therapy Forum into reality. The Financial Therapy Association (FTA) was officially recognized as a non-profit Kansas Corporation on October 5, 2009. By December 2009, the FTA had over 125 individuals on the mailing list and the first Board of Directors was nominated and voted into office. The new FTA Board moved ahead quickly to organize the first Financial Therapy Association Annual Conference held on the campus of Kansas State University in September 2010. Today, the Association has over 250 individuals on the mailing list and continues to grow daily.

Sonya’s other roles include serving as the faculty liaison for Powercat Financial Counseling, a peer financial counseling program at Kansas State University, where she researches college student financial literacy. Additional research interests include theoretical development of money issues within marriage, predictors of money arguments and their influence on relationship satisfaction and divorce, and behavioral finance implications within the household. Specific projects include studying the financial and psychological effects of military special pays on military service members and their spouses pre- and post-deployment as well as exploring disordered money beliefs (e.g., money avoidance) and behaviors (e.g., gambling, compulsive buying) of general and student populations.