Sarah D. Asebedo and Martin C. Seay will receive the 2016 Montgomery-Warschauer Award from the Financial Planning Association for their research into how pschology impacts financial planning.

The Montgomery-Warschauer Award honors the paper published during the previous year in the Journal of Financial Planning that provides the most outstanding contribution to the betterment of the profession. The award is named for the late Henry Montgomery, who helped create the Journal, and Tom Warschauer, the Journal’s first academic editor.

Asebedo is an assistant professor of Practice in Financial Planning at Virginia Tech and is a doctoral candidate in personal financial planning through Kansas State University. She will be joining the Texas Tech Personal financial planning faculty as an assistant professor in September.

Seay is an assistant professor of Personal Financial Planning at Kansas State University. His research focuses on borrowing decisions, how psychological characteristics shape financial behavior, and methodology in financial planning research.

The paper authored by Asebedo and Seay introduces positive psychology, illustrates how it overlaps with financial planning and provides specific scientifically based tools and resources that financial planners can use to integrate positive psychology into their practice.

“Asebedo and Seay have made an enormous contribution to our profession by adapting the perspectives of positive psychology to the practice of financial planning,” said Dave Yeske, a principal of Yeske Buie and Journal of Financial Planning practitioner editor.

“These two talented academics have convincingly demonstrated that the empirically validated tools of positive psychology can be used to help financial planning clients foster a more optimistic mindset, along with greater mental and emotional resilience, all of which helps them to not just function but actually flourish in the face of financially challenging life events,” he added.

The authors will present their research at the FPA annual conference in September in Baltimore.