George Horace Lorimer once said, “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.” No one knows this better than Dr. Jeff Dew, who specializes in researching how finances affects couples, and working to show them the tools they can use to bolster their relationships. Of his research, Dr. Dew says he wants people to understand the correlation between relationships and money so that they can “think about the different results they might get.”

His desire to do so sprang out of his own desire to understand how changes in his financial circumstances when he was in school would affect his marriage. In an interview for the  Journal of Financial Therapy, he says:   “I left a job in the mental health field to attend graduate school. The job had a reasonable salary and incredible benefits. As I was walking home from my graduate office one evening, I wondered how the financial change would influence my marriage. I have been researching this issue ever since.”

However, his research interests did not always lie in finances; at first, he was interested in the parent-child dynamic. He credits his original research to time spent employed at a youth treatment center. At the center, they offered parent education classes. Dr. Dew observed that the adolescents whose parents attended the class were rarely re-admitted to the center. Conversely, those whose parents skipped the meetings often returned to the center.

His work has been featured in numerous publications: The Huffington Post, DadsDivorce, and The New York Times to name only a few. Previously, he was a professor at Utah State University. He now brings his expertise to BYU, in our School of Family Life. Dr. Dew says he loves to teach because he gets to be around “bright and accomplished” students who are “eager to learn,” and because he gets to discuss family studies in the context of the gospel.