Savings Coach

10/19/2026

Getting married is a big life change—and it can change your taxes, too. 💰

Here are 4 things newlyweds should know:
1. Your tax filing status changes. If you're married on December 31, the IRS generally considers you married for the entire tax year. You’ll typically choose Married Filing Jointly, but check with your tax preparer to be sure.

2. Your combined income matters. Combining incomes can move you into a different tax bracket or affect certain deductions and credits. Some couples pay less in taxes, while others may pay more.

3. Benefits and deductions may change. Health insurance, student loan repayment plans, education credits, and other tax benefits could be affected by your new filing status and household income.

4. It's a great time to plan ahead. Review your W-4 withholding, update your financial accounts, and consider whether filing jointly or separately makes the most sense for your situation.

The takeaway: Don't assume your taxes will work the same way they did when you were single!

At Savings Coach, we help couples navigate the financial side of marriage so they can spend less time worrying about money and more time building their future together.

Newly married or getting married soon? Let's talk about your financial game plan.

10/12/2026

Ever feel like you make decent money, but there's never enough left in your bank account?

We spend a LOT of time helping clients understand their cashflows. The typical spending behaviors of most individuals and families can be broken down into three buckets:
1) Monthly Bills
Mortgage or rent, utilities, subscriptions, and other recurring expenses. Know what you owe and make sure it's paid on time.

2) Everyday Spend
Groceries, restaurants, shopping, entertainment, and all those little purchases that add up. Tracking these expenses over several months can reveal opportunities to save without sacrificing what matters most to you.

3) Rolling Expenses
Car repairs, annual insurance payments, holidays, and future travel or purchases. These expenses might not happen every month, but they're often predictable. Planning ahead can keep them from derailing your finances.
Example: If your car insurance is $1,200 paid annually then you need to be saving $100 per month for that payment today.

Tracking these three spending behaviors separately can actually help you simplify your finances and take appropriate action to improve your financial well-being.

If you need help with tracking your cashflows, automating bill-pay or how to budget, consider contacting Savings Coach today. We'd love to help!

10/05/2026

Your income goes up. Does your lifestyle have to?

Lifestyle creep happens when your spending increases every time your income does—until that big raise doesn't feel like a raise anymore.

You don't have to avoid enjoying your money. Just make sure your wealth grows faster than your lifestyle.

Consider trying this:

📈 Give every raise a job. Increase savings and investments before increasing spending.
🤖 Automate it. Send part of every raise directly to your 401(k), IRA, or investment account.
🏡 Don't upgrade everything at once. A raise doesn't require a bigger house, newer car, and more expensive vacations.
🎯 Know what "enough" looks like. More income should create more financial freedom—not just more expenses.

Turn raises into wealth, not just a more expensive lifestyle.

09/29/2026

Athens Red Hawks - FAFSA is now live for 2027-2028. But before you hit submit, perhaps you want to pre-calculate your SAI Student Aid Index amount. Take a few minutes and get your free College Money Report.
Reminder to use 2025 tax AGI income, but asset values as of today (day when you submit FAFSA)

90 Minute Session Towards A College Funding Plan $500 You've read, googled, and surfed but now you just want sit down and to talk to an expert and make sense of it all. With maximizing investment returns, tax benefits and student loans, we can help map out a strategic sequence to help you pay for th...

09/28/2026

Want to make saving and investing easier? Stop relying on willpower.

One of the simplest ways to improve your long-term financial success is to automate your money.

Why?
🧠 It removes decisions. You don't have to constantly decide whether you should save this month.
💵 You pay yourself first. Money moves toward your goals before you have a chance to spend it.
🔁 It creates consistency. Motivation comes and goes. Automation keeps working.
📈 It gives compounding time to work. Small, consistent investments can grow significantly over decades.
🙅‍♂️ It reduces temptation. Money you don't see sitting in your checking account is harder to accidentally spend.
📉 It can reduce emotional investing. Your contributions continue even when the market gets noisy.
🚀 And you can increase it over time. Every raise is an opportunity to automatically increase your savings rate.

The goal isn't to become perfect with money.
The goal is to build a financial system that makes good decisions easier.

👉 Set it once.
👉 Make it automatic.
👉 Let consistency do the heavy lifting.

Your future self will thank you.

09/21/2026

How can compound interest help you become a millionaire?!

Here are some examples we used to get to roughly $1,000,000 (or even more!).

If you can save $525 per month and grow it at 5% annually for 45 years, you would have saved $283,500. BUT, with the power of compounding you could have a balance of more than $1,000,000!

What happens when you change the variables? We could increase the savings rate to $1,000 but keep the rate of return at 5%. It may only take 35 years to grow to $1,083,843.69!

How about save $525 per month, but increase the rate of return to 6%? After 40 years you would have an estimated $975,000.

Lastly, what if we keep the 45 years, but increase both savings ($1,000) and rate of return (6%). You could have over $2.5M!! Even though, in this scenario you only saved approximately $540,000.

Consider playing around with a compound interest calculator like the one found at the investor .gov! Plug in numbers that make sense for your life. OR reach out to us at Savings Coach. We would love to help you understand how you could benefit from compound interest.

09/15/2026

Have you ever... Once you begin earning money, you are accumulating credits towards social security. Is your information accurate? Have you ever checked your estimated Social Security benefit?

If you’re young in your career, logging into SSA.gov might be one of the easiest financial checkups you can do today.

Here’s why it matters:
💰 Check your earnings record
Your future Social Security benefit is based in part on your earnings history. Make sure your wages are being reported correctly. Mistakes do get reported!

📝 Catch mistakes early
Employers and payroll records aren't perfect. Finding an error now gives you much more time to get it corrected.

📈 See your estimated benefits
Even if retirement feels decades away, seeing your projected benefit can help you understand what role Social Security might play in your long-term plan.

🎯 Put your retirement savings in perspective
Your Social Security estimate can be one piece of the puzzle when determining how much you need to save in your 401(k), IRA, or brokerage account.

🔐 Create your account and check it once a year.
You don't need to be close to retirement to start paying attention to your retirement plan.

Small financial checkups today can prevent big surprises later.
👉 Go to SSA.gov and review your Social Security Statement.

09/01/2026

Having kids changes your financial plan.

Start with these 5 questions:
1️⃣ Do we have enough emergency savings?
2️⃣ Do we have the right life and disability insurance?
3️⃣ How will we pay for childcare?
4️⃣ What milestones will we want to help our kids with financially—and what do we want them to pay for themselves?
5️⃣ Are we saving for retirement before college?

Having a child changes so many things for a family. To prepare, consider creating a financial plan that grows with your family.

08/31/2026

See the graduation speech for our Race to $100K 2026 Participants! There were A LOT of achievements in the last 12 months. We are proud of all our coaching clients and excited for their future trajectory!

Message us to learn how you can participate in the Race to $100K 12-month coaching program.

08/24/2026

You said “I do.” Now comes another important question:

How will we handle our money together?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Some couples combine everything. Others keep some accounts separate. Many find a hybrid approach works best.

Here are a few things to think about:
Debt: What debt are you each bringing into the marriage, and how will you pay it off?
Bank accounts: Joint, separate, or a combination of both?
Monthly bills: Will you split expenses 50/50 or contribute based on income?
Financial goals: Are you saving for a home, travel, children, retirement, or something else?
Protection: Have you reviewed your insurance and updated beneficiaries?
Communication: How often will you sit down and talk about money?

How Savings Coach can help:
We provide an objective third-party perspective and help turn all of these conversations into an actual plan.

You will feel more organized and have a process for making money decisions. You will be able to create a rich vision of your life together and be able to spend guilt-free according to your personalized plan.