EP Wealth Vice President, Advisor, Zach Pidgeon, CFP^®, EA draws on his experience inside college athletics to share how coaches can approach financial planning across every career stage. 

Financial Planning for College and Professional Coaches: What You Need to Know

College and professional coaching careers involve a level of uncertainty that most other professions don't share. Income, location, benefits, and job security can all shift quickly based on staff changes, performance, or new opportunities. A coach may work at 10 different schools over a 20-year period of their career—and their financial plan has to be flexible enough to adapt as circumstances change.

Before becoming a financial advisor, I spent over six years working in college athletics at Duke University, with my last role being Director of Football Operations. I was on the coaching staff, supporting coaches on the management, logistics, and behind-the-scenes side of running a program. That experience shapes how I work with coaching clients and their families today at EP Wealth. The goal is always to help them build enough financial flexibility that when a career change happens—because that's the nature of this business—they're not forced to make the next decision purely out of financial pressure. Instead, they can step back, evaluate their options, and choose the right next opportunity for themselves and their family.

In this blog, I walk through some of the key planning considerations for coaches at every career stage, including:

• How coaching careers create unique financial planning challenges
• How planning evolves from early career to late career and beyond
• Rent-vs.-buy decisions and multi-state tax considerations
• Managing multiple retirement plans accumulated across many employers
• When and why to build a team of professional advisors

Why Coaching Careers Require a Different Planning Approach

In coaching, frequent relocation is the norm. Some of the coaches I work with moved just about every year or two during the early part of a career—sometimes cross-country—just to take a slightly better opportunity and move the needle forward.

There's a saying I heard often when I was working inside a football department: "There are two types of coaches: coaches who have been fired and coaches who haven't been fired yet." That philosophy gets passed down early in a coach’s career. Senior coaches tell younger staff not to get comfortable, because even at the highest levels, a job can end based on something that is out of your control. It comes with the territory.

The only profession I'd compare it to is the military. But in the military, you're still a member of your branch—you're just reassigned to a new location. In coaching, it's "you don't have a job anymore."

Each move introduces a wave of financial decisions: new benefits, new retirement plans, new state tax rules, questions about housing, schools for kids, and how to keep things organized when everything is shifting. If you don't have a plan and cash available, you may not have the dollars to move when the time comes. A clear financial plan can potentially take a lot of stress off the coach and their family, and gives them the ability to think clearly as they transition to the next opportunity.

How Financial Planning Evolves Across a Coaching Career

The simple way I explain it to my clients: early in your career, it's about building good financial habits; later in your career, it's about strategy.

Early Career: Building Habits and Getting the Tools in Place

Early in a coaching career—when you're a graduate assistant, for example, or a lower-paid assistant position coach—the financial picture is similar to what a physician might face during residency. Income is limited, and you may be moving frequently.

At this stage, the focus is on:

Budgeting and cash flow awareness. Knowing where every dollar goes and avoiding unnecessary spending.

Building cash reserves. Having enough set aside to cover a security deposit, a cross-country move, or a gap between jobs.

Starting retirement contributions. Even small amounts can be significant when the habit is in place early.

Managing lifestyle creep. As income begins to grow, keeping unnecessary spending in check creates room for savings to build.

The goal here is to put the right tools in place so that as income and complexity increase, there's a foundation to build on.

Mid-to-Late Career: Deploying Strategy

As a coach moves into coordinator and head coaching roles, income increases significantly—and so does the complexity. Compensation may now include base salary, bonuses, deferred compensation, buyout provisions, and relocation benefits. Each of these can requires its own planning consideration from a tax, cash flow, retirement, and investment standpoint.

At this stage, planning shifts toward:

Coordinating complex compensation. Getting organized—what I call "getting to the starting line"—so the coach can see all the pieces clearly and address them one at a time.

Engaging the right professionals. A CPA for tax planning, an estate attorney for documents and family protection, and a financial advisor to coordinate across all of it.

Funding accounts strategically. With more resources available, there are more opportunities to save, invest, and plan for long-term goals, including retirement.

Aligning the plan with the coach's goals. The strategy should reflect what the coach and their family actually want to do and what their long-term objectives are.

Elevated Late Career: Thinking Like a Business Owner

When a coach begins earning income outside of their primary role—through consulting, speaking fees, clinics, endorsements, or media work—the planning takes another step up in complexity. At this point, the coach needs to start thinking like a business owner.

A few things to consider at this stage:

Business entity formation. Depending on the income level and structure, it may make sense to set up an LLC or S-Corp, with guidance from a business formation attorney.

Separation of income streams. Outside income should be tracked separately, with a dedicated business bank account and credit card for business expenses.

Additional tax planning opportunities. Outside income may open the door to retirement vehicles like a SEP IRA or Solo 401(k), and may require estimated tax payments and closer coordination with a CPA.

Camps and clinics as separate entities. Most universities don't allow camps to run under the university's name, so the coach has to operate them as a separate business entity, which adds another layer of complexity.

The coaches I've seen handle this stage well are the ones who have a trusted team around them and keep everyone on the same page.

Approaching Retirement: Planning the Transition

For coaches approaching retirement, the focus shifts again—toward withdrawal strategy, pension decisions, healthcare planning, estate considerations, and what life after coaching looks like. Some coaches want to step away entirely, while others may transition into consulting, speaking engagements, or broadcasting. Each path carries different financial implications, and the earlier those conversations begin with your advisor, the more options are available.

4 Key Planning Considerations for Coaches

The Rent vs. Buy Decision

This is probably the most common question I receive from coaching clients. When a family is moving to a new city and wants their kids to be settled, the instinct is often to buy. But in a profession where the coaching stint might last only a season or two, buying introduces risks that are easy to overlook.

A few things I walk through with clients:

• The capital gains exclusion. In general, to qualify for the full primary residence capital gains exclusion, you need to have owned and lived in the home for two of the five years before selling. Short coaching stints can make it difficult to meet that threshold, which may mean paying capital gains tax on a sale that the family wasn't expecting.

• The reality of remote rental ownership. Some coaches choose to keep a property and rent it out after they move. But rental ownership from a distance—hiring a property manager, having to take maintenance calls at all hours of the day and night—is more involved than some people realize. It also introduces rental income, depreciation, and future tax consequences when the property is eventually sold.

• What senior coaches have learned. Some of the more experienced coaches I work with have told me they've lived in many states and don't think they've made money on more than one or two houses in their career. Looking back, renting an equally nice house rather than buying would have left them in a stronger financial position in some of those situations.

None of this means buying is the wrong choice. But it's a decision that can be colored by emotion, and running the numbers with an advisor before committing can help coaches and their families see the full picture.

Navigating State Taxes and Residency When You Relocate

A move from one state to another can meaningfully change a coach's take-home pay. The same contract can have a different after-tax value depending on where you live. When a coach is considering opportunities in different states, we can run an analysis to show what the compensation looks like after state taxes so that you know what the various offers are really worth.

The goal is to make sure the financial side of a move is just as organized as the career move itself.

Managing Multiple Retirement Plans

Because coaches may work at many different institutions over a career, they can accumulate a significant number of retirement plans. These may include 403(b)s, 401(k)s, 457 plans, IRAs, and in some cases pension benefits through public university or state retirement systems.

It's not unusual for a coach to arrive at our office in mid-career with eight, ten, or more old retirement accounts spread across different custodians and former employers. In some cases, they don't have current statements or login access. They may only be able to say, "I coached there from 2000 to 2004, and I know there was a plan in place."

Tracking these down and getting organized is one of the first things we work on. The approach I take is: let's get to the starting line. Let's take a full inventory—what exists, where it's held, how it's invested, who the beneficiaries are—so we can do a "state of the union" and understand where things actually stand.

From there, we look at which accounts may be candidates for consolidation and which may be better left where they are. Some old employer plans may have strong investment options, unique distribution rules, or low costs. Consolidation can simplify things, but it should be a deliberate decision rather than an automatic one.

For coaches approaching or in retirement, having retirement assets consolidated into an IRA—or a Roth IRA, depending on the tax treatment of the dollars—can potentially simplify withdrawal planning and reduce the administrative burden of pulling income from many different sources.

Building Your Team of Advisors

As a coach's career becomes more complex, the financial planning typically involves more than one professional. That team might include:

• A financial advisor who understands the realities of the coaching profession and can coordinate across the other professionals involved.

• A CPA for tax planning—especially important with multi-state income, complex compensation, and outside business income.

• An estate planning attorney to address wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and family protection, particularly when there are minor children or significant assets.

• A business formation attorney, for coaches with outside income ventures that may benefit from entity setup.

• An insurance professional for risk management, who can help evaluate coverage and ensure there are no gaps.

The financial advisor often serves as the head coach across this group, helping to organize the full picture, keep everyone aligned, and make sure the plan reflects what the coach and their family want to accomplish.

Start Early

If there's one piece of advice I'd share with coaches at any level, it's this: the earlier you can start with financial planning, the better. The longer you wait to put a plan in place, the harder it is to build the kind of flexibility that gives you real options later in your career.

The more you do early, the more you can do later. It comes back to that core idea: if you've built a strong financial foundation, and the day comes when your job ends—because in coaching, that day may come—you don't have to scramble. You can look at your family and say, "We're all right. We'll find the right fit." That kind of confidence is one of the most valuable things financial planning can provide.

College and professional coaches who are interested in exploring financial planning at any career stage can connect with our wealth management team for athletes and coaches. Whether you're early in your career or managing complex compensation and multiple retirement plans, we're here to help.

Disclosures:

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