What One Financial Coach Taught a Room Full of Employees About Money, Behavior, and Why the System Was Never Built to Help You
This April, as tax season reminds all of us that money doesn't wait, OneVillage hosted a financial wellness seminar with Dr. Dominique Reese, AFC®, FFC® — OneVillage's Financial Wellbeing Coach — and the conversation that followed was one of the most honest, practical, and genuinely useful discussions about money we've seen in a workplace setting.
The topic was financial planning: specifically, how to maximize savings, reduce debt, and start investing. But what Dominique actually delivered was something bigger than a financial literacy session. She delivered a framework for understanding why most of us struggle with money — and why the problem has never been lack of discipline.
Let's Start With What Nobody Tells You
Most financial advice is built on a faulty premise: that if you just follow the right rules, the right percentages, the right budgeting system, everything will fall into place.
The 50/30/20 rule. The latte factor. The debt snowball. Save three months of expenses. No, six months. No, twelve.
The advice is everywhere. And yet financial stress remains one of the leading drivers of absenteeism, distraction, and burnout in the American workplace. Employees aren't struggling because they're irresponsible or undisciplined. They're struggling because the advice they've been given was never designed around their actual lives.
Dominique opened the session with three assumptions she asked every participant to hold throughout the conversation. Money is personal. Money is behavioral. And the money you have — or don't have — is a reflection of your behavior, not your worth.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Because if money is behavioral, that means it's changeable. It means there's no permanent state of financial struggle. It means that wherever you are right now, there's a path forward — and it starts with understanding your own patterns, not someone else's benchmark.
The Technique That Changes Everything: Budgeting Using the Past
The centerpiece of Dominique's session was a technique she calls budgeting using the past — and it's deceptively simple.
Before you create a budget for next month, you look at last month. You pull your bank statements — ideally the last 30 days, though 60 or 90 gives you an even clearer picture — and you manually log every single transaction. Not into an app. Not into a spreadsheet that auto-categorizes everything. By hand, in your own words, in your own categories.
Why manually? Because when you see a number three times — on the statement, when you write it down, and when you add it up — it anchors in your memory in a way that a pie chart never will. The muscle memory, the repetition, the act of physically accounting for every dollar — it creates a kind of financial awareness that passive tracking tools simply can't replicate.
Once every transaction is logged and categorized, the numbers start to tell a story. And it's almost always a story that surprises people.
Dominique shared an example that landed with the room: a client who went to the grocery store 26 times in a single month. Not because she was stocking up or meal prepping — but because she stopped in after work whenever she needed something. Twenty-six times in thirty-one days. That's a behavior, not a budget problem. And once you can see the behavior clearly, you can make a real decision about whether you want to continue it, change it, or stop it entirely.
That's the question Dominique asks for every category: is this a behavior you want to start, stop, change, or continue? Not what does the internet say you should spend on food. Not what does the rule say. What do you want, for your household, for your life?
The result of this exercise isn't guilt. It's clarity. And clarity, Dominique says, is where you find money you didn't know you had. When you can see exactly where every dollar went, you can make intentional decisions about where you want it to go instead — and redirect that money toward something that actually matters to you.
The Four Things Every Household Should Be Saving For
Once you have that clarity, Dominique walks through the four savings priorities every household needs to address — in order.
1. The Emergency Fund
This one comes first, always. An emergency fund is held in a traditional bank account — accessible, liquid, boring. It won't earn meaningful interest and that's not the point. The point is that it's there when you need it, without penalty, without delay, without having to put anything on a credit card.
How much? Dominique's answer is refreshingly honest: it depends on your household. How many emergencies did you have last year? How much did they cost? Use that as your barometer. The general guidance of three to six months is a starting point, not a rule — and once your balance exceeds $10,000, move the rest into a high-yield savings account where it can at least work for you while it waits.
2. Goal-Based Savings
This is the money you're setting aside for the things that matter to you — a down payment, a vacation, a new car, a home renovation. It lives in a high-yield savings account where it earns interest, compounds over time, and stays untouched until you're ready to use it.
Dominique's reframe here is worth remembering: your budget is your vision board. Where your money goes reflects what you value. And if there's something you keep saying you're going to get back to — something you haven't budgeted for — putting it in the budget is the first step to actually making it happen.
3. Retirement
Retirement savings comes in two forms: pre-tax and post-tax. Pre-tax accounts like a 401(k) or 403(b) reduce your taxable income now and grow tax-free until you withdraw. Post-tax accounts like a Roth IRA are funded with money you've already paid taxes on — but withdrawals in retirement are tax-free, and after five years, you can access your contributions without penalty.
For 2025, the 403(b) contribution limit is $23,500 — $31,000 if you're 50 or older, and $34,750 if you're between 60 and 63. The Roth IRA limit is $7,000, or $8,000 if you're 50 or over. If your employer offers a match, that's the first dollar you should be capturing — it's part of your compensation, and leaving it on the table is leaving money behind.
One quick way to estimate your retirement number: multiply your anticipated annual retirement expenses by 25. If you expect to need $60,000 a year in retirement, your target is $1.5 million. That number can feel overwhelming — but the math of compound growth means that starting early, even with small amounts, changes the trajectory dramatically.
4. Investments
Once you've built your emergency fund, established your savings habits, and are contributing meaningfully to retirement, investments are the next layer. A traditional brokerage account lets you invest in stocks, index funds, ETFs, and more — and unlike retirement accounts, there are no contribution limits and no withdrawal restrictions. You're only taxed when you sell at a gain. That's why high-net-worth individuals tend to hold significant assets in brokerage accounts: the tax treatment is often more favorable than ordinary income.
For most employees, this stage comes after the first three are solidly in place. But understanding that it exists — and that it's accessible to anyone, not just the wealthy — is part of what makes sessions like this one so valuable.
The Moment That Stopped the Room
Near the end of the session, an employee from Defenders of Wildlife came off mute with a simple question: are these one-on-one coaching sessions actually free?
The answer was yes. Completely free. Available to every employee at any company that partners with OneVillage — with no referral needed, no waitlist, no copay, and no cost of any kind.
That question — and that answer — captures exactly why we do this work.
Financial stress doesn't stay at home. It walks into the office every morning and sits down at the desk. It shows up in distraction, in absenteeism, in decisions made from anxiety rather than clarity. And for most employees, there has never been anyone at work willing to sit down with them, look at their actual numbers, and help them build a real plan.
That's what Dominique does. That's what OneVillage does.
Bring This to Your Team
Every employer who partners with OneVillage gets access to our full library of expert seminars — financial wellness, stress management, insurance navigation, eldercare, chronic condition coaching, and more — at no cost to employees.
If you want to bring a session like this one to your workplace, we'd love to make it happen.
📩 Email us at support@onevillage.io and let's talk about what your employees actually need this year.
OneVillage is a healthcare navigation and whole-person wellness platform serving employers of all sizes. Our coaches, navigators, and clinical team are available to your employees — at no cost to them. Learn more at onevillage.io
