Chess Tutor/Coach/Blah blah blah

If you're a rank beginner is it worth it to hire a coach or is it just a way to separate a fool from his money?

I have gone from losing games to a computer all of the time to winning most of the time, that's at the easy level. At the normal level I'm still losing most of the time.

My goal is to go from rank beginner to intermediate player within a year, I play versus a computer about an hour a day.

Yes it's worth it, but I'd recommend building your way up to at least 1,000 to 1,200 before hiring one. There's plenty of free material on youtube to get you there. As it'd be overkill to pay a coach to teach you basic opening principles as a 500. Also, many concepts that a coach will really be able to help you with, would be too complex for a total beginner to start learning as a 500.
If you're already 1200+, then a coach will help you get to intermediate (say 1600-1800) faster, but you'd still be able to make this climb with the same free resources.

For beginners, your best study areas are:
1) Opening Principles
2) Tactical Puzzles
3) Endgames (primarily, basic Rook endgames and king + pawn endgames).
4) More Tactics! Always keep this built in to your study regime!
5) Start to look at middle games (huge topic) on youtube; plans, outposts, weak colour complex, etc.

I went from around 600 last year, to 1700+ this year, mostly following the above.

Getting a coach could be helpful for sure, but it is your decision if you want to spend money or not. Until you make that decision, let me help you a bit. In this article you will find tips on how to gradually improve:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement