Coach vs no coach -
Coaches are great for giving you that sense of direction, and it's true you'll tend to make more progress with a coach then without. However, the greener the student, the less difference you'll see between coach and no-coach. Online coaches in particular are limited to how much they can do. Often they have multiple students and hand out common enough advice.
Having made it (nearly) through a masters program you know how to budget your time and study. If your only goal is to be competent enough to not lose all your games at a tourney then 1 year of self study would do that, i.e. minus the cost of a coach. If you're looking for someone to annotate your games, I'd be more than willing to go over one every now and then (you can message me) or simply post one over at the game analysis forum 
Cost and effectiveness of a coach -
One of the most important methods to improvement as a beginner/lower class player is playing lots of games. At that level something like the Chessmaster program can point out your basic errors as well as a coach could. e.g. principals of opening a chess game, basic tactics, and the like.
A GM coach would run $75-100 an hour or more. A lesser title and you might get down to $25 an hour. Lets say you meet with a coach for an hour, once a week for a year ($1300), subtract a few holidays and it'll still be $1000+. If you wanted to make master by a certain date, this may be worth it. It's not so much the cost, but that if you're looking for minimum competency, coach vs no coach will be little difference to the end result. The homework and guidance the coach will give is standard and easy enough to find.
Self taught -
Playing games, reviewing them with Chessmaster, and a few books. For less than half the cost (>$1000) you can get Chessmaster and a few good books. Chessmaster 10K is $15 on amazon. I would recommend a few books out of Seriwan's Winning Chess series. Winning Chess Strategies, Winning Chess Tactics, and Winning Chess Endings The combined cost is $75-85, and it will take you less than 6 months to work through them. Remember at least 50% of your study time should be devoted to playing actual games and reviewing them. Next order of importance is solving tactical puzzles. Last is getting through those 3 books, which I'm guessing would seem like light reading anyway.
6 months later, now you can split your time between drilling tactics, playing games, and one or two more books. I would recommend something like Chess Master vs Chess Amateur and then tackle the classic Modern Chess Strategy (by Pachman). Combined cost of $25. Do this and review your games in Chessmaster for the next 6 months and you would definitely be competent. Of course depending on your natural ability, seriousness of study, etc etc you could be anywhere from crappy to master level so I wouldn't promise any ability, but I'd guess 80% of adult beginner players who did this at 10hrs/week would end up in the 1300-1400 USCF** range, certainly better than 99% of 8 year olds 
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Of course a membership on this site has many benefits as well. You can check them out vs the different costs here. I would be interested in videos / chess mentor / and the computer workout (note, not the play vs computer, "little chess partner")
You may also find Heisman's page interesting. "NM Dan Heisman authors the award-winning Novice Nook columnist, aimed at improving adults ." (Wiki) What I linked simply has a lot of guidelines, principals, and tidbits. At the top you'll see a few good points under the "Improving/Learning" category.
** While other's will correctly note there is no conversion between types of ratings, as a rough estimate I would put the average 1300-1400 USCF player at 1600-1700 turn-based chess.com.
Hello Everyone,
The major thing that has kept me from really progressing in chess over the last 2 years or so is the fact that everytime UI start to work on studying chess and trying to improve, I get swamped with course work (I am in the last year of a Master's Degree program).
I have finally reached a point in my academic career in which I can actually focus on studying chess for the next year without bailing out mid quarter (fingers crossed). I am considering finding a good chess coach as I feel that having someone looking over my sholder- telling me what I am doing wrong, would be a very beneficial thing for me.
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I plan to dedicate approximately 10 hours a week to chess (on average), starting next month. My goal is to be ready for tournament play by this time next year (no, I am not under the illusion that I will be good enough to make chess master within one year, I just want to be good enough to not get killed by some 8 year old kid- not that there is anything wrong with 8 year old kids- within 20 minutes of walking into the tournament).
Do you know of any reputable coaches? Do you have experiences with coaches you can share (I am considering on-line coaches mainly as there are not any coaches where I live). What would you say are their strong points. Also, I am particularly looking for someone to annotate my games.
Pricewise, free is always nice but I am more than willing to pay(prefeably not both an arm and a leg- just one or the other).