The notification came on a Tuesday morning in late February 2026, while Brittany Holloway was between patients at the dental office where she works in East Nashville. The IRS Where’s My Refund tool had flipped from “Processing” to “Approved,” and a deposit of $1,247 was headed to her checking account within three business days. She screenshot it immediately. Then she opened TikTok.
That was, she told me later, where the trouble really started.
A First-Generation Filer Who Taught Herself Everything
When I sat down with Brittany Holloway at a coffee shop off Gallatin Avenue in late March 2026, she arrived with her phone open to a notes app where she had written down her own financial numbers. That detail said a lot. Nobody in her family had walked her through any of this. She figured it out herself.
Brittany is 25 years old and works as a dental assistant — a job she genuinely loves — at a private practice in Nashville. She earns $17 an hour, which works out to roughly $35,360 a year before taxes. She finished her dental assisting program at a community college in 2022, the first person in her immediate family to complete any kind of post-secondary credential. That credential came with $8,000 in federal student loan debt.
At 19, she also opened a credit card “because everyone said you needed to build credit,” she told me. That card now carries a $3,000 balance at a 24.99% annual percentage rate. Between the two, her total debt sits at $11,000.
Nashville’s rental market has not been kind to someone at her income level. Brittany pays $1,150 a month for a one-bedroom apartment she shares responsibilities on with a roommate, but her half of the household expenses — rent, utilities, groceries, transportation — consumes more than 60% of her take-home pay each month. There is not much room left over.
The Tax Filing Itself: Straightforward, Until It Wasn’t
Brittany filed her 2025 federal return in early February using a free online filing service, claiming the standard deduction for single filers — $14,600 for tax year 2025, according to IRS guidance. Her employer had withheld slightly more than her actual liability throughout the year, which is how the $1,247 refund materialized. She did not have any complex tax situations: no freelance income, no investment accounts, no dependents.
The IRS acknowledged receipt of her return within 24 hours, and the refund moved through the standard processing timeline. From acceptance to deposit took 18 days — within the typical 21-day window the IRS publishes for e-filed returns with direct deposit.
The filing part, Brittany said, was not the hard part. “I actually felt really proud when I submitted it. Like, I did this myself, I figured it out.” The hard part came immediately after, when she started thinking about what to do with the money that was coming.
Three Weeks of TikTok and No Clear Answer
This is the part of Brittany’s story that I found most recognizable — and most worth reporting. She is not financially reckless. She watches financial content regularly, follows several personal finance creators, and has a genuine desire to make good decisions. The problem, as she described it to me, is that the advice she consumes directly contradicts itself, often within the same hour of scrolling.
She spent approximately three weeks in this holding pattern. The $1,247 sat in her checking account. She moved it to a separate savings account so she wouldn’t spend it accidentally. She made lists. She asked a coworker. She texted her older cousin, who told her to “just invest it.” None of it resolved the paralysis.
Part of what made it harder, she explained, was the social comparison element built into the platforms she was using. “I see people my age talking about their Roth IRA like it’s just something everyone has. And I’m like — I’m just trying to cover rent. It makes you feel behind.”
The Decision She Made — and the One She’s Still Sitting With
On March 14th, Brittany transferred $1,000 directly to her credit card balance. She kept $247 in savings as the start of what she called “an actual emergency fund, even if it’s embarrassingly small.” The credit card balance dropped from $3,000 to $2,000.
She told me the decision felt both right and incomplete. “I kept thinking about the interest. Like, that 25% APR — that’s real money I’m losing every month I carry that balance. So logically it made sense. But then I felt like I was behind on everything else still.”
Her student loans — all federal, serviced through the Department of Education — are currently on an income-driven repayment plan, and her monthly payment is $67. She has not made any extra payments toward the principal. The $8,000 balance sits largely untouched beyond her monthly minimum.
The comparison she keeps making, she admitted, is not one that serves her particularly well. “I know I shouldn’t compare myself to what I see online. But when you grow up without anyone explaining money to you, and then you get online and everyone seems to have it figured out — it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing everything wrong.”
What Brittany’s Tax Season Actually Reveals
By the time I finished my coffee and Brittany had to leave for an afternoon shift, what struck me most was not the $1,247. It was the cost of the confusion itself. She had spent nearly three weeks in a state of productive paralysis — saving the money, yes, but also losing sleep over a decision that, in dollar terms, was relatively contained.
That paralysis has a real cost. Her credit card had accrued approximately $62 in interest during the three weeks she waited to make a decision, based on the 24.99% APR applied to a $3,000 balance. It is not a devastating number. But it is a number that existed only because the information environment she relies on — financial TikTok, social media peers, informal advice — gave her competing signals with no framework for applying them to her specific circumstances.
According to the IRS Statistics of Income data, the average federal tax refund for individual filers has hovered near $3,000 in recent years — making Brittany’s $1,247 below average, likely because her withholding was closer to her actual tax liability. For someone in her tax bracket, that is arguably better than an outsized refund, which effectively represents an interest-free loan to the government. But it also means less of a lump sum to work with each spring.
Brittany is already thinking about next filing season. She wants to understand her W-4 withholding better so she can make more intentional choices throughout the year rather than waiting for a refund to force the conversation. That impulse — to be proactive, to understand the mechanics — is the same one that brought her to the coffee shop with her financial numbers already typed out in her notes app. She is going to figure this out. It is just going to take her longer than she thinks it should, and that frustration is part of the story too.
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