Maybe your resolution for 2026 is to pay down debt, start your retirement savings, or save for a big ticket item. Maybe you need help with personal finance but don’t know where to start.
Either way, prioritizing your goals for the New Year comes down to understanding what you value the most, Kumiko Love, an accredited financial counselor and author of “My Money, My Way,” told PBS News.
That’s because, in “the world of finance, everything is a trade off,” Love said.
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Of the 30% of Americans who say they make at least one resolution, 61% say they are focused on money or finances, according to Pew Research. And a majority of Americans – 87% – say they accomplish at least some of their annual resolutions.
To Love, mapping out small wins along the way can help you stay the course.
“What we need to be doing is celebrating all the consistent habits and actions and mindset that we’re doing to get us there,” Love said. “The honest truth is we live more in our day-to-day than at our end results.”
To help you set yourself up for financial success this year, PBS News asked experts for tips on reaching different financial goals.
Take the first step – even if you’re scared
Fear around your money “most of the time comes from the unknown,” Love said.
“You’re not scared of looking at your money. You’re actually nervous and stressed out because you have no idea what’s going on with your money,” echoed Tori Dunlap, a self-taught money and career expert who founded the financial education platform Her First 100K. “We can’t make changes unless we actually know what’s going on, unless we know where our money’s going.”
When you sit down to look at the numbers, “rewire all of that shame and the fear and the guilt you feel,” suggested Dunlap, author of “Financial Feminist. The first step to that is “looking at your money in the most neutral way possible and just figuring out, ‘OK, what am I gonna do to fix the things that aren’t working and continue doing the things that are?'”
There are also resources for people who need support. “The most important thing in this day and time is that if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel burdened, that you reach out and say, ‘I need help,'” said Michelle Singletary, personal finance columnist at The Washington Post.
She suggests looking into personal finance classes or community programs, or finding an accountability partner. “Maybe there’s somebody in your life who’s really good with money” who you can ask to help you on your personal finance journey, Singletary said.
Tips for paying down debt
Love wants people to understand that “paying off debt is not an action, it’s a change of lifestyle.” She said if you don’t learn the healthy habits to stay out of debt, “you can pay off debt but go right back into debt again.”
So the first step of what she calls a “debt payoff journey” is to understand “why you’re in debt in the first place.”
“This is not a blame game,” Love said. “This is simply understanding how you got here so you can set better management and healthy habits to maybe correct some of those things and or make different choices.”
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High-interest debt should be the first kind you should tackle. “Credit card debt always is going to have a high interest rate. That’s probably the debt you need to work to eliminate first before you worry about your lesser interest debt,” Dunlap said.
If you have multiple credit cards with different interest rates, start with the one with the highest interest rate. Dunlap also suggests “looking “into a personal loan to help consolidate your debt, especially if you have a lot of debt at a higher interest rate and it’s not going down.”
“The thing with credit cards is that the interest compounds. It’s very high and it compounds every day,” Dunlap told PBS News. “So, every day you spend in debt, it gets more expensive. Personal loans allow you to typically take out a loan at a lower interest rate with one single monthly payment that isn’t going to compound every day.”
The personal loan route to pay off high-interest credit card debt can be “a nice reset for your money.”
Tips for paying off student loans
Dunlap said the strategy for paying off your student loan debt depends on what kind of loans they are and what the interest rate is.
If you have multiple sources of debt, federal student loans can be your last priority since there are other options for repayment, Love said.
You may qualify for an income-based repayment plan that could help give you “some breathing room” to focus on whatever debt is most eating into your cash flow and destroying your budget, she added.
Dunlap shared what she calls the “7 to 8% rule.” If the interest rate on your student loan debt is more than 7 to 8%, then it costs you more money to be in debt, so you should pay it off faster. Put extra money into the principle so your interest is calculated off of a smaller balance.
If the interest rate is less than that, Dunlap recommends sticking with monthly payments and focusing on investing any extra income instead.
If you have private student loans at a high interest rate, Dunlap said it might be worth refinancing, but she said “do not take your federal loans private.”
“That takes you out of potential student loan forgiveness in the future,” Dunlap said, and won’t allow you to get on an income-based repayment plan.
Tips if you want to start investing
“Investing should not be sexy,” Dunlap said. “It should be safe, consistent, and over a long period of time.” She said day trading or picking “a hot stock” is very risky.
The first place to start when investing is using your retirement account to its full advantage, both Dunlap and Love said.
“People don’t understand that retirement accounts like a 401k or an IRA are investing accounts and they’re tax advantaged, meaning that the government is incentivizing you to save for your retirement by offering you tax breaks,” Dunlap said.
Plus, a lot of employer sponsored plans offer a match as part of your benefits package, Love said. “It’s like free money” you can use to invest.
But, Dunlap said to remember to choose your investments. Otherwise, you’ll spend “years in what I call financial purgatory,” Dunlap said.
Dunlap recommends ” something like an index fund, which is a group of stocks” that is “well diversified.”
Love said if you want more specific advice, you’ll typically “have access to the financial advisor that is managing” your retirement account on whatever platform you use.
“If you have questions, reach out to them. That’s what they’re there for,” Love said
Tips for if you want to save more for retirement
Love stressed that while she is an accredited financial counselor, she is not a fiduciary. So her advice shouldn’t take the place of recommendations from an adviser with specific information about your assets.
But there are three steps that come to mind for how you could begin “upping your retirement game.”
First, “start with your [employer] match.” Then, if you want to go above and beyond, “I would move to a Roth IRA or traditional IRA, depending on your tax bracket and where you’re gonna be in retirement.” And then “I [would] look at something called a health savings account,” where individuals can set aside money on a pre-tax basis to pay for qualified medical expenses.
Love recommends looking into an HSA because it’s a triple tax-advantage account, since you can contribute to it before taxes, earn interest on the account tax-free, and withdrawals are not taxed as long as they’re used for qualifying medical expenses. Since the funds don’t expire and continue to roll over year after year, “it turns into quite a retirement account when you become of age for retirement.”
Dunlap said if you are nearing retirement, you can contribute more money through a “catch-up contribution,” which varies based on the account. She recommends looking into what type of retirement account you currently have and what the catch-up contribution is if you’re looking to save more as you get closer to retirement age.
Tips for saving to buy a house
Before you think about the financial part of homeownership, the first question you should ask yourself is “is this something you want to do or just something that you were told to do?'” Dunlap said
“Renting is not throwing away money. You are paying a fee to live in a place and also a convenience fee where somebody else is gonna handle any problems that come up,” Dunlap said. She said homeownership comes with many more expenses than just the down payment and monthly mortgage, and you should ask yourself if you’re ready to pay for everything that could come up.
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Some expenses to consider include property taxes, emergency repairs, possibly a homeowners association fee and property insurance. So, “the second question is, can I afford to do this?” Dunlap said.
If the answer is yes, Love said you need to determine how much to save, which “starts with understanding what you want to buy.”
“Until you know how much house you can afford and what you want, it’s really hard to start the planning process,” Love said.
Love said some of the questions to ask yourself when determining your budget include: “Are you buying a fixer upper? Are you buying something that you’re going to only live in temporarily for a short amount of time under five years? Are you buying your forever home? How big do you want it? Do you still want to extend your family? Because then you have to think if it’s going to be your forever home, you better make sure it’s big enough.”
Dunlap suggested using a high-yield savings account to use as a place to save the money you will use for a down payment, and to automate contributions so it’s easier to meet your monthly goal. If you want to avoid paying for private mortgage insurance, the easiest way to do this is by having 20% of the home price for the down payment.
If you’re like the 80% of buyers who financed their home purchase in 2024, you will want to think about how to improve your credit score to get a better mortgage interest rate, Dunlap said.
And don’t forget about an emergency fund, Love said. You can also use the questions you asked yourself at the beginning to determine how much to save for house maintenance.
Tips for saving for a trip or big purchase
As soon as you know an estimated total for the purchase, you can start a sinking fund, where you save a small amount from each paycheck for a planned expense. This should be separate from your emergency fund, which should only be used for unplanned expenses.
Both Dunlap and Love say the easiest way to determine your monthly savings goal is to take the amount and divide it by however many months you have to save. If you do this and the amount is unrealistic, Dunlap said, you should pick a different destination, a more affordable item or give yourself more time to save, if you can move the date.
Tips for making up lost income
In 2025, more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. were laid off, according to the career services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
When trying to make up for lost income, Love said, “lean in on the skills that you possess” and “get on places like Upwork where you can work for yourself.”
You may feel like you are overqualified to drive for Uber, but you could be surprised and make way more than you thought you could, Love said. Places like Upwork can also connect you with temporary gigs that match your skillset.
Dunlap said a high-yield savings account can come in handy during this time. Even small contributions could return $20 to 40 a month, compared to the few dollars you’d get in annual interest with a traditional account.
It’s also a good time to make a sustainable budget. Like a car gas gauge, “budgets tell you how far you can get,” Dunlap said. “Knowing what’s going in and going out, and allowing your budget to adjust accordingly is one of the ways we get control during a very uncontrollable situation.”
Also, “remind yourself that this season is temporary,” Love said, and give yourself grace.
Tips for budgeting if your income fluctuates
More than half of the U.S. workforce in 2024 were paid hourly rates, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . These workers tend to have less predictable paychecks compared to salaried workers.
If your income fluctuates, the first step is to know the minimum amount of money you need to make each month to meet the basics. (Love calls this a “bare bones budget”; for Dunlap, it’s the “ramen noodle number.”)
Start with a revolving checking or savings account, where you’ll deposit your checks or tips.
“Pay yourself” your bare bones budget from this account to cover your monthly expenses. If there is extra money left, leave it in the revolving account so you can make up for expenses when you don’t meet your bare bones budget in other months.
Love recommends having at least one month of bare bones expenses in the revolving account. Keeping the baseline in the account can help stabilize your cash flow.
Gradually, “you can start giving yourself more for more wants” as you continue to build up this account, Love said.
If you make more money than you expect, Dunlap suggests going through a “financial priority list” for that extra income.
“Contribute to your emergency fund,” Dunlap said. If you already have three to six months of living expenses tucked away, pay off credit card debt and then “contribute more to your retirement accounts,” Dunlap said.