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At the end of the year, music lovers get their Spotify Wrapped reports, summarizing all the tunes they listened to in 2025.
What if you analyzed your money goals in the same way?
In other words, as 2026 begins, it is a great time to review the financial milestones you were striving for this year — and to use those results to chart a better path this year.
As it happens, Current, a consumer fintech banking platform, knows exactly what money goals people were aiming for in 2025, thanks to a survey from financial information site Bankrate. The top one, by a significant margin: Paying down debt, identified by 21% of people. Other top responses included saving more money for emergencies and getting a higher-paying job.
Of course, life requires people to juggle many different financial aims at once. The real challenge is finding the right balance, so you can make progress on multiple goals in 2026.
“The number one task is to identify your top priorities,” says Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst. “It’s not unlike putting together a puzzle. Once you get an idea of what your puzzle pieces are and how they fit together, that’s part of the process of doing the work and attaining your financial goals over a lifetime.”
So looking back, how did Americans fare in 2025? Here’s a roundup of people’s top money goals.
Paying down debt. It’s not surprising that this was number one on everybody’s collective wishlist, considering Americans are struggling with it so mightily.
Look at the latest numbers from the New York Fed: Total household debt stood at a record $18.59 trillion in this year’s third quarter, comprising everything from mortgages to credit cards to auto loans to student debt. Anything households can do to reduce that burden — and the interest being paid on it — is a sound strategy for the future.
Saving for emergencies. If your budget has little margin for error, and you are hit with sudden expenses, “that’s when things start to get dicey,” says Hamrick. It forces you into a debt spiral that could potentially end in bankruptcy.
That’s why a pot of emergency savings is so critical — between three and six months’ worth of expenses, suggests Hamrick, to help you get through any rough patches like layoffs or medical crises. “More is always better.”
Rather than having that cash sit and earn nothing, make sure to give it a boost in a higher-yielding account.
Getting a higher-paying job or an additional source of income. Affordability is the watchword of the day, since consumer costs have been rising for years — spiking during the COVID-19 pandemic, and still proving stickily high, thanks to factors like tariffs. (Inflation is currently around Read more