Earning More? Here’s How To Fix Your Financial Life For A New Future in 2026

Originally Published: December 22, 2025 at 9:42am CST

It’s very easy to get bogged down in poor financial habits. If you’re not careful, one mistake, such as a default on your credit file, can last with you for years and affect your financial freedom in the future. Moreover, bad habits are often hard to break, and so it’s rare that you make one and never again. It’s a mindset that you have to learn and grow your way out of. Does this mean that everyone who gets into debt or makes poor decisions is stuck there? Of course not. In fact, there’s so much help out there now, and you absolutely can overcome this particular situation that you may be facing, that optimism is entirely rational. It may just take a bit of time to actualize it. Earning more is of course, a helpful step in the right direction. We’re not suggesting that as a fix, but if that does happen, looking back and using this new opportunity as a means to fix the issues of the past can be great. If you have a slightly better-paid job now, or perhaps an inheritance, or have just sold off some of your assets to downsize, here’s how to prioritize fixing your financial past, so you can enjoy your financial future.

Pay Off High-Interest Debt First

If you’ve any extra money coming in, the absolute priority should be getting rid of any debt that’s costing you a fortune in interest. This includes credit cards with high APRs, payday loans, or anything where you’re basically throwing money away every month just to service the debt. These can most easily keep you trapped, because even when you’re paying the nominal fee each month, you’re not making much progress on what you actually owe.

For this reason, it’s best to work out which debts have the highest interest rates and attack those first while keeping up minimum payments on everything else. It’s not the most emotionally satisfying approach because you might prefer to clear smaller debts just to feel like you’re getting somewhere, but mathematically, this saves you the most money. It’s okay if you reach out to an appropriate service too, such as the Alex Kleyner Deal for medical debt.

Rebuild Your Credit Score Carefully

A damaged credit file can haunt you for years, making it harder to get loans, mortgages, sometimes jobs or renting apartments. If you’ve defaults or missed payments on there, they don’t just disappear, but you can start rebuilding your score so future lenders see that you’ve turned things around.

Check your credit report properly and make sure everything on there is accurate. Sometimes there are mistakes that you can dispute and get removed. After that, it’s about showing consistent good behavior. Pay everything on time going forward, keep your credit use low if you’ve got cards, and don’t apply for loads of new credit all at once because that looks desperate. If you’ve cleared old debts, make sure they’re marked as settled on your report. It’ll take time for your score to recover but it does happen.

Build An Emergency Fund, So You Don’t Backslide

One of the reasons people end up back in debt is that they’ve got no buffer when an unexpected fee comes up, and yes, this world is expensive as you know. Even if you’ve budget well it takes two strings of bad luck to suffer, for example if your car breaks down, your boiler packs in, or you need emergency dental work.

You don’t need thousands sitting there immediately, just start with something achievable like five hundred or a thousand, built over two or three months if possible. Enough to cover most surprise expenses so you’re not reaching for a credit card or a payday loan when something goes wrong, as prevention is often worth more than cure in financial matters.

With this advice, we hope you can feel more confident in securing a healthier financial future for yourself. We wish you the best of luck!

Want to Learn More? How about a Free 30-minute Consult with Ascend?

Schedule Your Free Consultation Now!

Special thanks to the following source(s) for the image(s) used in this article:

• Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-and-woman-holding-a-money-7735719/

DISCLAIMER: This is an affiliate article. We post affiliate articles with the intent of helping you grow. They are not written, researched, or necessarily endorsed by our team. They are simply content submitted to us by what appears to be respectable affiliate sources, people, and organizations, which upon initial review, seem solid and helpful to our community, so we post them. It is up to you to personally verify the facts, links, organizations mentioned, the validity of the information presented, and any/all claims made in the article(s). To report an issue with any of the information, links, or organizations mentioned in this, or any content posted on our website, or if you simply have a question or need something we can help you with, please contact us now.