Now that you - hopefully - filed your taxes before last week’s deadline, you may be eagerly waiting on that refund from the IRS to hit your bank account. Before you get the money, you may have already spent it three different ways in your mind, but new research suggests you may want to really think it through before you use it.
It turns out, nearly a quarter (23%) of Americans have regrets about how they spent their tax refund last year. That’s according to a new survey from PensionBee of 1,000 adults across the country, which looks at how people used their 2025 tax refunds and how they plan to use this year’s.
More than half of those with refund regret (57%) wish they had saved or invested more.
- But only 10% plan to use their refund differently this year.
- The thing is, people’s short-term financial needs often push their long-term priorities aside.
- This year, 13% plan to build an emergency fund with their refund, almost twice as many (6%) who actually did this last year.
- Another 9% plan to invest their refund into their retirement savings, which just 6% did last year.
- In 2025, 35% of Americans used their refund to cover day-to-day expenses.
- About 15% treated themselves with their refund last year and the same number plan to do so again.
- Just over a quarter (26%) planned to pay down debt, and 28% actually did.
- And with consumer prices up 2.4% over last year and 24.3% higher since January 2021, more people are expected to need to spend their refund on living expenses before they can save it.
"2026 refunds are expected to be among the highest in years," says Romi Savova, Founder and CEO of PensionBee. "For those who can set even a portion aside, the long-term payoff is real, and the regret of not doing so tends to arrive sooner than people expect."
Source: Yahoo Finance