These are the top three money lessons that we learned this year.
Practical AI Use for Personal Finances
AI continues to spark new innovations and flood our daily lives. Instead of shying away from technological advancements, we at OneUnited Bank lean in strategically, taking initiative to harness these innovations directly for our community.
It’s important to stay ahead of the curve, especially in technology. In 2025, we helped our readers learn how to prompt and leverage AI for personal finance, and look at AI as a financial GPS.
With WiseOne Money Management, we took it up a notch, unlocking the full power of AI to help guide our customers at every uncertain financial turn. WiseOne doesn’t just help you automate and answer simple questions, it helps you level up your financial planning with strategy, insights, and personalized guidance.
Ready to level up? Join our WiseOne Money Management app waitlist today!
Financial Wellness Over Financial Fatigue
We are not keeping up with anyone else other than ourselves in 2026. Say it loudly and say it proudly!
Whatever the Joneses may have just bought has nothing to do with our long term financial vision and peace. We are deprogramming financial anxiety and taking back control of our money habits!
In 2025, we unpicked how burnout, financial triggers and shifting costs of friendship put pressure on our financial wellness.
Burnout isn’t just emotional. It also hits your wallet! Studies on our brains link chronic stress and being overworked to impaired decision making, lower productivity, and reduced income growth over time.
Whether you’re rethinking your work-life relationship, looking at pivoting your career, or considering a sabbatical, a Rest Reset is key in staying at your best for longer!
Financial triggers include pressure points like FOMO spending, stress shopping, and guilt gifting. Each trigger can cause us to overstretch our finances and lose sight of long term goals.
The key to keeping these pressure points free of aggravation is to identify them when triggered and to pause and process before acting. Extra time and consideration can significantly help save us from financial strain.
The cost of friendship is changing how we form relationships and even how we think about maintaining them. It’s easy to make virtual friends, but keeping contact in real life can add several 0’s to your weekly spending budget.
Inflation’s cousin, “friendlation”, can be kept in check by re-imagining formats and risking new definitions of friendship. While setting boundaries, like a loud budget, may cost us certain friendships, the peace of mind that comes with financial honesty is worth the trade-off.
We have our own vision board and decision making logic, based on how we envision a fruitful financial future for our families and friends!
The wellness era isn’t over. As a matter of fact, it’s not even an era… it’s a lifestyle!
Major Check-ins
In 2025, we zoomed out and asked ourselves major questions on how we perform financially, and most importantly, why we seek to perform well in the first place.
Timely check-ins help us break down our annual goals, stay accountable, and reset expectations to match reality. They answer the question “what we need to do”. Setting aside time 6 months into the year to do a check-in helps us recommit to our financial goals and stay on track. An end-of-year check-in with a partner can also help us shift from running a marathon year-round to a sustainable pace, ensuring we hit our EOY goals without hitting a wall.
Wealth and ownership questions challenge us on “why are we doing this”. They contextualize our financial dreams and goals, putting them into perspective.
When we ask ourselves “what is my net worth” we are actually asking several questions. How much do I have left after accounting for my total debt? What is my ultimate wealth goal? Why do I hold that ultimate goal to begin with?
What will you do with your net worth? Will you expand your ownership of property, start a family business and invest in generational wealth creation, or will you build a nest egg to retire early?
Sometimes answering these intimidating questions, or just starting to consider how we would want to answer them in the near future, makes daily financial discipline feel more real!
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These lessons remind us that financial progress isn’t about speed or comparison, but about deep personal alignment. When we move smarter, using tools wisely, defending our well-being, and understanding our “why”, better decisions follow. As we head into 2026, we’re carrying forward the wisdom that builds wealth and leaving behind the habits that no longer serve us.
