Tax Refund 2026: What to Do With Your Money When It Arrives - 7 On Your Side

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Your tax refund check may have already been direct deposited or may still be on its way, and you might need to act quickly to expedite delivery.

Before you treat that refund like free money, 7 On Your Side's Nina Pineda has some options on how to make this money work for you.

Your tax refund isn't like a bonus; this is just your hard-earned money coming back to you. That's why you need to be intentional about where you invest your refund.

Many people have probably received theirs through direct deposit, which is what the government opted for last year.

If you do not upload your bank account, you may receive a letter requesting account information, which could alarm people.

It explains that you need to upload your bank information, so do that if you want your refund sooner and don't want to risk your check being lost in the mail - or worse, stolen.

The QR code on the letter does not lead to anything suspicious, but it does lead to the actual IRS website, and the IRS said people would receive this if they did not have their bank account information on file.

If you are concerned, you can always log in to your IRS account, and there should be a copy of the notice posted online.

If you do not update your bank account, then the IRS will issue a paper check after six weeks.

There was discourse online that people were receiving the notice that they had already applied for direct deposit, but you can always double-check online and ignore the letter if that's the case.

Once you secure your refund, you should know what to do with it. The average refund this year is $3,275.

Consider depositing it into a high-yield savings account and dropping an additional $50 a month. After a year, you could have more than $2,000.

You should also heavily consider paying down debt with your tax refund. If you have a credit card balance of $6,500, you put $1,000 towards that debt. Pay that off, and your monthly payment will drop from $605 a month to $512, and you'll save $117 in interest.

Also consider bumping up that monthly payment. That will save you majorly in the future.

Pay off your highest-interest debt first - or, if you are good on debt, save towards your emergency fund. It's recommended to have three to six months of living costs covered in case of an unexpected event.

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