Like millions of Americans, I make New Year’s resolutions. Last year, like millions of Americans, I resolved to exercise more, eat better, and lose weight.
I had some work to do. The twins were born during summer 2023, and they brought us untold joy. Taking care of them also meant less sleep, more snacking and comfort foods, and no energy to work out. Bad habits formed, and pounds packed on.
The good news: In 2025, I woke up early and regularly worked out before the boys woke up. I also was much better about what and how much I ate. I lost about 15 pounds. The bad news: Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and all the family dinners, holiday parties, and gifts of cookies and sweets, I found about eight of them. Can you guess what one of my resolutions for 2026 is?
Looking back at last year’s list, I think I did better at keeping my professional resolutions than my personal ones. Let’s take a look:
- I want to set a new record for returning missing money to you through our ICash program. We’re still tallying final numbers for how much money we returned to people, businesses and nonprofits, but it looks like we will be close to breaking our record. It’s already clear that we SMASHED the record for number of people we helped. The old record, set in 2024, was 330,064 claims paid out. In 2025, we will surpass 540,000 claims paid.
- I want more families to take advantage of First Steps. The program provides $50 deposits to new parents who open Bright Start or Bright Directions 529 college savings accounts. We made more than 12,000 new First Steps deposits in 2025, nicely beating my New Year’s 2025 resolution of 10,000. It was part of the best year yet for our college savings plans. We reached a new high of $24 billion in assets, added a record 60,000 new accounts, families are on pace to contribute a record $2.1 billion to their college savings accounts, and independent Morningstar awarded Bright Start a gold rating for the seventh time on my watch.
- I want to pass the ENABLE Act through Congress to help those with disabilities and their families. Happy to report that these provisions passed, making permanent ABLE to Work contributions, the ABLE saver’s credit, and 529-to-ABLE rollovers. But we did more than that in 2025. We once again lowered fees, we greatly expanded the number of Illinois disability agencies who manage accounts for the adults they serve who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, and we will bring ABLE information in 2026 to 20,000 Illinois families whose very young children receive early intervention services so that they can begin saving early for their ABLE-eligible children with disabilities.
- I want to help charities make more money off their investments. We have helped local governments earn more than $3.5 billion since taking office, and we would like to help Illinois charities do the same. We came close to getting the bill signed into law this year but fell a little short. We will try again this coming year. Please let us know if you can help.
- I want to earn another $1 billion in interest income for the state by investing responsibly and wisely. Final numbers aren’t in yet, but we should be close to $1.5 billion in investment earnings for the state for 2025, well above my goal!
- I plan to help more local governments take part in our Illinois Funds investment pool to earn more interest income. It looks like we should end the year with close to $900 million in interest income for our local units of government and lowered administrative fees by an average of 12%. Every dollar we make in interest is a dollar in local property taxes that doesn’t have to be raised.
- I want to write a book. Between my job and raising two toddlers and a teenager, I wasn’t able to keep this resolution.
Happy New Year and may you be successful in keeping your resolutions in 2026!
Sincerely,
Michael