Kevin O’Leary Says This Is the Only New Years Resolution That Will Actually Impact Your Future

We all start the new year with traditions, be it popping champagne with friends or watching the ball drop. But it’s also an opportunity to start fresh with a clean slate, and create new plans and goals.

Kevin O’Leary, star of ABC’s Shark Tank, says it’s also a great time to form goals via those resolutions and actually stick to them. “The best resolution you should make on New Year’s Eve, and this is No. 1, is to pay down your debt,” O’Leary tells CNBC Make It. “That is the most important thing you can do for your future.”

“Of course you want health and happiness, and everybody wants everybody to have that,” he says, “But in terms of taking care of your family and you, paying down your debt is No. 1.”

“If you want to find financial freedom, you need to retire all debt — and yes that includes your mortgage,” the personal finance author and co-host of ABC’s “Shark Tank” previously told CNBC Make It.

To get started, O’Leary thinks we should create a plan to make principal payments to pay down that debt, and tackling your credit card debt first, because that’s generally our debt we are paying our highest interest rates on. (For example, the average card APR is over 17 percent, according to CreditCards.com.)

“New Year’s Eve, you look at your credit card and you say to it, ‘I’m paying off your balance buddy, and I’m going to do that before July,'” O’Leary says. “Make that a New Year’s resolution.”

“You will thank Mr. Wonderful for that, believe me. It will make you way better off in the back end of the year.”

But what about O’Leary, who is already a millionaire and is debt-free? What kind of financial resolutions could someone with so much knowledge — and cash flow — set for themselves?

“Here’s my New Year’s resolution,” he tells CNBC Make It. “I want to make more money next year than I made this year.”

Of course.