On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised lower taxes, lower prices and a stronger economy in his second term.

On Day One of his second term, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders — including a regulatory freeze pending an administration review and a directive to members of his administration to assess trade relationships with Canada and China and Mexico — to try and move some of his goals forward. But delivering on those and other promises will take additional steps, and in many cases, the support of Congress. 

Here are five ways a second Trump administration could impact your finances.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests from CNBC for comment.

One wildcard is tariffs. There are a range of views on how Trump will use tariffs and the impact those tariffs will have on prices. Tariffs are paid by businesses buying the goods and some of the cost is typically passed to consumers. 

During the campaign, Trump promised a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports, a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico and Canada and a tariff of up to 60% on products from China. Trump’s Day One order to assess trade relationships puts an April 30 deadline on those reviews.

“We view Trump’s decision against announcing new tariffs on his first day in office as evidence of the ongoing internal debate over how best to implement the duties, not as a sign of plans to significantly scale back or withdraw his campaign pledges to impose new duties on foreign goods,” Beacon Policy Advisors wrote in a research note.

During his confirmation hearing last week, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers to think about tariffs in three ways: as a remedy for unfair trade practices, a revenue raiser and a negotiating tool. He pushed back on Democrats who said tariffs will mean higher prices for consumers.

“China, which is trying to export their way out of their current economic malaise, will continue cutting prices to maintain market share,” Bessent said. 

Unless Congress takes action, trillions of tax breaks are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, including lower tax brackets. More than 60% of taxpayers could see higher taxes in 2026 without extensions of provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, according to the Tax Foundation.

Extending those provisions is a heavy lift amid concerns over ballooning federal debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit is expected to rise to $1.9 trillion this year, adding more onto the $36.2 trillion in outstanding debt.

TCJA provisions will cost an estimated $4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, according to a budget model by Penn Wharton. Trump also promised to eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security, which would drive the price tag exponentially higher. That puts a lot up for negotiation as lawmakers debate spending and taxes this year. 

“Fiscal pressures are going to weigh harder on the debate than they did the first time around,” Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the Tax Foundation, said at CNBC’s Financial Advisor Summit in December.

Experts predict one of the key battles will be over the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.  Under current law those deductions are now capped at $10,000. High-tax states like California, New York and New Jersey all have top tax rates above 10%, so changes there would be meaningful for many taxpayers who itemize deductions. Putting that cap in place freed up an estimated $100 billion a year in the federal budget, helping offset other cuts. 

The maximum child tax credit was also doubled under the TCJA, from $1,000 to $2,000. On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance said he wants to increase the credit to $5,000. Trump has said he supports the credit, but has not specified an amount. Both are costly in budget terms. 

To keep Trump’s campaign promise to protect Social Security and Medicare, cuts to other health care programs become a way to fund tax proposals. House Republican lawmakers have identified $2.3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, according to a document made public by Politico.

Subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are also at risk. Without an extension by Congress, the subsides expire at end of 2025. Some individuals could see their premiums significantly increase. Because policy changes under the budget reconciliation process are limited, some analysts expect those subsidies to run out.

“It’s unfortunate because there are any number of compromises that could be crafted to better target the subsidies in exchange for extending them and stabilizing the market,” said Kim Monk, a partner at Capital Alpha Partners. 

People with credit card balances could benefit if Trump makes good on his proposal for a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Thursday he was drafting legislation to do exactly that. The catch: If enacted, experts say, it could also make it harder for people to get credit.

While analysts say a cap is unlikely, the attention to the issue puts it on the watch list.

“It means there is risk that Trump could intervene with credit card policy even if it is not a draconian interest rate cap,” said Jaret Seiberg, a financial policy analyst at TD Cowen.

Mortgage rates have risen in recent months, even as the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates.

While those opposing movements may seem counterintuitive, they’re due to market forces that seem unlikely to ease much in the near term, according to economists and other finance experts.

That may leave prospective homebuyers with a tough choice. They can either delay their home purchase or forge ahead with current mortgage rates. The latter option is complicated by elevated home prices, experts said.

“If what you’re hoping or wishing for is an interest rate at 4%, or housing prices to drop 20%, I personally don’t think either one of those things is remotely likely in the near term,” said Lee Baker, a certified financial planner based in Atlanta and a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.

Rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage jumped above 7% during the week ended Jan. 16, according to Freddie Mac. They’ve risen gradually since late September, when they had touched a recent low near 6%.

Current rates represent a bit of whiplash for consumers, who were paying less than 3% for a 30-year fixed mortgage as recently as November 2021, before the Fed raised borrowing costs sharply to tame high U.S. inflation.

“Anything over 7%, the market is dead,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. “No one is going to buy.”

Mortgage rates need to get closer to 6% or below to “see the housing market come back to life,” he said.

The financial calculus shows why: Consumers with a 30-year, $300,000 fixed mortgage at 5% would pay about $1,610 a month in principal and interest, according to a Bankrate analysis. They’d pay about $1,996 — roughly $400 more a month — at 7%, it said.

Meanwhile, the Fed began cutting interest rates in September as inflation has throttled back. The central bank reduced its benchmark rate three times over that period, by a full percentage point.

Despite that Fed policy shift, mortgage rates are unlikely to dip back to 6% until 2026, Zandi said. There are underlying forces that “won’t go away quickly,” he said.

“It may very well be the case that mortgage rates push higher before they moderate,” Zandi said.

The first thing to know: Mortgage rates are tied more closely to the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds than to the Fed’s benchmark interest rate, said Baker, the founder of Claris Financial Advisors.

Those Treasury yields were about 4.6% as of Tuesday, up from about 3.6% in September.

Investors who buy and sell Treasury bonds influence those yields. They appear to have risen in recent months as investors have gotten worried about the inflationary impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed policies, experts said.

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Policies like tariffs and mass deportations of immigrants are expected to increase inflation, if they come to pass, experts said. The Fed may lower borrowing costs more slowly if that happens — and potentially raise them again, experts said.

Indeed, Fed officials recently cited “upside risks” to inflation because of the potential effects of changes to trade and immigration policy.

Investors are also worried about how a large package of anticipated tax changes under the Trump administration might raise the federal deficit, Zandi said.

There are other factors influencing Treasury yields, too.

For example, the Fed has been reducing its holdings of Treasury bonds and mortgage securities via its quantitative tightening policy, while Chinese investors have “turned more circumspect” in their buying of Treasurys and Japanese investors are less interested as they can now get a return on their own bonds, Zandi said.

Mortgage rates “probably won’t fall below 6% until 2026, assuming everything goes as expected,” said Joe Seydl, senior markets economist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

There are a few reasons for the higher spread: For example, market volatility had made lenders more conservative in their mortgage underwriting, and that conservatism was exacerbated by the regional banking “shock” in 2023, which caused a “severe tightening of lending standards,” Seydl said.

“All told, 2025 is likely to be another year where housing affordability remains severely challenged,” he said.

That higher premium is “exacerbating the housing affordability challenge” for consumers, Seydl said.

The typical homebuyer paid $406,100 for an existing home in November, up 5% from $387,800 a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Those who want to buy a home should try to put down a “significant” down payment, to reduce the size of their mortgage and help it fit more easily in their monthly budget, Baker said.

Don’t subject the savings for a down payment to the whims of the stock market, he said.

“That’s not something you should gamble with in the market,” he said.

Savers can still get a roughly 4% to 5% return from a money market fund, high-yield bank savings account or certificate of deposit, for example.

Some consumers may also wish to get an adjustable rate mortgage instead of a fixed rate mortgage — an approach that may get consumers a better mortgage rate now but could saddle buyers with higher payments later due to fluctuating rates, Baker said.

“You’re taking a gamble,” Baker said.

He doesn’t recommend the approach for someone on a fixed income in retirement, for example, since it’s unlikely there’d be room in their budget to accommodate potentially higher monthly payments in the future, he said.

With President Donald Trump back in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, experts worry that a number of student loan programs may now be in jeopardy.

At-risk programs include the U.S. Department of Education’s new repayment option for borrowers — called the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan — and the Biden administration’s more lenient bankruptcy policy.

Meanwhile, House Budget Committee Republicans are floating proposals that would reduce or eliminate more student loan programs, including the Biden administration-era rules that made it easier for borrowers to get debt relief when they’re defrauded by their schools, Politico reported last week.

Consumer advocates are worried for borrowers based on Trump’s comments about student loan relief on the campaign trail. At one rally, he called the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness efforts “vile” and “not even legal.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 40 million Americans carry federal student loans, and the outstanding debt exceeds $1.6 trillion, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

Here are the programs experts think are most at risk under the Trump administration.

Republican attorneys general in Kansas and Missouri, who led the legal challenges against SAVE, argued that President Joe Biden was essentially trying to find a roundabout way to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court blocked its sweeping debt cancellation plan in June 2023. Due to those legal actions, the plan has been on hold since last year.

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The plan is unlikely to survive a second Trump term, Kantrowitz said.

“There are several methods the Trump administration could use to kill the SAVE repayment plan,” he said. “They could abandon the defense of the repayment plan in the pending lawsuits.”

“They could issue new regulations to revoke the repayment plan,” or Congress could pass a law to do away with the plan, Kantrowitz added.

Currently, SAVE enrollees are excused from making payments while the plan is tied up in the courts. That reprieve may soon end, too, experts said.

For decades, student loan borrowers found it next to impossible to walk away from their federal student debt in bankruptcy. The Biden administration changed that.

In the fall of 2022, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice jointly released updated bankruptcy guidelines to make the bankruptcy process for student loan borrowers less arduous. The Biden administration’s updated policy treated student loans like other types of debt in bankruptcy court, experts said.

Trump is likely to rescind that guidance, Kantrowitz said.

“There may be more of a scorched earth approach to opposing all attempts to discharge federal student loans in bankruptcy,” he said.

However, Malissa Giles, a consumer bankruptcy attorney in Virginia, said she was hopeful that the guidance will remain in place.

Still, her concern is that many jurisdictions will have new assistant U.S. attorneys, “and we may see a shift in the approach based on changing politics and pressures of more Republican-aligned U.S. attorneys.”

For now, she said she was being more conservative in what student loan bankruptcy cases she took on.

Among the recent ideas floated by House Budget Committee Republicans is the partial repeal of the Biden administration’s Borrower Defense regulations, which made it easier for borrowers to get their debt excused when their school engaged in misconduct.

The GOP members are also reviewing reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, including the possibility of “limiting eligibility for the program,” according to the document obtained by Politico.

They’re also considering eliminating the student loan interest deduction. That tax break allows qualifying borrowers to deduct up to $2,500 a year in interest paid on eligible private or federal education debt. Before the Covid pandemic, nearly 13 million taxpayers took advantage of the deduction, according to Kantrowitz.