Navigating the New Trump Accounts

Youtube Link https://youtu.be/gBV92IKjxNY

In this episode of The Money Pig Podcast, Tim Goodwin and Joe Beckford break down the brand-new Trump Accounts (also called 530A “Invest in America” accounts)—a potentially game-changing opportunity that could give children a $1,000 government-funded head start on retirement. Created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, these accounts are designed to help families build long-term wealth earlier than ever before. The hosts explain who qualifies, how to claim the free seed money through your tax return, and why parents should act quickly before missing out on one of the biggest new financial planning tools for kids in decades.

Tim and Joe also explore how corporations—and even billionaires like Michael Dell—are already committing billions of dollars to help fund these accounts for eligible children. With contribution limits up to $5,000 per year from families and tax-free employer contributions up to $2,500 annually, Trump Accounts could become a powerful alternative (or complement) to traditional college savings plans like 529s. The hosts highlight how these accounts function similarly to traditional IRAs, potentially supporting first-home purchases, education expenses, and long-term retirement growth through low-cost index investments.

Most importantly, the episode explains why Trump Accounts could reshape how Americans think about investing by giving millions of children early ownership in the stock market. Instead of waiting until adulthood to learn about retirement planning, future generations may grow up already invested—literally—in their financial future. If you’re a parent, grandparent, or employer wondering whether these accounts are worth opening, this episode outlines exactly how they work and why they could become one of the most important wealth-building tools for families in the coming years.

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The following transcript of the podcast audio was software-generated, and not reviewed for accuracy. Therefore, the transcript below should not be used without verifying the validity and accuracy of its content. Please contact Goodwin Investment Advisory with any questions.

And welcome back to the Money Pig podcast. We’re your host Joe Beckford and Tim Goodwin. And today we need like sound effects and a symbol. So today we’re super excited to talk about navigating the new Trump account. So ⁓ I learned a lot getting ready for this. Right. Excited to talk about this before we do Joe before we do what generation is Forrest Gump?

What generation is Forrest Jenne?

Okay, my turn. You’re killing me. So what is this podcast, right? The Money Pig, Peace, Generosity. Do you know why crabs are not generous? Why are crabs not generous? Because they’re shellfish.

⁓ my goodness. I like that. like that. ⁓ all right, Joe, if we haven’t totally lost you by now, why did all the viewers all of a sudden drop off? ⁓ so, ⁓ Joe, before we jump into Trump account, share with the audience, something interesting about you, your favorite segment of the show. ⁓ so you have my favorite segment. ⁓ something interesting about me. know my youthful appearance would make you think that’s not possible, but I do have grandkids.

So there’s that. have two grandkids, Mason and Andrew, and they’re both really good basketball players. that’s cool. Shout out to Mason and Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty fun. That is awesome. It’s great time of life. Yeah. I actually have gotten into enjoying watching basketball moves. The squeaky shoes. Well. That’s what threw me off. Yeah. College hoops are more fun to me than pros. Yeah. Yeah. High school. It’ll get better and better. I feel like they try harder. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

So something interesting about me is we are doing one of those kitchen remodels. sounds awesome and horrible at the same time. It is. is. I think it’s like less horrible than like, you know what? Let’s just sell the house and move. It’s like, we have to pack stuff up. That’s the horrible part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s a lot of things and motions and stages, but yeah, instead of just buying a new house, like, well, can we fix up our house enough and still like it? So,

Shout out to Tara, our producer. ⁓ Josh has been helped us out a ton on this project. So, pretty awesome. Well, good. awesome. Okay, so we are jumping into the new Trump accounts. And what exactly are the Trump accounts? Why should we care? Why should we be interested? How about care because free money? Who doesn’t like free money? Let’s just care.

For that reason. If no other reason, let’s do that. So Trump accounts are also known as what? 530 A’s. Oh, really? Yes. Tell me about that. you know how we’re all used to like a 401k or a 457 or a 43B or a 529, all kinds of numbers that we advisors are used to and a lot of people know and have those kinds of accounts. That’s because they’re lines in the tax code. That’s like where the line is.

This particular kind of account came out as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 and their code is 530A. So when you’re listening to the news and you hear about people talking about their 530A accounts, that’s what these are. Interesting. Yeah. So this is totally new. I think like the IRS is using the term IRS Trump accounts as well. I’m also hearing like invest in America accounts.

Yep. well. So this is fun because there’s some things that are kind of a little more clear about these Trump accounts, Invest in America, 538 accounts. There’s some things that are not completely sorted out yet. I don’t think it’s all fleshed out. Yeah, these are hot and fresh out the kitchen. Yeah. So ⁓ essentially though, you have to claim a Trump account through how? How do you get the Trump account open? Typically, I know, you know, we met with some…

one of our CPA partners today. And she’s opening them up for clients. Yes. So you can do it as part of your tax return. That’s the only way I know how to do it, but I don’t know how to do it personally. It’s called a form 4547, Trump account election. So what’s not clear to me is if you can just do that any time of the year, maybe you can. But certainly, you can do it during your tax return season and claim these. So if you’re claiming them for your children,

If your child was born on January 1st of 2025 or later, more recent, know, essentially we’re talking about you’ve got a two-year-old or younger, no, one-year-old or younger. Yeah, one-year-old, You’re zero for a whole year, Yeah, you’re like, probably like 15 months is the oldest kid, right? Yeah, so, but anyway, if your child was born on January 1st, 2025, or later, when they open the Trump account,

As far as we understand it, the government is going to put $1,000 in the Trump account. So that’s pretty cool. Free seed money. That’s the free money I’m talking about. Now, you can still claim a Trump account for an older child. So if they were born before January 1st, 2025, you can still open the Trump account. You just probably aren’t going to get this $1,000. That’s what’s pretty clear right now, is you can still open it. Just as long as they don’t turn 18 in the year that you open the account.

if they were going to turn 17 this year, and whatever year you’re listening to this podcast, unless they’ve changed the laws, you can still open and claim that Trump account. Now, why would you open up a Trump account? That was going to be my next question. you’re going to ask me that? Well, I got ahead of it. I asked you. Yeah, yeah. Well, Tim, if I’m not getting free money, why would I open a Trump account? Yeah, I’m so glad you asked, Joe. That’s just a really great original Totally unprovoked. ⁓ So, well, there

They are pretty cool to fund. I think that they might become something that’s easier and a little more fun to fund than a 529 plan. And I’ll get to that in a second. OK. But what is already true is that ⁓ very wealthy individuals, billionaires, and corporations are talking about and committing to funding Trump accounts on behalf of our kids.

Say more. Say more. Which is super cool. Yeah. Well, I’ll do the best story is about Michael Dell, Michael and Susan Dell. This is the Dell of Dell computers. OK. So that worked out pretty well for them. I got to hear him on an interview recently where he was like, you know, building these things in high school and college in his garage and all that kind of stuff. So really cool that he started so early and that’s worked out for them. So they have committed to a gift of six point two five billion dollars. So cool.

In increments of $250, so it goes a long way. of kids. like 25 million Trump accounts. they’re actually, from what I understand right now, they’re actually funding the accounts for children that were born before January 1st, 2025. So the ones that aren’t getting the $1,000. Now, they are limiting it to zip codes where the average income in the zip code is, I think, below $150,000. Right. So it’s not just everyone. But there could be…

Michael Dell and the guy that founded this and gave President Trump and that group the idea, they actually have a group. And they’re going around like literally dialing for dollars and calling billionaires up that they know and challenging them to do the same thing. So this is pretty cool. So I’m just saying more could be coming. Companies can also fund Trump accounts. So you could open one up and your company might start funding it. Companies are encouraged to contribute up to $2,500 a year. But what happens if the company puts in more than $200?

$2,500. Well, the cool thing even 2000 up to 2500 is tax free. So for instance, a lot of times, you know, you get an employee benefit of something, right? So it’s not unusual that oh, we’re paying for part of your insurance, or we’re doing this or we’re doing that. Well, that’s part of your total comp. And that’s considered like compensation, and it’s taxable. So this is business can give up to 2500 bucks on behalf of an employee into that employee’s Trump account for their child.

No income tax, doesn’t show up in your W-2 anywhere, tax free. Over 2,500 has to be reported as taxable income. I got ahead of myself a little bit here. So what’s the contribution max for basically the parents or other folks that are contributing? It’s $5,000 a year. I don’t actually know if that is impacted by the employer contribution or if the employer can contribute 2,500 in addition.

So unclear. don’t know if that’s been made clear. So you may need to may need to check on that But there is a limit how much money can go in per year ⁓ What is the money invested in?

That is a great question. What is the money invested in, Tim? That is a great question. still gray. I was going to say, I don’t think we have 100 % clarity on that question. is that they’re going to probably do what the TSP does. So if you work for the government and you have their version of a 401k is called a TSP, a Thrift Savings Plan. And there very limited options in there, but they’re all broad-based index funds. It’s like, I don’t know.

There’s not a lot of options. Five funds. Yeah, it’s like a fixed income. a fund, there’s a bond fund, there’s basically a cash fund. right. A couple of hybrids. So I think it will be very low cost and very broad-based. And as a certified financial planner who’s been in the business for 22 years, I think that’s great. I think those are great that they have very low cost index fund options in there. So the hope is that this really could grow and really could compound.

Hopefully parents can get more than the thousand bucks in there while they’re a kid. And it’s called a growth period. So while the child is between birth and the year they turn 18, it’s called a growth period. There’s actually no exception right now for money to come out of that kid’s Trump account unless, unfortunately, that kid was to pass away before that happened. That’d be the only way that money could come out. But once that kid turns 18, then what happens?

Something that doesn’t happen today in life, right? So this is kind of a hybrid thing that we’ve never really seen before, right? So what’s the purpose of this account is ultimately it’s to help retirement. It’s to help kids get a start on retirement. And why are we starting so early? Why are you getting a thousand bucks early? It’s because why Tim? Time value of money. Why do we tell people you can start young and save a little and it’s…

means a whole lot than if you wait until you’re 50 to start realizing, Oh, I haven’t saved enough for my retirement. So why don’t we do this when kids are little? So for the ones that are, you know, 15 months old and younger are getting a thousand bucks to get started. If you’re lucky enough to live in one of Michael Dell zip codes and you make less than a hundred in that zip code that makes less than 150, actually you could make more than 150 and live in one of the zip codes that gets, you know, you’d get some benefit of that. That would be nice.

So you get some seed money, but then you add stuff to it. It basically becomes an IRA. And it’s gonna be, as far as we know now, it’s gonna be subject to the same kind of rules as an IRA. Like traditional IRA. Traditional IRA, yeah. It’s gonna be pre-tax, so ultimately down the road, unless there’s a change right now, there’s not a Roth provision that we know of, so the money’s gonna come out of it ⁓ as taxable income. As far as we know, you’re still gonna have to wait till you’re 59 and a half to take that money out without some sort of tax penalty on it, but it’s basically like,

Hey, people aren’t saving enough for their retirement on their own, so why don’t we give them a leg up and get started early? And what’s cool about traditional IRAs is that there are some exceptions to pulling out the money before you’re 59 and half to avoid a penalty. So it’s not that you can’t have it at all. It’s just that there are some hoops. That’s right. So let’s talk about those. Well, what’s good about the hoop is that one of them is, and I can’t believe this hasn’t been inflation adjusted in forever, but it’s $10,000. You can take $10,000 out of a traditional IRA

to help you buy your home, your first home. For a first time home purchase, you can take out 10,000. So that’s pretty cool. It probably will be taxable, just not hit the 10 % penalty. And then it can also be used for higher education as well. Disability death. So there are some exceptions to the 10 % penalty to use some of the traditional IRA assets that used to be your Trump account once you’re 18. So they could help with education and it could help with.

that first time home purchase. I also want to go back and say that $5,000 contribution max that it’s cash. You have to contribute cash. You might have other accounts who are like, hey, can I fund it with a stock I already have? if Rich Uncle Jim is like, hey, I want to give some Tesla stock to my kid or my grandkid. He can’t do that. He has to sell the Tesla stock and contribute cash. So I think that’s something that’s good to know.

What about deductibility, Joe? Do you know about the deductibility of the Trump accounts? As far as we know right now, there is no deductibility for contributing to it. During the growth period? Yeah, during the growth period, you add money. Like in a normal traditional IRA, for instance, if you make a contribution to your own IRA as you’re going forward, there are limits to how much you can do. And if you’re under 50, what’s that? $7,000?

And then you get a catch-up period after that, that’s deductible off of your income, kinda like your 401K is, you get a credit for that, these are different. So as of right now, we’re not aware that there’s gonna be any kind of deductibility for contributions. So maybe you are a parent or you know a parent, and you’re like, I need to tell them this so that they claim the Trump account. If that parent is a bit older or maybe ⁓ has some health issues, ⁓

it’s good for them to be aware of that the parent kind of can establish a controller of the account. So the child actually owns the account as soon as it’s claimed. But it’s more the control of the account is by the parent or whoever opened it. I’m going to go into that in a second. But it really should be the parent. But if the parent is concerned about, gosh, I don’t know if I’m still going to be here when they’re 18, ⁓ you can establish a backup person.

⁓ This is really interesting too, like I was doing some research like what if the parent is not in the picture? You know what if we’re talking about could easily happen? Yeah, my wife lost her mom when she was four like you know foster kids ⁓ that kind of situation so so legal guardian can Open up a trump account if the parents not in the picture ⁓ Even an adult sibling can then a grandparent. It’s actually in that order right so you’ve got legal guardian then parent actually

⁓ then adult sibling, and then grandparent. So just as long as somebody is in that child’s life that fits that description, then they can open up that Trump account on their behalf, which I think is a good thing. So it’s very accessible. It is. And that makes it different from like a 529, for instance. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that’s one of the… Let’s get back to what I was saying earlier about why I think…

that people will be more excited about funding these in 529. Yeah, so let’s say that. So let’s say I’m your son. Pretty hard to imagine, So I’m your son. You’re the elder for a minute. This is only my fantasy life, Okay, And you want to give money to your grandkids, right? And so I’m like, hey, Tim, why don’t you put money in in little Timmy’s 529 over here? Yeah, and I think if you were like, hey, do you want to put the money and little Timmy’s 529 plan or his Trump account?

I’m probably going to pick the Trump account. Okay, so talk to me about that. Why? I might do a little bit in the 529 plan. What the 529 plan does is it gives tax-free growth for qualified educational expenses. honestly, super cool. I’m a huge fan. I’m a huge fan of qualified education, higher ed, and I’m a huge fan of being intentional about saving in a 529 plan because you’re going to have those expenses, hopefully, if you’ve got kids that want to go. So, but I think what I like about the Trump account that Trump’s

But I’m up to the 529 plan. Can’t escape it folks. Sorry. Is, I mean, the freedom that comes with it. I think the flexibility. I know we just talked about a lot of control, but like if you try to pull $10,000 out of your 529 plan for a first time home purchase, you’re going to pay a penalty and federal and state tax on the earnings. ⁓ So you avoid that penalty.

in this Trump account once you’re 18 to do that. You still can use it for hire at like a 529 plan. So it’s not like either or. The Trump account can maybe seemingly do what a 529 plan does. And then it is really, because that traditional IRA is so restricted and controlled by the government, I have a little more confidence that if I fund that for a little to me, that it’s likely to still be there when they need it in retirement.

because that penalty is there, because those rules are there, because it hurts so much to take it out without that exception before you’re 59 and a half. So you give these kids money, but they’re not ready for it yet to manage it or to use it or to spend it. And then what are they going to invest it in? could be sky’s the limit, right? But if it’s in this traditional IRA, that’s a Trump account, the investments are limited, your options to take it out are limited, but the options you do have to take it out, I think, are the options that I would be interested in funding for.

Little Timmy. And what I’m hoping is that eventually, it’s just super easy. We have some QR code. If my kids have Trump accounts, I can send a QR code to family on their birthday or Christmas or whatever, and they can just, boom, from Venmo straight up, 25 bucks put in their Trump account. Why do I feel like I’m going to be getting Venmo requests from Tim’s family? Yeah, that’s a great idea. Somebody write that down. Hey, Siri, remind me on my kid’s birthday to send Joe the Venmo request for the Trump account.

⁓ I do want to share something that I think is the most exciting thing, and it probably is because I’m an eternal optimist, okay? But I think that these Trump accounts could drastically ⁓ reshape culture and what culture thinks about the stock market and what culture thinks about capitalism moving forward. And this is why the majority of Americans do not own what, Joe?

Equities. majority of Americans don’t own Way more than the majority, like probably 30 % roughly of Americans own stocks. So, you know, when the stock market takes off and everybody’s excited about a good year, you’re excited about a good year in the stock market when you own stocks. When you don’t, there’s a little bit of animosity. You know, like, well, that’s great for them. I don’t own any. There’s a have-have-not kind of scenario. ⁓

You know, I remember back during COVID times, we’re pumping a lot of, what’s the Fed do, the easement thing, quantitative easement. They’re printing money and maybe there’s some small checks that came in the mail, but it was mostly kind of putting liquidity into the system. And what did it do? It drove up our real estate prices. It drove up the stock market. Well, I was talking to a friend of mine that was like, how does that help me? I don’t have equity in the house. I don’t have stocks. I was like…

It doesn’t. Then it doesn’t. It doesn’t help you. Those two things aren’t helping you. So I just think this allows so many more Americans to participate and to feel like they benefit from that. I wish we had done that with Social Security. I wish it had just was invested in the S &P 500 or whatever instead of some promissory note that’s literally sticky note that says IOU in the United States, know, Social Security Treasury Trust. like it just would have been great if folks felt like they were participating in this.

this great American economy and the capitalism and the stock market, the good parts of it, right? So there’s just gonna be this lift where people are gonna be excited about IPOs and companies doing well because they own part of those companies. It’s gonna create this ownership and equity level that most Americans don’t feel or experience right now. I mean, for me, my optimistic part is I hope that parents, grandparents, the people that are opening these accounts take that opportunity to talk to the kids that they’re opening it for.

and talk about investments and talk about the wisdom of saving early and starting to invest early and get them invested and get them invested in investing kind of thing. Like make that a normal sort of behavior to where your kid is, it’s not unusual. Your kid could be 10, 11 years old and say, yeah, I’ve got an investment account. I’ve got my retirement account. They can’t even fathom what the heck retirement is at 10 years old. But they do know I’m investing for my future.

And what does that look like? And I think that’s missing in this country right now. I know a lot of times people aren’t investing until they get their first big job. They get out of college or high school or whatever and they start making real W-2 money, not lawn mowing money or pool cleaning money like we did. They get their first real job and then there’s like, you’re eligible for a 401k. And they’re like, what’s that?

And what do I do? Well, you’re in your… What’s the stock market? You’re in your 20s when you’re learning that. I mean, if you don’t go to school for finance, you’re not learning that. I hope we take that opportunity to start just indoctrinating people into that at a younger age. Like, this is the norm. That’s a great point, too, because hopefully my daughters don’t listen to this episode, but Maureen and I… Because I am not sending money to their Trump accounts. For sure. For sure. Uncle Joe’s going to contribute, right?

Zero chance. No, like, Maury and I have established a 529 plan for the girls and then we have just a joint brokerage account that we’ve earmarked for the girls that’s in our name. And we started putting in the same amount into both of those many years ago. Not very much, but we just keep doing it. Well, that’s compounded over a good bit of time and a decent run in the stock market, say, over the past decade or so. I am not telling my girls how much are in those accounts. I’m just not.

Because I don’t want to build any entitlement. These are things that we’re going to reward the behavior we want repeated. We’re putting the right amount of pressure, I like to think, on grades and on pursuing scholarships and figuring out how to pay for college. And then we can come behind and help cash flow with some of these things that we’ve saved for in advance. However, if they had a Trump account, I would tell them all about it whenever they’re ready to hear about it.

I’ll tell them how much the balance is, what it’s invested in. And again, they’re gonna be like, what is that? What is that account? What are the investments? This thing grew, this thing went down. Why did it go down, dad? I lost money. What does that mean? Let’s talk about it. You’re absolutely right. They’re definitely gonna be talking about investments way earlier because they have an account that’s literally in their name that they can’t even touch till they’re 18. And their hands get slapped if they touch at 18, that they don’t use it for the house and the, know, what was it, educational stuff.

But otherwise it’s growing. So I think they’re going to be learning about investments earlier. Folks are to be more interested in it. And honestly, the macro event too, is if more money is going into the stock market, just overall through Trump accounts, that pushes up stocks for everybody. for everybody. have more cash going in, more contributions. So all right, anything else?

Feel like we covered it pretty well. think we’ve covered everything we know. OK, cool. Well, I know we like to sign off with gratitude as well. Oh, we do have a call to action on this one. A CTA, we call it in the marketing world, So we do have a blog called Navigating the Trump Accounts. So we do. We do. So a lot of information here. But if you go to GoodwinInvestment.com and you go to Knowledge Center and you search for navigating the new Trump accounts, you’ll be able to.

find that blog, or better yet, Joe, if you were just subscribed to the blog. Then it would automatically come to you. automatically comes to your inbox. beautiful gift every month. Beautiful gift. Twice a month. Free gift. Free gift. Free gift. Twice a Free. So that’s our plug to sign up for the blog. But if you’re afraid to give us your email address for whatever reason, you can just go to GoodwinInvestment.com, search for it, be all anonymous and mysterious. Joe, signing off with gratitude once again.

⁓ I’ll kind of ⁓ flip the script here. We don’t really like stay on topic for the gratitude. Not generally. I actually ⁓ I am grateful for being aware of the way that I look at a situation because some situations can make you really frustrated depending on how you look at it or you could be really grateful. And my example is Maureen and I got hit in our vehicle coming home. ⁓ you told me about that. crossed the double yellow lines.

right before I crossed him at night. And I, you in that split second, are we going to have a head on collision or the airbags? How are we going to do? We’re to end up in the hospital. And I don’t know if angels pulled us, pushed us to part or whatever happened. And it was just our side view mirrors. I’m pretty sure it was just his side view mirror. I don’t know because he hit and ran and I pulled over and my side view mirrors like super jacked up. I can’t believe, you know, later in the day, I realized that no other part of my car was scratched, you know, so.

Just had to replace the side view mirror. Was it an inconvenience? Yeah. Am I coming out of pocket? Luckily, the insurance said, OK, it’s hit and run. It’s like uninsured motorists, so the deductible was small. It was just $250. So that’s nice. I could be frustrated that, man, this crazy driver, and he scared me. And now I’ve got to fix my car and all that stuff. Or I could be grateful for, it wasn’t worse. I have insurance. This is just an inconvenience. So I think just the overall awareness in a situation to take a step back and go.

I just can either choose to be frustrated and choose that the world’s against me or I can choose to be grateful and that the world’s for me. So anyway, that’s my gratitude. Man, I can’t talk that. That’s so terrible. Well, I’m grateful we get to do this because one, I find it super fun. I know not everybody else wants to go on camera and wants to talk and finds that sort of thing fun. And there are things that you find fun that I do not find fun like…

building fences. Anyway, I’m just glad I get paid for doing something that I love and I think that’s super fun and I’m grateful for that. I’m with you. I am too. All right, thanks for listening or for watching. Until next time, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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