BiggerPockets Money Podcast - Yes, the Trump Account Belongs in your Financial Order of Operations. Here’s Where.

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Trump Accounts are one of the newest tax-advantaged investment accounts for children, but where do they fit in your financial plan? In this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, Jeremy Schneider of Personal Finance Club explains how Trump Accounts work, who should open one, how they compare to 529 plans and custodial accounts (UGMA/UTMA), and why they may become an important long-term wealth-building tool for families. You'll learn the rules, contribution limits, Roth IRA rollover opportunities, investment restrictions, financial aid implications, and practical strategies for parents and grandparents looking to build generational wealth. Connect with Jeremy Schneider: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/personalfinanceclub/ Website: https://personalfinanceclub.com/ Nectarine: https://hellonectarine.com/ To go beyond the podcast: Kick start your financial independence journey with our FREE financial resources - https://biggerpocketsmoney.com/ Subscribe on YouTube for even more content- www.youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney  Connect with us on social media to join the other BiggerPockets Money listeners - https://www.facebook.com/groups/BPMoney We believe financial independence is attainable for anyone no matter when or where you’re starting. Let’s get your financial house in order! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're going to be debating a question for parents and future parents. What is a Trump account and where does it fit into my financial independence plan? We'll be breaking that down with Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me as always is my never afraid to Trump conventional phi wisdom co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. I've been bided in my time waiting to discuss Trump accounts with you here.

And couldn't be more excited to get going today. Look at that one. That was great. We'll have to retire these political jokes here. They're going to trigger people. But with so many questions around these new accounts, we wanted to bring on somebody who has taken a deep dive and actually opened a Trump account himself so that he can help us separate the facts from hype. And so today, joining us is Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club. Jeremy, welcome back to Bigger Pockets Money. I'm so glad to be back. Hey, Mindy and Scott. I love this show. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for joining us. For anyone who may be hearing about Trump accounts for the first time, can you just explain very quickly what they are? It's basically a new tax code that lets children open up investment accounts that are controlled by their parents until they're 18.

So think of it like an IRA for kids. So you can start investing for a child's retirement at birth rather than waiting until they're 18 for them to be able to open an account. Awesome. Yeah. And so I think that when we have another tax advantage to count, that needs to then fit into the order of operations. that you choose for yourself as an optimal one or your best guess of what's optimal for you in the context of saving with your discretionary income, right? So here's my my hypothesis about how to use the Trump account in the context of a tax-advantaged order of operations

for those pursuing financial independence, right? First, you take your free money, you have to take the Trump account contribution. I had actually thought this was a match until I talked to Jeremy, and it's not a match. It's not like to put a thousand bucks in to to $1,000 for your baby. You open the account and $1,000 goes in for your baby. So you take that free money. Then you take your 401 match from your employer. Then you might consider something like an employer stock purchase plan dependent on what's offered there. Then you're going to max the HSA, which for a married filing jointly household, presumably most of people taking advantage of Trump accounts are many of them. That's $8,750. Then we're going to fully fund our 401k. That's

$49,000, $24,500 each for two income earners. Then we're going to max the Roth IRA, either through a normal or a backdoor contribution, that could be up to $15,000 for this household, $7,500 each. Then we're going to fund the 529 account before we max the remainder of the Trump account, because up to the amount that we're projecting to spend for college education, because I think the 529 plan is arguably better if you have a plan to spend for college education, and there may be a little bonus because it can be rolled over to a Roth IRA up to, I think, $35,000.

Then we're going to max the Trump account after we've met those preconditions. So excluding the 529, you're talking about $72,750 for this married filing jointly household, contributing to other tax-advantaged accounts before they even get to these Trump accounts for one or multiple children. So in practice, I think that aside from taking the free money, very few people are going to get to these Trump accounts if they're following what a lot of people would argue are best practices in the rest of their tax-advantaged order of

operations stack. So, Jeremy, how am I doing here? I agree mathematically, you're right, which is this isn't some better tax break. than the other tax advantage accounts, you know, by the math, by the spreadsheet you're right, I think, you know, the only counter argument might be, is there a reason you want to be doing this with your child or do you want to take birthday money that's given to your kid and put it in this account because it's really there is and not yours? You know, then you kind of are left with a question, okay, where does birthday money go? Is that a 529 thing? Is that a custodial Agma-Utma?

Is that a Trump account thing? But basically, yeah, you're right. That's how I'm handling it. I'm taking my $1,000 for my baby, my $250 for my 5-year-old, and I don't plan to hyperfund this or anything just because, like you said, it's not the best tax advantage. And also, there's some weird things about having an 18-year-old with a ton of money in their name that they can control on their 18th birthday, which maybe isn't the lesson that we want to be teaching either. This is going to grow tax-deferred, right, in this account for this child up until I turn 18. Can you explain why that's important relative to?

to just putting money in an after-tax brokerage account for them, for example. You dove right into the really great technical analysis of the whole order of operations, which is great because I'm sure many people who listen to this podcast, most of them just want to hear the details. But I think it's always important to take a step back and remember that a Trump account in any tax advantage account isn't an opportunity to invest. Sometimes people say to me like, oh, if the Roth IRA max is $7,000, does that mean I can't invest more than $7,000?

And the answer is no, you can always invest unlimited amount of money in a regular old brokerage account. You can go to Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, Robin Hood, wealth front, whatever you want, open up a regular account and you can invest unlimited money and it has unlimited flexibility. You can spend that whenever you want. You can take it out whenever you want. You can put it in whenever you want. There's no limits. The only reason you would ever not do a regular brokerage account is if you're trying to get a tax benefit,

if you're trying to pay less in taxes. And the tradeoff you're making for that is one of the first. flexibility. And so the conversation about all these different accounts is, am I willing to have less flexibility with my money in the hopes of paying less tax? So yeah, the after tax brokerage account, when you put money in, you have a job, you pay income tax, you put mine into a regular brokerage account. It grows. And then when you sell something, you pay capital gains tax on it. And then as it's growing, you're also paying income tax on the dividends and any capital gains are kicked off within those years. And so you kind of taxed three times. You're taxed on your

income, you're taxed while it's growing on any dividends that kicks off, and then you're taxed on the gains at the end of capital gains. A Roth account, and this is the same for 529 accounts, you're still taxing your income, and then you put money in, but with Roth or 529, you're never taxed again. But the tradeoff there is with a Roth account, you can't take it out until you're 59 and a half years old, and with a 529, it needs to be spent on qualified educational expenses, or like you mentioned, there's some opportunity to rolled over to a Roth IRA if the kid doesn't use it all. And so that's kind of the tradeoff, which is, okay, we're going to not tax you after you put the money in, but your hands are a little bit tied. You have to use it for stuff

the government wants you to use it for, i.e. retirement education. The Trump account's a little bit weird because you put after tax money in and then it grows tax deferred. But when you take it out, you still pay tax again, actually. Instead of like the Roth benefit, which is great, you never pay tax again. You're actually paying, you're paying income tax on the gains. And so the first time I heard this, I was pretty annoyed and I'm still a little bit annoyed because the traditional versus Roth debate is like, do you want to be taxed at the beginning and never again like a Roth or do you want to be not taxed at the beginning and only at the end like a traditional with a Trump account, you're actually getting taxed at the beginning, income taxed, it's drawn tax deferred.

And then at the end, you pay income tax, not capital gains tax on the growth. You know, when you say that out loud, you're like, wait a minute, could that even be worse than a broker's account? And it actually might be worse in a very, you know, unique situation. But it turns out that that tax deferred benefit is powerful enough to override the fact that many people are going to be in higher income tax brackets than they would be in capital gains tax brackets. And so that's the whole point of this tax benefit. And, you know, actually really, for what it's worth, and we should maybe get into the politics. But like for what it's worth, I think that Trump accounts are really well implemented.

I think they're really easy to use. I think they're a good idea. But I wish that tax benefit was stronger because if it was like the Roth benefit where we never pay tax again, that would be much more interesting. and probably move up in your order of operations. You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized? That same feeling hits me with my finances every spring.

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accounts? These are triple tax disadvantaged. Is that what we're going to call these? Like super tax, yay tax. But when I am putting money into a Trump account for my child, I'm paying taxes at my current tax bracket. It's growing, like you said, tax deferred. When they turn 18, that Trump account changes to a traditional IRA, which is not a taxable event.

You can make it a taxable event by taking that traditional IRA and converting it to a Roth account. So now your kid has a Roth IRA. And if you do it when the kid doesn't have income, your subject, there's like kiddie tax laws that I'm going to send you to a CPA for because they're super confusing to me. But if you wait until your child has earned income, you can start your Roth conversions. I have a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old. So the 19-year-old doesn't qualify for the Trump account. The 16-year-old does, but I can only put two years' worth of contributions into her account before she ages out, and it turns into a traditional IRA.

But what if I Roth converted when she's 18 or 19? Now she's got $10,000 in her Roth account. I can't put $10,000 into her Roth account right now. But over the course of two years, I can put it into her Trump account and then Roth convert. And I'm not planning on using this for college expenses. This is just to kickstart her Roth account for her retirement because let me tell you, a 16-year-old does not want to save for retirement at 16. And that's where the strategy comes together for this, right?

And I get it. Like Trump is a polarizing figure. This makes it very hard for many people to rationally assess the value of this account. They hear all these things that's very confusing. But here it is in a nutshell about why this account is so powerful for my daughters, for example, right? Let's say I contribute the max to these accounts every year for the next, you know, 15 to 18 years as they grow up. Then they go to college, right? I've got my 529 in addition to that that pays for college, right?

At that point, they earn a little bit of money, right, doing some kind of college job. Now we have earned income. They can now contribute to their Roth IRA. and they can roll over this account in the traditional IRA, the Trump account, which the Trump account is converted to, and begin putting that into the Roth at a very low tax bracket, 10, 12% tax bracket. Now their Roth could have several hundred thousand dollars in it by the time they graduate college or they're after the first few years of work, and they're post-fi, effectively at that point, in a really tax-advantaged way. I cannot contribute to their Roths for them until they have earned income. You must have earned income to otherwise contribute to a retirement account here. So that's the advantage. That's a very powerful one. You cannot dismiss it. These are not gimmicks. They're not like worthless accounts for this. They belong in the order of operations and they're very powerful for that reason. It's much better to do that than for them to inherit my Roth IRA, for example, if I were to pass because they have to distribute from that Roth within that 10-year window. So this is a powerful tool. And sadly, it will only maximally benefit people who are very wealthy and can go through the rest of the sack for the most part. It will be a small benefit for those who take the free contributions there.

Yeah, but I'm not the only person who can contribute to Daphne's account, Scott. You could contribute to Daphne's account. Jeremy could contribute. Her birthday's in November. So if you want a write or a check and we'll use that birthday money to put in there. This is a great way for grandparents or aunts and uncles. I mean, I don't know if you don't have enough toys in your house, Scott, but when my kids were their age, there were toys everywhere. And every year they'd have a birthday. Oh, what can we get them? Please don't get them another toy. Throw money into. their Trump account. And if you don't like the name Trump account, they have another name. It's called the 530A account. So you can just call it a 530A if that makes your heart sing. Or the Biden account, right? Of course. What do you think about all this? Is that the right way to think about these accounts? I think like a little bit of a historical perspective is important because it almost goes back to the dawn of Social Security when, you know, in the early 1900s, the U.S. government was like, oh, there's a bunch of broke old people that's bad for society. Let's tax the young working people will instantly give that money to the old people and solve our problem. And maybe that was

very politically popular at the moment because it solves the problem instantly. But as population shift, when there's a bunch of baby boomers retiring and there's more old people who are trying to take money out of the system than there are young people putting money in, that system breaks down as we're seeing with Social Security age getting pushed older, it's maybe going to go broke. And so I think that the idea behind this Invest America Act, as it was originally called, was to basically start all kids off with their own account. And if you look at how much money you put in Social Security over the years and what you take out and you compare that to what it would have been if you were just investing it,

it's eye-watering. You're like, oh, man, I have 90% less money or whatever it is because it's just a one-to-one transfer from young to old instead of a growth with the market for the 65 years of your life. And so while Scott, I think you're right technically that, you know, if you're super wealthy and you're doing every single thing perfect by the book, that, where it falls in the order of operations. I think for like regular humans who, you know, live in a regular place who don't, you know, have 50 million spreadsheets, they're kind of saying like what Mindy was saying, which is they're going to throw some birthday money there. They might

have an introduction to investing when they might not otherwise have because they're getting this $1,000 incentive to get started. And just the idea that, hey, take your own retirement into your own hands a little bit instead of waiting for Social Security to give you, you know, some pittance when you're, you know, 67 and a half or whatever it is. I think that's kind of moving in a better direction so people will have more wealth. And so the Trump account credit, I think it's really well executed. I've always found it very, very hard to give the gift of investing. Like if I want to invest for my, you know, my nieces and nephews, like I know them very well. They're my brother's kids.

I basically just have to like give him money, write him a check or Venmo him or whatever. then he just has to do it. He has to do something. He has to go open up an account, whatever it is. But the Trump accounts, there's like a little share link. And anyone with that link or that QR code and a debit card can just put money in someone else's account. And so, yeah, that's not the correct order of operations.

But the net result might be a lot of kids who didn't have, you know, like, you talked about the power of it. If you're super wealthy and get your kid and, you know, avoid the required distributions of an inherited Roth IRA. Like that's like the high income scenario. The low-income scenario is you might have something when you had nothing, which I think is a really good thing for people. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a great call out there.

And I did not realize about the contributions items here as well. So, yeah, that's a great alternative to like a birthday, you know, present or whatever it is for many of those kids. So I do want to call out, where is this money coming from to fund the Trump accounts in terms of the gift that you get, the contribution that's just made if you open on? So there's two different places. So first, if you're a baby born between 2025 and 2028, which, Scott, I think we both have one of those. All you have to do is just go to, and it sounds like an ad, but it's not actually because it has the word Trump on it. I've gotten torn to shreds on social media because people said, you're supporting Trump or, you know, I've gotten torn to shreds by both far ends of the political spectrum for what it's worth. But, I mean, just on that note very quickly, it was originally called the Invest America Act. And then through the wash of legislation, it came out the other side called the Trump account.

But this isn't a Trump business. It's not like Trump crypto. It's not, you know, Trump hotels. It's code of, in the IRS code, like Mindy said, like line 530A. And it's run by the Treasury. So this is like a government thing, not a Trump business thing. That said, that law that has passed said, hey, baby's born between 2025 and 20208, we'll get a $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury.

So it's coming from taxpayers, you know. And so that's political to all. money is political, but basically babies are getting money just from taxes, from, you know, so we all throw money into the big tax pot and then everyone, you know, each baby born gets a thousand bucks. And then, you know, these Trump accounts have also made easy for large donors to basically try to donate to a large number of kids accounts. And so Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers and the Dell Foundation donated $6.25 billion

and he said, okay, if you were born before 2025, if you're still a kid, but you're under 10 years old, then you can sign up for a Trump account. And the first 25 million kids who weren't eligible for the $1,000, they'll get $250 from this big donation he made. And so it comes from two places. The babies get it as part of law from tax money and slightly older kids between, you know, one in 10 years old get it from this Dell donation. Yeah. I want to point out that this is great. Like, like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take the $250 for my. three-year-old, right? It would be crazy not to do that, I think. And I also want to call out that that this is, this was a very good investment for Michael Dell, right? Because I look at Dell stock

and in the last year, there is a 261% increase in the value of their stock. And that is heavily concentrated around this kind of May 8th time period. I wonder if anything happened there, like a White House event or something like that. That's been very, very profitable for him. And another reason why these accounts, I think, trigger people, you know, arguably, rightfully so in many cases here. This is not an endorsement of any of any of a politician or whatever. You have to get past this, though, I think, to make rational financial decisions for you and your family and understand that the account is a good tool that belongs in your arsenal, not a scam or fraud or something else there. It's a tool. You should be aware of it, when to apply it,

and how to use it here, even if, you know, some of these things make you mad in some cases. Yeah, I don't, you know, was there a backroom deal? Was there a handshake? I certainly think Trump has been a lot more freely tweeting ticker symbols and things like that that any other president would be investigated for. But yeah, I agree with you, Scott, that you should have to run in your lane and look at what's right for you. And I think that, yeah, it's still a really cool tool that's being put out there. So, Jeremy, one question I was thinking about this when I was, what I was thinking about where the Trump account belongs in the optimal order of operations stack, which is, you know, the, the inheritance tax exclusion is up to like almost 14 million now. I think it's like 13.99 million per person or something

something around that. And that's $28 million for, you know, a married couple, for example, that can be given tax free at a stepped up basis in many cases outside of these, these accounts. And so what I was thinking was, is there really a big advantage over just building my wealth after tax in various, you know, areas? And then sending that to my, my daughter's at passing or at any point in my life, if I want to gift it to an irrevocable trust before those things come up. I came to that conclusion that, yes, the advantage is that, that, you know, that's a advantage is that this builds into a traditional IRA that can then be converted to a Roth, whereas my general gifts to an irrevocable trust could not be converted into a Roth.

And that was the number one advantage I could come up with with the Trump account over just transferring wealth outside of those accounts. Is that a right way to think about it? Or how do you think about it? I think it is. And, you know, again, it's this tradeoff between, are you willing to accept the restrictions in the hopes of some lower taxes? And I think it's good to put some numbers out. So actually made a spreadsheet comparing if you invested in a custodial Agma-Utma versus a Trump account. What was that word?

Is that English? Just kidding. I'm here. Can we define it for people who don't know that term? The Agma-Atma? Yeah. Okay. So Agma stands for a Uniform Gift to Minors Act.

And Utma stands for Uniform Transfer to Minors Act. Of these two acronyms that basically mean we're going to put a brokerage account in a child's name. And the adult is going to be the custodian. of it. So if you say a custodial account, that's what I think most people are familiar with. Yeah. Right. That encapsulates the, I've heard it called like half half where other people say, Agma Utemann, Utemur custodial. But basically, that's the option that already existed. You know, we can all go open up a custodial account today for our child and invest, but you don't have this tax advantage nature of it. And so I was like, what's the real benefit here? Can I compare the,

you know, tax deferred Trump account versus the regular old taxable brokerage account? And it doesn't actually make a huge difference. So I compare it if you invested $1,000 a year in a Trump account versus a thousand dollars in an Ugma-Utma account for 65 years looking at the growth of the stock market. Let's say the share price grows 8% per year and 2% in annual dividends. I assume some things like a 15% capital gains tax rate and a 25% income tax rate. If you invested in an UGMA-Utma at the end of 65 years, your $1,000 a year would grow to $3.6 million. If you did it in a Trump account, it would grow to $4 million. So it, you know, it's significant. What is that? About 10% more, but it's not crazy, right? So it's definitely worth it, but you kind of have to decide, is it part of

your plan to be gifting this much money to a child? Or do you want to just keep in your own account and give them the $3.6 billion whenever you feel like it? One other component for this is also flexibility, right? So I've lived my life and I've paid taxes as a result of this choice. But I've prioritized the after tax component and I've paid my taxes. And I also believe that that's a direct correlation to the freedom and flexibility I have now at 35 relative to having a little bit of a larger number in some of the pre-tax accounts here. So that's a trade-off that reason what people can make. What I rather have my kid having $2 million at age 35 or 40 and in an after-tax account, or would I rather have them, you know, get them that extra million bucks at $65. That's a real

trade-off. I think that's that's unknowable in some of these things. And the UGMA up or custodial account, as it's perhaps more colloquial known, there's a trade out there that only you can decide. So if you do it my way where you convert to a Roth, the Roth account does not count against your kids FAFSA financial aid, whereas the Trump account and the UGMA-Utma does count against them. It can reduce your aid eligibility by up to 20%. That's where my understanding is a little bit weak. And I do know that parental accounts, like a 529 or only, I think it's something like 5.something percent count towards the children's asset. But if a child has their own asset accounts much more like 25 percent. And so my big

picture takeaway in this sort of thing is if you're trying to stay as broke as possible to get college funding, that's probably a short-sighted perspective. I'd say, you know, build wealth. If you can afford college, great. But I do think that sometimes people get so focused on like, oh, what if I don't afford, you know, what if I don't qualify for college funding in 18 years? I'm like, then that's probably a good thing because it means you have a lot of money. But I do think it's worth looking into, you know, the impact these have on financial, especially if you're coming up to that quickly. Let's talk about limitations, right?

We talked about flexibility. This is a IRA and there will be penalties or consequences for accessing funds in the IRA in advance of retirement age in many cases. There are ways to do that. We've talked about those in the past. There are probably ways to do that in the future as well. But another limitation is what you can invest in, right? So a custodial account, or, you know, an after-tax tax, brokerage account or any other thing, you know, most Roths and 401k, you can invest in basically

whatever you want, and that's publicly traded, and you can open up a self-directed account and invest in even more than that if you have that proclivity. But in the Trump account, you're limited, right? What are the limitations there? That's right. The law says that Trump accounts can only hold U.S. index funds with an expense ratio under 0.1%, which means you can't hold international funds, you can't hold bonds. The way it's implemented today is if you go to Trumpaccounts.com and you open an account, there's no trade button. There's no, you know, there's no opportunity to buy something or not buy something.

Just when you contribute money, it's automatically invested in SPYM, which is the S&P 500 ETF with a 0.02% expense ratio. And so on one hand, I kind of think it's a little bit too inflexible, which is I like how the TSPs are done, another government sponsored account. for government employees in the military where they can choose from a very short menu of things. Do you want U.S., do you want international? Do you want the life cycle funds?

With this, there's no choice. It's just S-P-Y-M is the horse for everyone. But I actually really do like that for a lot of reasons, too. Again, the listeners of this show, if you're making half-million dollars a year and you've got, you know, Scots order of operations, like as a poster on your wall and you're trying to max out your $70,000. You know, you're in good shape. You're going to be fine.

But, like, normal people, you know, normal people here on. in Planet America who got like a $100 gift for a birthday present and it goes into the Trump account. Like they might forget to invest it. They might not know. I mean, every, I know you guys see this. I know you guys say this because every day of my life, I look at a young person's Roth IRA and they said, hey, I put $5,000 in three years ago.

How come I have $5,000 and $7 now? And you guys know why it is, right? Never actually click the button. They never invested it, right? And so this just eliminates that risk, which is so powerful because all the people who were making the mistake and not getting invested. They're in an S&P 500 ETF. Good. You know, for the first 18 years, for me, I'm like, okay, close enough, great.

They got 18 years of S&P 500 growth. And then when they're 18 and they want to roll over to Roth and diversify, I think that they'll be an adult and they'll have that option. So I actually don't hate the way it's implemented. And again, the app is actually really nice. You just put a debit card in or you transfer money and then it just shows your balance every day. You guys heard our recent episode with David Jackson.

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Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. When WestJat first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. I like that you can't invest in crazy stuff. SPYM, the S&P 500, great.

That's your only option. So somebody who isn't as well versed as those of us who are on this show in investing aren't able to go and to be like, I'm going to buy crypto with my kids' Trump account. I'm going to buy, you know, SpaceX or. I'm going to buy, you know, crazy things that maybe aren't the best choice for those kids. The S&P 500 gives a good return when it's giving a return. Past performance is not indicative of future gain. But they don't have options.

And while I would love options, I'm glad that there's not a lot of options that could cause the kids to, like, lose everything. Yeah. And SPYM does not own SpaceX yet, right? And I like that too, but that's another story. Mindy's like, I'm glad they don't let you buy SpaceX, meanwhile, 30%. allocation to SpaceX. Yeah, I think any investment strategy is open to critique. You know, if someone has 40% internationally, you could say, why that much? You know, if they have bonds. But, you know, I think it's, and for a government-sponsored account, I think it kind of makes sense. Like,

all right, well, we're going to, if the government's going to be pumping a lot of money to the market, we might as well be investing in American businesses. And so for all the critiques, I actually think, you know, it's doing a good job. And many of you made a great point, which is we're kind of forcing babies to build wealth against their will. even, you know, not that babies have a wilt against investing, but, you know, their parents, and another robot Trump accounts is you can't actually can't take the money out before 18. And so things we talk about all the time, which is like buy and hold, low cost index funds, leave it alone, let the market do the work. They're forcing this best investing practice on babies

so that they're going to get a head start. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah, I agree. And I think, that what makes this hard for a lot of people is because Trump is so polarizing, it makes it very hard. like we stated earlier, for people to really just, like, say, what is this account? What does it do? And because it's got his name attached to it, now maybe some people have to have a hard conversation with their spouse. Like, it's just sad that that's the way the world is today, and that's how things are going in a general sense. And there's good reasons for it on both sides, you know, for how people feel about this stuff. But our job, I think, is on this show and with you, Jeremy, is to say, no, this is a tool and we're going to put it in the toolbox, and we're going to just use it the way that it's appropriate. And I think the answer from a takeaway perspective today is if you have two kids or one kid or any kids that are eligible for these gifts, open the account, take your money and put it in there and invest it.

Like that is a hour of work for you, maybe less. And you can do that. And if people are going to give your kids gifts, you can decide whether it's appropriate to put them in the Trump account or into a custodial account. And there's a debate, but the tax efficient approach is likely to side with putting it into the Trump account, I think. Is that the right framework here? Yeah. And it's pretty easy to do too, you know? Again, the Trump, when we keep going back to it, is so I've seen some sentiment online.

I literally said, hey, I opened the Trump account. I got my $3,000 for my one-year-old baby. It was really easy to do. People were like, I can't believe you're putting your money into this. You're going to lose all your money. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I ended up money into it. The money was a gift.

And no, I'm not going to lose my money. It's an SPYM, you know. And, you know, I think there's the argument that could be made that anything that's touches the government. They're going to take it from you somehow. But, you know, I kind of think that if you say that, you can say about anything. You can say about your brokerage account or your house or whatever. It is easy to open to and you just go to Trumpaccounts.gov. And I actually opened one for my five-year-old this morning. It took, you know, maybe five minutes. So they've done a good job with it. Well, Jeremy, where can people find out more about you? If you're not fine about me,

you can follow me on Instagram at Personal Finance Club or you can go to my website at personal finance club.com. Jeremy has just like such a constant stream of such reasonable, easy to digest, fun, engaging Instagram content. These posts you make are just fantastic in explaining everyday finance concepts to people. And it's just wonderful what you're doing there and spreading that education there. And then, of course, nectarine is where you can find flat fee or advice only CFPs, who largely overlap with the financial independence community as well. Two great resources you've built there. Thanks for all your contributions here. Thanks for the plugs. Yeah. And what is that website? Because it's not just nectarine. Yeah. If you Google it,

you'll find it. Even if you Google tangerine, you'll find it. Yeah, I had several reached out saying, should I consider hiring a tangerine guy? And I was like, well, very close. Citrus fruit, but nectarine, yeah. We've been called all the fruit names. Yeah, it's at hellonectrine.com. And yeah, they're flat fee advisors who don't sell any products. Don't manage your money, don't earn any commissions. It's just simply our or project financial advice, which I think when people have come from a commission-based financial advisor, it's like the cloud's clear and the sun comes out. They're like, oh, okay, when they're not trying to sell me whatever makes them the most money, suddenly the experience changes a lot. Yeah, Jeremy, I eventually, after like, I think it was

seven years caved in and bought DeeperPockets.com and redirected it to bigger pockets. For similar reasons there. You waited seven years out of in my first days before. I can't believe you're still available. So one day you'll buy tangerine.com too. Oh, you know, like buy it from the squatter. Oh. from Squatter. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on this. I think the lesson here is these are a tool, figure out where to use them, take the free money, and get over the political association with the name of the account, because it's probably in the best interest of your kid to at least understand the tool and use it competently. And if you have a baby, you get a thousand

free dollars. And you don't even have to have that baby yet in the next two years. Yeah, I know, you got time. If there wasn't enough reasons, financial reasons, have a baby, there's one more. You get a thousand free dollars. Yes. they're such a good investment. Jeremy, thank you so much for your time today. And we will talk to you again soon. Thanks, guys. There's a pleasure.

All right, Scott, that was Jeremy Schneider, and that was a really fun discussion about Trump accounts. I learned a lot. I know you learned a lot. What did you think of the episode? And more importantly, are you going to open up Trump accounts for your girls? Yes, I'm going to open those up today or maybe tomorrow and take the free money. I didn't realize it was that simple and that easy.

And I just got to mechanically do it. So I think everybody should do that who has a kid. it's eligible for those gifts. And then I do think, you know, I'm not sure if I will actually max out the Trump accounts this year because I have other items higher up on the priority list that I want to do. But, you know, I think in years where I do have large surpluses, I absolutely will put that in there. Yeah. And when people ask you, what can I get for your kids for Christmas, birthday, there's so many

opportunities to give kids things that they don't need. This is something you can do. Oh, instead of putting $50 into another toy she's not going to play with, put it in her 530A account or her Trump account. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. All right. Your learning does not stop just because Scott and I are at the end of the show. You can hop on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com and check out our blog, our newsletter. Sign up for our newsletter if you don't already have it. You are also going to find a ton of resources. Scott and our tech team are going crazy making new calculators, news templates, new spreadsheets.

There's a ton of stuff available and every day they're adding something new, almost every day. One thing that we just did actually this last week is we've now rolled out transcripts for every single one of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast episodes. We should have had that years ago. But we've done that now. You can open your app, the Bigger Pockets Money mobile app that we had a lot of fun coding. Or you can go to the website at BiggerPocketsmoney.com slash podcast. And you'll find all the episodes. You'll find playlists that we've aggregated.

Those are even easier on the app than on the website for most of those. and you can find the transcripts there. If that's ever used to you, you want to find something or, you know, figure out what it was said or I mumbled it. They're all there. Hopefully the AI was able to decode my mumbling in many of those cases. But really excited about that.

That was actually quite a big project. So you can check that out. In addition to the many calculators and financial resources we've published. Yep. We've got a ton of stuff over there and we're adding more all the time. So please visit us online. All right. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

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