The Trump administration is now taking youth investing a step further as a way to “jump-start the American dream” amid widespread voter concern about affordability. A program that will fund the upcoming Trump accounts (formally 530A accounts) offers all American children born between 2025 and 2028 a chance to be invested in the stock market.
As of 2022, just 58.1% of U.S. households had direct or indirect holdings in stocks or bonds, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission – up significantly from 38.3% in 1992, but still a narrow majority.
According to the official Trump accounts website, starting this year, parents will be able to open accounts for children who are U.S. citizens under age 18 when they file their taxes or when an online portal launches this summer. As part of a limited program, the Treasury Department will deposit $1,000 into the accounts of enrolled children born between Jan. 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2028. Children under 18 born outside of this period can also open Trump accounts, but they will not receive the $1,000 from the government. Relatives and other donors, such as employers and foundations, will also be able to contribute to the accounts, which can only be invested in low-cost index funds.
The account will be locked until the child’s 18th birthday, giving the money a chance to compound. When the child turns 18, under current rules, their Trump account automatically becomes an IRA, meaning the funds can be left to continue growing until retirement age. Moving the funds into a Roth IRA would allow the money to grow tax-free for decades. Money in Trump accounts can be withdrawn sooner for qualified expenses including education, the purchase of a first home or starting a business, according to Matt Lira, executive director at Invest America.
Related: Read this before putting any of your own money into one of those Trump accounts for babies
While it remains to be seen how many families will open Trump accounts, the program is significant in its promise to fund a sizable cohort of U.S. children’s participation in the financial markets, potentially making them America’s inaugural generation of (near) universally invested kids.
Even if no additional funds were added to the account after the initial $1,000 from the Treasury Department in the limited program, that investment could compound to roughly $5,800 by age 18 based on historical returns from the S&P 500 SPX. The program has been lauded by both Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, with the latter long an advocate for “baby bonds” to help build wealth.
Read more: Could ‘Trump accounts’ make your kids millionaires? Maybe – with this strategy.
One of the goals of the Trump accounts, Lira told MarketWatch, is to help families that don’t already invest get over the “cold start” of opening an account and risking their own money, which has perpetuated wealth inequality. The accounts will at first be funded with government money, and perhaps most importantly, children can enroll when they are born. “Mathematically, the more time you can let the money work for you, the greater the financial upside,” he said.
As this program kicks off, Lira said the U.S. is also experiencing a “renaissance” in children’s relationship with financial literacy. A record 30 states required a personal-finance course for high-school graduation as of late 2025, according to Next Gen Personal Finance. Parents have made financial literacy a priority for their kids – especially millennial-age parents, noted Lira, himself a millennial whose experience with money “has been a challenge” in many ways.
The hope is to “have an entire generation that’s experienced compounding firsthand, and appreciates compounding and savings. It changes their financial behaviors, and they’ve had these great educational moments formally in the classroom and extracurricularly,” Lira said. These kids are “going to make smarter financial decisions as a whole,” he hopes.
‘I check the bitcoin price every day during or on the way to school.’ Riley, an 11-year-old investor
Early success with stocks can provide critical momentum.
Josh Kinser, a 50-year-old father of three in Texas, said he participated in a stock competition workshop in elementary school. His pick, Coca-Cola (KO), did very well. He won, earning his homeroom class a pizza party, he told MarketWatch: “There was a lot of clout in that.” His uncle later bought him stocks, which also performed well. Later, when he worked as a server through college, he continued to “dabble in stocks.”
Kinser is now teaching his own children about investing through a variety of kid-oriented apps like Greenlight, Stockpile and Acorns. Riley, his 11-year-old, has made some profitable trades on stocks like Netflix (NFLX) and Roblox (RBLX), which she buys with a share of her allowance and cash gifts. “I check the bitcoin price (BTCUSD) every day during or on the way to school,” she said.
Shifting wealth-building patterns
As more Americans invest in the financial markets overall, the increase has been particularly dramatic for young Americans.
Just a decade ago, investing remained “a relatively rare occurrence for people in their mid-20s,” according to a 2025 report from the JPMorganChase Institute. In 2015, only 6% of 25-year-olds had moved money into investment accounts since age 22; by 2022, that share had increased to 39%. It slipped to 37% in 2024, but was still up sixfold.
While this trend may have been a temporary fluke related to the pandemic-era savings boom, “amid a decline in those becoming first-time homeowners, [it] suggests a potential change in wealth-accumulation patterns, in which the stock market plays a bigger role in people’s financial lives relative to prior generations,” JPMorganChase Institute researchers noted.
Meanwhile, this shift also appears to be catalyzed by an unfavorable change in the job market for young Americans in recent years, especially those in white-collar occupations. The unemployment rate for people ages 20 to 24 in December increased to 8.2%, compared to 7.5% a year earlier and 6.4% in December 2023.
The St. Louis Fed concluded in a report last year that the “concentration of unemployment increases among recent college graduates and white-collar workers suggests that traditional assumptions about education and career security may need significant revision.”
Alisa Chang, an 18-year-old high school senior in California and YIS student advisory board co-president, said she started with stock-market simulation games and then began investing real money last year through an account her father opened for her, which is performing well so far. One of her main picks is Futu (FUTU), the Hong Kong-based fintech that owns Moomoo.
Chang intends to study business and start her own company in the future, but also believes it is essential to earn money from multiple channels. Hard work is important, she told MarketWatch, but if “something bad happens to one side, the other side could hold you up still.”
Chang especially hopes that youth organizations like YIS can introduce other female teens to the benefits investing can have on financial security. In her experience so far, “??I noticed mostly guys are into investing,” she said.
Fundamentally, the teens interviewed by MarketWatch – some of whom were born overseas or whose parents are immigrants – expressed dreams similar to the ones Americans have had for generations. The path there, however, is shifting.
“My goal is to live comfortably,” Erlichson said. “To have a house and have a family; hopefully, to do well enough where I can provide and get my family whatever they would like. And travel is a big thing for me – I want to be able to take my kids to see the world. You always hope that your kids climb the ladder. At least that’s what I hear my dad say: You hope that your kids do better than you.”
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-Venessa Wong
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