Nearly 70 million tax-advantaged Trump Accounts have been established for American children since the federal program officially launched on July 4, according to data from the Treasury Department. Of those, over 60 million accounts were generated through an automatic enrollment process designed to streamline access for eligible minors.
Trump Accounts function as specialized investment vehicles created for children under the age of 18. The program includes a one-time $1,000 contribution from the federal government for citizens born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. Additional private donor seed money is also made available to children falling within specific age brackets. While the accounts have been automatically opened for tens of millions of youths, parents and legal guardians serving as account custodians must actively claim the accounts to manage them and secure the initial Treasury seed contribution.
To facilitate the claiming process, the government launched the Trump Accounts App, which is accessible on mobile platforms via the Apple App Store for iOS users and Google Play for Android devices. The Social Security Administration has also begun dispatching new insert notices to parents of newborns outlining the sign-up steps.
During the claiming procedure, custodians are required to verify their personal identity, confirm their legal relationship to the child, review the child’s recorded information, and accept the formal terms of the account. Completing these verification steps unlocks the ability to claim the one-time $1,000 seed contribution directly from the Treasury Department.
Once an account is successfully claimed, custodians can enable additional financial contributions from family members, friends, and eligible employers. Under the provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, annual contributions to a child’s Trump Account are capped at up to $5,000 per year. Custodians can utilize the mobile application to generate and share a unique code allowing family and friends to contribute directly. Deposits can also be executed using a debit card, though transactions may require several business days to process and appear in the balance.
Funds deposited into Trump Accounts are invested in diversified index funds tracking a broad segment of the U.S. stock market. To protect account holders, expense ratios are capped by law at no more than 0.1%, or 10 basis points.
Prior to the program’s July rollout, the Treasury Department announced that the default investment option at launch is the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (SPYM), a low-cost exchange-traded fund designed to track the performance of the S&P 500 Index. In addition to the default fund, Treasury officials indicated that four other low-cost ETFs tracking broad market indexes will be available for Trump Accounts. These options include the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 1500 Composite Stock Market ETF (SPTM), and the iShares S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT).
