Should I Set Up a Trump Account for My Kid?

Welcome everyone to the Directed IRA Podcast. This is Matt Sorenson, joined by the incredible Mark J. Kohler. And today we are talking about something on the cutting edge, something new that I have fallen in love with recently, and that is Trump accounts. I want you to know about these and be using them. If you've got a kid under age 18, you've got to listen to this episode. So as we break down today, what is a Trump account? We're going to contrast it with some of the other accounts you might be thinking about for your kids.

Well, my introduction is a little different. Happy New Year, by the way. Scrooge. Bah humbug. You know, Matt Sorensen. But no, Happy New Year. Glad you're here with us, everybody. Our inaugural podcast of 2026. And I am not in love with the Trump accounts. And I think there's accounts that parents are underutilizing already. And to get hopped up on the Trump accounts, is only for those that are already maybe hitting some base hits with some other strategies that you may not be aware of. So, this is going to be a very, what do we call it, energetic exchange of information. I like it.

We're going to be debating here and I will win the debate. That's okay. You guys hang in here.

Fighting words have already started. Just by saying you're in love with something with Trump, you've lost half of our listeners already, which I'm a huge Trump fan.

So that I know I'm arguing the Trump side, Mark's not the non-Trump side on this one. So, you know, it's a little different. But I think, first of all, I'll just say that you got to get over that Trump account thing. If you're like, I don't want to set up a Trump account for my kid, I didn't vote for him. I voted for someone else. Get over that. Okay. This is an awesome opportunity to save and invest for your kids. Now, I will say this. My first review of Trump accounts, I was like, These suck. Why would I do this for my kid? But I learned one thing that made all the difference, and this was in the regs that the IRS just put out. You can convert a Trump account to a Roth IRA. We're going to break down how the hell a Trump account works, how it turns into traditional IRA, how you can convert to a Roth IRA. But that one thing made all the difference for me. So now I'm like, wait a sec, your kid could have a Roth IRA at age 18 that you funded with your contributions. They didn't have to have earned income. And we can maybe even do the Roth conversion if we're doing it strategic, entirely tax-free. Now I'm in. Now I love Trump accounts.

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I like your first point, though, and this is an important one. I'll just say two words on it and we'll move on, is that we cannot let who passed legislation dictate whether or not we use it or get excited about it. I've been a pretty vocal a proponent of ACA, the Affordable Care Act, or what is known as Obamacare. I think if you have to choose between President Obama's legislation or evil insurance companies, I'm going to go with the legislation. So again, we could get into debate of who passed what when it came to healthcare legislation, but I think there's a lot of good things in there that you can take advantage of. So who cares? It was freaking Obama that, you know, pushed that through. Same thing here. Don't worry about Trump being the advocate for this. Look at the legislation objectively and decide what's best for your family. So I like that point first, Matt. Okay, I'll come with some competing questions or thoughts, but lay it out for us. What are the basics of these Trump accounts? Everybody, I want to encourage you, if you're driving or multitasking, at least listen to this portion because you're going to need to know. They're going to be around for a while.

Yep. This is going to be a big deal. This is going to be the new thing. Just like when people talk about traditional IRA or a Roth IRA or a 529, this is going to come end of the lexicon as well. So this was in the one big beautiful bill that passed legislation last year, and the Trump accounts go into effect in 2026. In fact, the first day you can have a Trump account is July 5th, 2026. So this is going to be the first year of it. Now what it is, is it's a savings vehicle for people under the age of 18. So if you have any kids under the age of 18, this is primarily for parents, grandparents, maybe you're an aunt or uncle, or you like the neighbor kid down the street, whatever. Okay, it's about helping kids get a financial head start. Now, the way you do it is you can put in $5,000 per year as a contribution per child into a Trump account. You do not get a tax deduction when you put it in. The kid doesn't get a tax deduction. Okay, this is after-tax dollars, 5 grand going in. The benefit of the Trump account is when it's invested, and we'll talk about how you can invest it here in a second, the options, Sadly, you can't self-direct it, but we'll get to that. The benefit of it is when you invest it, the investment gains and returns are coming back with no tax on it. So this is growing in a tax-advantaged way. You could certainly set up a brokerage account for your kid or whatever, but as that's making money, they're going to have taxable income potentially. So the benefit of this is it's compounding and growing, and there's no taxes on the money.

The thing that opened the door for me a little bit on this was that No matter what the income of the parent is, you can open this account for your child. Typically, the middle-income Americans even get phased out of things like this. So I want to reemphasize that any family of any income level with a child under age 18 could open one of these accounts. Now, I will say what I don't like is that you lack a significant amount of control over this account. You can put it in S&P 500. The big brokerages are going to control these accounts. They're going to have their fees buried in them as they typically do. And so you have to be very cautious of the cost associated with these accounts and what you're invested in. But you are getting the snowball going down the hill. It will gain more snow as it rolls over and over and gets going.

I'd agree with that.

Yeah. My problem is fair. Yeah. But my problem is you cannot pull out the money for college tax-free. And even if you do convert it to a Roth, the kid's going to have to wait until they're 59 and a half to get that money out tax-free and penalty-free, which I'm not opposed to. Americans are terrible at saving.. But when I've got my little Johnny or, you know, Jane at age 5, I'm more worried about rising college and tuition costs that are going to nail us 15 years from now. And so I'd like to put away some money for that. But most parents are not using the Coverdell, which you can self-direct and even buy crypto inside of Coverdell and do 100 other things, or a Roth IRA. That you can put contributions in and then pull out. And yes, Matt will explain the Trump account flexibility with contributions. I believe there's some opportunity there. But I think parents should be using the Coverdell and even the 529 has a Roth conversion feature. So maybe the answer is, and I'm going to say it now, is you need to be as parents using a combination of these accounts. That's the most and best strategy. So don't use a kind of a narrow approach and stay in one lane here. I think there's a lot of options. But Matt, tell us about college and these Trump accounts. What's your take on that?

Yeah, well, I'll just say on the first thing, on the knock on investments, that is a downside to this is you can't self-direct it. You can invest in what you want. You can invest it into Apple. You can't invest it into a crypto. You can invest it into real estate. You can't self-direct it, which is what we do at Directed IRA with all of our clients, like their Roth IRA. And you can do a kid's Roth IRA. You could do a Coverdell for your kid, and you could invest in a real estate deal, in crypto, in a private company. Like, these are all these self-directed assets we do every day at Directed IRA. Um, so we won't be— not— we will not be doing Trump accounts here. So you will have to go to Wall Street, as Mark said, because the investment requirement is that you're going to have a mutual fund or an ETF that is primarily invested in U.S. stocks. Now, these have to have low fees. There's certain legislation on this to keep the fees low on it. And you're going to see the big banks and financial institutions supporting and doing these accounts. So that's definitely a downside. Now for college, on that issue is I would agree, actually, there are probably better accounts for college savings. I don't think of the Trump account as a college savings account. I think of a Trump account as a wealth-building tool for the long term to secure retirement savings for your kids, like give them the head start. So many of us here, like, and I just see this on social media, right, of You know, if you started a Roth IRA when you were age 20 and you didn't put one penny into it, but you put $50,000 into it, you'd have $6 million by the time you're 65. And you're like, well, great, I'm 50. How does this help me? You know, you're like, I got to get a DeLorean and find plutonium and go back to the future. Like, how am I going to— how am I going to actually do that? But you can do this for your kids. And so I think of this as long-term wealth building for your kids, giving them a financial head start. Then now there are ways you can get money out of these early. Let's say you just— so let's, let's, let's fast forward here. Let's say you put some money into this thing. Okay. Let's say your kid was 5 and for 12 years you put $5,000 into this thing, right? So you put $60,000 of contributions. Let's say it invested and grew. Now it's $100,000 in a Trump account and your kid's going to college. Like, I got a Trump account. I want to access those funds. What they look at is they say, great, you can take that money. And in fact, there's a— this is now a traditional IRA, by the way. Once your kid reaches age 18, the traditional IRA rules apply to your Trump account. They now have a traditional IRA in their name. Well, if they want to access that for college, there is an exception to the 10% early withdrawal penalty for college expenses. So they could use that exception to waive the 10% penalty, but it's traditional dollars now. So when they access that money, they have to pay tax on their earnings and growth. This is an important thing. The contributions of $60,000 that you put in, you never took a deduction on those. These are a little different than your regular traditional IRA contributions. So you get that back without having to take it into taxable income because there's a 10% early withdrawal penalty for Education Savings Account. There's also one for purchasing a first-time home. There's a number of these. Exceptions already in the traditional IRA rules that'll waive the penalty up to a certain amount of dollars you take. There's a way you can access this money, but you will have to pay some tax on the earnings and growth you're pulling out. Now you got some tax deferral, but also you're not paying tax on those contributions. And you have to do that pro rata rule where if it was 60% contributions, as we're talking about here, 40% growth, there is some tax just on the 40% growth. So if I take $10,000, I have to pay tax on that $4,000, 40% that was earnings and growth. But again, no early withdrawal penalty because it was for college. This would be the same for a home, but I can still access. I know not as good as a Coverdell or even a 529 that comes out at the time of the tax-free.

Matt, I'm a pretty smart guy in this area of the law, and I know you, and we talk all the— I got lost in everything you just said there for a minute. I mean, this is— I feel like I'm looking at a crystal ball and it just got really foggy. So here's what I would throw out to all of you. Take a breath too, because Matt is so freaking smart and I loved his strategy. He was playing chess. He was thinking 5 moves forward. What are you going to do? And we got to do that. I agree with that. But here's what I think parents need to know. You have to sit back and go, okay, we're talking about kids. So any of you without kids, change the channel maybe, or send this to a friend. So you got kids under age 18. That's point number 1. Yeah. Now let's assume you have a little financial wherewithal. What's most important right now with your Johnny and Jane that are under age 5 or under age 10 or 15 is probably college or post-secondary education, even if it's a trade school. We got it. We got to think about that first. And if you're not rolling in cash, you're going to typically, in my opinion, go with a Coverdell. It's a couple grand. Start there. Now, the point I'm going to make here is you can use all of these strategies and start to stack them. Let me quickly say, if you're financially, again, on a very tight budget, you're a middle-income— if you're a family with kids, middle-income America, everything's tight. I've been there. Matt's been there. We're, we, we're, we've moved a little past that with our kids over age 18 now. And so, and we've had a career to be able to build some additional income. But for many, many million Americans, I would start with the Coverdell. Number 2, if you're a small business owner and you're doing a little better, I would start paying your kids. To help in the business and funding their Roth IRA. Why worry about converting later? You get complete control of that Roth now and you can pull out contributions for college or let it roll. A lot more flexibility. Oh, you're doing even better. You've been having a great year. You're making even more money. Okay. Trump accounts now come into play because you can do a Coverdell, you can do a Roth now. And you can do the Trump account and convert it to Roth later. So now you're tripling down. And if you're making a lot of money and you're a high roller in Vegas, you might triple down at the roulette table, play a little tougher at the craps table. And that's your latitude. God bless you. You're very fortunate. And then fourth, you've got rich parents, aka grandparents, and they want to help little Johnny and Jane as well. 529, I'm up. 'Cause 529 allows them to stack some money in there and it could be even rolled to a sibling or another grandchild if they don't use it. But you're going to have limits to the Coverdell, the Roth, or the Trump. And the 529 is the grandparent strategy. They could really throw down some bank if they want. So I hope that was helpful for some of you too, thinking I've got options and it's based on my income, the age of my children, and what you're trying to accomplish. But the Trump account can play a role. I think it's going to be there for the clients, our clients that have a little more money and they've already done the Coverdell, done the Roth. Now they want to hit the Trump. Yeah.

What do you think? I think if you're just thinking about college, I think the Coverdell The kids' Roth IRA and the 529 are better, but I'm not thinking about just college. Only 39% of kids between age 18 and 24 are in college and going to college.

Okay.

I know there's an assumption that every kid just goes to college. They don't. You're probably going to— if you have a couple of kids, it's most likely one of them is not going to go to college. All right. So, um, now you might be like, my kids are going to college. Okay. All right. And you're like, I want to have a college savings strategy. Okay. We talked about the Coverdell. More control about what you invest, no deduction when you put the money in, no taxes as it grows, and then you can spend it out, no taxes on the way out as it's going into college. And you can self-direct that.

Okay. Now let's, let's debate this point a little. You had a, you made some big points. I made some multiple points. Let's just stay on this college one for a minute though. I like your point. But here, what do we got going on with AI? AI is now making trade schools even more important. I got a multimillion-dollar trade school being built right here in this little town I'm at right now. And because people are realizing I got to go back to trades because AI just took my job. Trade school is considered college education and qualifies for withdrawals for covered Ls and 529s. I think we're under— I think we are as a society not seeing the explosion of trade schools coming down in the next 10 years because this is what people are going to need. AI cannot go fix my HVAC or my toilet or pull electrical through my house. And I think kids are going to be going to trade schools in droves down the road because they need high-paying jobs that are going to be waiting there for them. The 529, the Coverdell can do that. Take that, Matt Swartzwanger.

Yeah, yeah. I will not disagree with that. Okay. But that's the thing. Coverdells, 529s were created for education expenses. Crap, you can even use them for higher ed and private schools now for your kids. And like, that's what they were— have been built for. But the Trump account is not for that. So let's not criticize it because it doesn't do that. That's not what it was created for. Remember, the first version of Trump accounts were these MAGA accounts. That's what the first version of Big Beautiful Bill had. And they were for college, they were for vocational training, they were for starting a small business or buying your first home. They had all these rules in there. And they changed it all and they said, you know what, let's just turn it into a freaking traditional IRA. The policy objective was to give kids a financial head start. If you're a parent, you're like, I want to give my, my kids a financial head start in building and saving for retirement so they have something they're looking forward to when they're 59 and a half. And I wish I had that for myself. That's what this was built for. Yes, there's some ways you can access the money and pay a little tax on the earnings and growth. And there's penalty exceptions for buying a home and an education that are in the traditional IRA rules already. Even if you convert it to Roth, they're in those rules too. So I still like it because I'm not thinking about just for college.

Yeah. And I want to— I get it. That's a great— I love this debate because you and I don't get emotional about it and we keep it very— we keep it on point. And I love that. That's a great— comment is that why piss on it? It wasn't built for that anyway. Now, I will say this too. I think there's something we need to throw out for those out there who are our far majority of our listeners is you're a Main Street business owner. Hence the Main Street Business podcast is our sister podcast. And if you've got a small business, do you know that funding of the Trump account could be tax deductible? And here's how. You're going to be paying your kids in your business, presumably. And that's a strategy we've been teaching for years. You can fund their Roth IRA and they can fund their Trump account personally because they're under age 18 with the money you pay them out of your business. So now you're getting the tax write-off to fund that account and convert it to Roth for that kid later. Or use those 10 other points Matt made earlier, but you're getting a write-off to do it. Is— would you concur with that, Matt?

Like that?

Yeah.

And I go back to this as the stacking strategy of what you're talking about with the Trump account and the covered L and the 529. This is where if you're— if you're a kid's Roth, if you're a business owner and your kids work in the business, real estate investor, they're working on your properties. We want you paying those kids from the business, get them involved in it. You're taking a tax deduction. And they have earned income now, you can just put the money in a kid's Roth. Do that first before you do a Trump account. The problem is not everyone can do that. Not everyone's a business owner, or not everyone's kid is actually working in their business where they can legitimize that. Now, we want you to be. We've both done that with our kids, Mark and I. They've been involved in the business doing legitimate things. We've done kids' Roths. The nice thing about the kids' Roth IRA that beats the Trump account is I can immediately invest it in this. I can self-direct it. I don't just have to buy a Wall Street product. I can invest in real estate. You can do a kid's crypto Roth. We do those all here at Directed IRA. But for the mass market out there, it's not a business owner. The Trump account is going to be the one thing you can do, and it's the second thing you do for you business owners after you do the kids' Roth. Because like I said, I want to throw out one last—

I'll throw out this one last concept and then maybe, Matt, you take us home on this.

I still need to explain the Roth conversion here because I want to hit the Roth conversion strategy on it.

Okay. The one other concept I want to lay out there, too, is for those listening, please realize you owning a rental property is a pseudo small business. You may go, I don't have a small business. And I mean, I've got a good friend that's an executive at Verizon and he's like, yeah, I've always wanted your small business strategies. He owns 3 rentals and it took me years to convince him. I'm like, dude, you've got 3 rental properties. Those are small businesses. Yeah, but I don't get to take the losses or the write-offs. You will. When you go to sell those rentals, any expenses you've had, they snowball in what's called a passive loss carryforward. All of those rental properties, are a small business waiting to be harvested with write-offs. So your kids under age 18 could be helping in a rental property that you have near grandma's house, even though you're a $500K a year executive and who knows what Fortune 5000. The point is you can use that rental property to pay your kids to help with that rental property and use that as a deduction, even if it's a delayed deduction that's going to carry forward till you sell the property. So don't forget that either, folks.

Yeah, let me hit the big difference maker here because I kind of led with that and said you can convert this Trump account to a Roth account when the kid reaches age 18. Okay, here's how you're going to do that, and this is really the secret and the reason I like the Trump account, is at age 18 that Trump account will turn into a traditional IRA automatically. Okay, now traditional IRA rules apply to this account. Well, when the regs— when they came out with these just last month, the Treasury said So IRA rules apply. You can do a Roth conversion to it. So we can do a Roth conversion now to this traditional IRA. When your kid is age 18, finishing up high school, maybe their first year of college or who knows what, they're not making much money. They're under the standard deduction. Let's say 12 years from now, the standard deduction is $20,000, meaning the first $20,000 you make, you pay no tax on it. That means I could convert $20,000 of a Trump account and pay no tax on the conversion. Now I can chunk it over a few years. Let's say your Trump account's worth— has $60,000 in it. I could do $20,000 every 3 years. And at the end of the day, that traditional IRA is now 100% Roth dollars and I paid no tax to convert it over to a Roth. Now my kid is building a Roth IRA and now it's growing and coming out totally tax-free.

Okay, I will take that and raise you by 3. Matt and I were talking about playing poker in Alaska earlier before the show. You know, that's our goal this summer is to play poker in a small cabin in Alaska somewhere. Okay, here's my counter. The 529, if a beneficiary does not use 529 funds, they can convert up to $35,000 of it to Roth IRA money. With no 10% penalty, and they don't have to claim it as income at all. It's just limited to their annual Roth contribution amount after the 529 has been in place for 15 years. Now, again, this does not make it better than the Trump account. It makes it a sister account that can be stacked together. But I just want to say the 529, you can already convert $35,000 of that to Roth. Once it's been around for 15 years for a beneficiary that didn't use it and there's no income, no penalty going straight to a Roth IRA. Yeah. Where's the pen? I need to drop a pen. Yeah.

Did you hear that? I love that too. It's— so I want you to do that also, not instead. Okay.

Do that.

That's true. Do that also. Okay. One last point on this, and Mark's going to laugh and probably fall asleep here and tell me how, you know, that was confusing and not even he understood it, but This is important.

Okay.

Okay. Okay.

When I will focus.

Okay. All right. Everyone, if I lose you on this, it's okay. We got lawyers at KQS Lawyers, our firm, that can help explain this to you. We can. I got an article coming out on this. All right. This, this is a little—

Matt has more faith in you, the listener, than me.

So this is an advanced point is what I'm saying. But it matters. And I know there's some CPA listening. Or some advisor, tax attorney, or someone being there, or some of you smart people out there. I know some of you clients, you're like, hmm, but Matt, this is the question you're probably thinking. Let's take that example I gave earlier. You put, you know, 5, 12 years of contributions, $5,000 each. You put $60,000 in the Trump account. It's invested and it's grown to $100,000. So $40,000 is investment growth, but the $60,000 I put in Whereas contributions, I took no tax deduction on. Do I pay tax on the Roth conversion when I'm converting that $60,000? The short answer is no. The Roth conversion, you only pay tax on the earnings and growth. Now, that's pretty freaking awesome.

Okay, that wasn't that advanced.

I caught that. Okay, let me layer on the next piece of this because this is the next.

All right.

So I was baby stepping. All right. Baby stepping.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Um, what was the doctor?

Doctor—

oh, What About Bob? Bill Murray. Oh, What About Bob? Leo Marvin. Dr. Leo.

Yeah, Dr. Leo. Man, that's good.

I'm baby stepping.

All right, baby step.

Okay, point number 2 on this. You might be thinking, and this is probably what you're thinking, is, well, Matt, I'll just convert that $60,000 then to the Roth, and I'll leave that other $40K in the traditional, and I'll just leave it there. The IRS doesn't let you do that. They make you prorate it. So if you want to convert $10,000, they're going to say $6,000 of that needs to be the, the money you put in, which you won't pay tax on, but the other $4,000 must be the conversion. Or sorry, better than I thought they do.

I thought they say any conversions is earnings first. Yeah.

So, so you do it pro rata. So you will pay tax on the growth and investment part that's grown, but the money you put in, which you never took a tax deduction on, You actually don't pay tax on converting that over. So there it is. That's the strategy. Now you've got a Roth IRA. And I'll just say this because I ran the numbers. If you had a kid at age 20, then you got $100,000 in their Trump account, you've converted that to Roth. They invest it for the next 45 years, getting a 10% return. You can get that in the S&P 500. You can do even better if you're self-directing there. They will have an $8.8 million Roth IRA.

At age 60. Okay, well, so start over. Okay. I do how many years with my kid under age 18 of $5,000 a year?

Well, let's say you— let's say you did $5,000 a year for 12 years. Okay. So you got $60,000 of contributions and let's say it grew the $40,000. So now it's $100,000 total. Okay. You did the conversions. Now the kid's 20. Now we're looking at— we're looking 45 years till the kid's 65. They can access at 59 and a half, but I just went to 65. That's the most common retirement age, right?

Leave it alone. They just leave it alone. Put it in S&P.

They just invest it. They don't put any contributions in after that. After that, it's just $100,000 growing because of compounding. And this is assuming a 10% annual rate of return. That account will be $8.8 million.

That's amazing.

Did I get you now? Yeah.

$8,800,000. Okay, that's good. I thought it was going to be $8,700,000, but $8,800,000 blows my mind.

So I mean, now that extra $100,000 did all the difference.

Wow. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, let's— if we started to stack, I was going to run to the whiteboard for those that are watching this on YouTube and start looking at what the Coverdell could be, the $529,000. The Roth during the same time period, then the conversion with the Trump. And this is where I hate to say it, when you make money and you have more money, it's easier to make more money. And that's just— it's the nature of the beast and it's the game. And I want to— I'm going to say this is my final point. You're listening to this because you've already caught the vision of the power of investing and self-directing, hopefully small business as well. And you're able to get over to our sister podcast, the Main Street Business Podcast. We value that American dream, that journey, and know that it's possible for anyone. And so let's go in with some energy here that it doesn't need to be overwhelming or frustrating. I don't have enough money to fund these accounts, guys. There's always a way if you continue to apply yourself and listen and learn and get education. We're grateful you're here. We're going to help you on that journey. And everybody is in a different situation. We are definitely sensitive to that. And we wish you the best in your American dream. Yeah.

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And thank you everyone for listening. A quick disclaimer and reminder: this presentation does not constitute an attorney or CPA client relationship, and it is always in your best interest to consult competent legal and tax professionals when conducting your own personal transactions.

We also want to make sure you know this is not investment advice or financial advice. We're just trying to give you education, ideas, and strategies you can take to your professionals or conduct your own research on. We'll see you next time.