- The Treasury Department will automatically enroll more than 60 million children in Trump Accounts starting on or about October 1 — parents no longer have to sign up.
- The accounts are child investment accounts created under last year's tax law; money is invested in low-cost index funds of mostly U.S. stocks and locked until age 18.
- Catch: auto-enrollment does NOT trigger the $1,000 government deposit for kids born 2025–2028 — parents must specifically elect it and claim the account.
- Only 7 million of 73 million eligible children had signed up; just 10,000 came from no-income households, which is why Treasury is switching to auto-enrollment.
- Auto-enrolled accounts can receive only government and nonprofit money until a parent claims the account and verifies their identity.
Your kid might get an investment account this week — and you won't have to lift a finger. The Treasury Department issued new rules Tuesday scrapping the sign-up requirement for Trump Accounts, the government's new child investment program. Instead of asking parents to opt in, Treasury will simply create accounts for every eligible child automatically — more than 60 million of them, starting on or about October 1.
It's one of the biggest enrollment pushes Washington has ever attempted, with a twist every parent needs to understand: the account gets created for you, but the headline $1,000 government deposit does not come with it.
Why Treasury is doing it this way
Trump Accounts launched with fanfare in early July under the One Big Beautiful Bill, sold as a way for children to start building wealth long before they'd normally qualify for tax-advantaged savings. The program's website declares that "the American Dream starts now."
By the end of July, Treasury had processed 5.6 million enrollment forms. Secretary Scott Bessent says about seven million children are signed up. Against roughly 73 million eligible kids, that's less than one in ten — and only about 10,000 of those accounts came from households reporting no income, a group that includes 8.6 million eligible children.
The families who could use a savings head start most were the ones least likely to know the program existed. That's the real reason for the switch: big donors — including Michael Dell, who has pledged $6.25 billion — want their money reaching every child, not just those whose parents found the forms. Washington University professor Jin Huang called it "the most important design change since the law passed": defaults are the single most powerful lever in savings policy, the same logic behind auto-enrolling workers in 401(k)s.
The $1,000 catch nobody should miss
Here's the part the headlines will bury. Auto-enrollment creates the account — but under last year's tax law, the $1,000 federal contribution for children born between 2025 and 2028 must be specifically elected by the taxpayer. Tuesday's rules don't change that, and the Treasury secretary legally can't make that election for you.
So if your child was born in 2026, the government will open an account for them — and the $1,000 stays on the table until a parent claims it.
There's a second layer. Automatically created accounts can receive only the $1,000 deposit and contributions from governments and nonprofits. To add your own money — up to $5,000 a year, including up to $2,500 from an employer — you must first claim the account through a Treasury app or website and verify your identity and legal authority over the child's finances. The Wall Street Journal notes the rules don't fully spell out how that claiming process will work yet. In short: the government will put the account on the table, but you still have to walk over and pick up the good stuff.
How the accounts actually work
The mechanics are straightforward: money inside goes into low-cost index funds of mostly U.S. stocks, families generally can't touch it before the year the child turns 18, and after that it functions as a traditional individual retirement account.
The design is deliberately boring — broad index exposure, a long time horizon, no trading — because a dollar compounding for eighteen years in the stock market has a way of turning small seed money into something real.
Treasury will also keep enrolling eligible children periodically after the initial wave — roughly two million a year as new babies arrive — and the Social Security Administration will enroll newborns at birth registration in hospitals. Bessent has said the total number of accounts could reach 70 million soon.
What parents should actually do
Auto-enrollment fixes the awareness gap for creating accounts. It doesn't fix the engagement gap: millions of children will soon own stock-market accounts they've never heard of, funded by money their parents may not know how to claim. As Madeline Brown of the Urban Institute put it, there's still real work to do in building awareness so families actually use the accounts to their full advantage.
The government's bet is that an account in hand is worth more than a form in the mail. If you're a parent, the move is simple: don't assume the money arrives on its own. Watch for Treasury's claiming process, make the $1,000 election if your child qualifies, and treat the auto-enrolled account as a starting line — not a finish line.