The Greedy Mofos Podcast

The $1,000 Baby: What's Really Behind "Trump Accounts"

Danko Studios Season 2 Episode 2

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0:00 | 20:27

The so-called "Trump Accounts" provide eligible newborn American children, courtesy of President Donald J. Trump,  where the government drops $1,000 into a savings account. Sweet deal, or a taxpayer-funded branding exercise with a Wall Street pipeline attached? Let's follow the money.

What's actually in the fine print: it's a kids' IRA for babies born 2025–2028, capped at $5,000/year in contributions, locked till 18, invested in index funds. The catch nobody's shouting loud enough about is that it's the wealthier families who can max the $5,000 that will benefit the most. The money's taxed as ordinary income  and it could hurt you financially later. 

Factual-based, done the research, this is my opinion. You decide if you're going to be TRUMPBOOZLED!!! or if this is another of his greedy mofos ploy. What's in it for him? 

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The government just offered to put a thousand dollars in your kid's name in a bank account. Or an account. A Trump account per se. Free. No catch, they say. Just sign up if you were born between January 1st, 2025, to December 31st, 2028, you can get a thousand dollars. Or your kid can. So naturally I got suspicious. Because in my experience, when somebody's this excited to hand you free money, the real question isn't what do I get? It's what do they get. And they in this case, of course, mean Donald Trump, my president. Because he's calling it the Trump account. Welcome back to Greedy Little Food. Let's talk about the Trump account and where they are about to get the Trump boozoo.

SPEAKER_01

They told the champagne water paychecks. I stole the deal from a widow's tickets. They catch them figures. They've done it for years. Greedy mofos.

SPEAKER_00

Season two is here. If you're new, this is the show where we talk money, we tell the truth, and we keep it greedy. Greedy meaning smart about your own self-interest because nobody else is looking up for it. And greedy, pointing out the greedy mofos that are just all in it for themselves. It's no fluff, no financial advice, disclaimers as a personality, just the real truth that I dig deep and find by researching, studying, analyzing, and reading the fine print and what's hidden beneath the curtain. So let's get into it. I'm Aston, your host, and this is Greedy Mofo. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about the Trump accounts and what they're actually offering. They were launched on July 4th of this year. Um supposedly, and I read the bill, so they were created created under the big tax and spending bill that Trump is putting out there. And the entire pitch that they want us to believe is that it's a new tax advantage investment account for kids under 18. So if you were a child, like I said earlier, born between 2025 and 2028, the government's gonna drop $1,000 of seed money into a investment account for you, and they have an app for it, and you can apparently add up to $5,000 a year. So of course we know no kid that's one or two years old has $5,000 a year. So where does the money come from? Well, hopefully your parents, if they think like this is a true investment account, maybe they'll put in $5,000 a year, and the money is supposed to sit there until the kid turns 18. Now, here's the catch. Where is this money gonna get invested that's in these accounts? Is it going to go into a treasury bond? Is it going to go into a commodity? Is it going to go into a ETF or just regular stocks? Okay. Well, whatever money's in the account is supposedly going to be invested in the US stock index funds. Now, how many parents know what that is? If you don't have a median income of maybe $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Maybe you do. Okay. So supposedly if they put this money into a stock index fund, even if you don't put in any more money, if you don't put in $5,000 a year, let's say you just put in a hundred dollars a month for a year. That's twelve hundred dollars a year. Okay. Um the math will tell you that, well, yeah, by the time they're 18, that should increase. Okay. But what will inflation be in 18 years? You know? Will the Trump accounts even exist in ten or eighteen years? Who knows what's gonna happen to our government once Trump leaves office? So, on paper, it sounds amazing. Free a thousand dollars, compound growth, supposedly, a nest egg from birth, possibly, and the treasury's calling it the biggest thing for young people since the GI Bill. Really? So what's the trap? What are they not telling us? What are they not putting out there that everybody should know instead of blindly forging ahead, signing their kid up that's been born since January 1st, 2025, and thinking that, oh my, my kid has a thousand dollars. What now? So from what I gather, there might be four traps, maybe even more, maybe something I've missed. Trap number one. It's taxed like income, it's not a gift. So, like if the parent needs money and decide to take it out, well the kid can't take it out, it's two years old, or five years old, or ten, or twelve, or fifteen, it's taxed like ordinary income. So if you compare that to a Roth, where qualified withdrawals are tax-free, the money that you're putting in, and any other money that's being contributed into your kid's account, when you decide to take it out, Uncle Sam gets his cut on the way out. They don't sell you that up front. Trap number two. It's locked up. So your kid gets a thousand dollars. Maybe some philanthropist puts in five thousand dollars. That's the most they can put in in one year. It would be nice if somebody came along, like an uncle or an aunt or a grandmother, and said, you know what? I'm gonna give my kid twenty thousand dollars. Well, they can't, because they capped it at five thousand. So even if you just put in the thousand and don't put in anything else, the money is frozen until the kid turns eighteen. If there's an emergency, too bad. It's not your money to take out. Trap number three. So they want you to think that oh, we're gonna put this money in, we're gonna start you off with a thousand dollars. And this is way better than any other method out there for making your money grow and building a wealthy lifestyle and having your child have some money saved in the bank. There are way better tools out there that they're not telling you about where you can put a thousand dollars and make it grow faster, not have a limit as to how much you can put in in a year. So, let's say you want the thousand dollars because you want your kid to go to college. Well, a 529 has bigger tax breaks. Let's say that the kid gets a job when he turns 16, 17, 15 even, or has a side hustle in making his own money, like a lot of kids are doing these days. Maybe he's an influencer and has all this money. Do you think a Trump account is really somewhere they want to put their money because they can't touch it until they're 18? A custodial Roth IRA grows tax free. Even if you just go online and just get a plain brokerage account and put some money in there, and get a high-yield savings account and put some money in there, that probably will still be better than a Trump account after taxes. So this is the bipartisan policy center's analysis, not just me. This is where I get and dug this information from. So trap number four, who actually wins? Well, according to the Urban Institute, they flagged it as saying that the families who will benefit the most are the ones that can already afford to throw in five thousand dollars a year. So if you're a parent, you sign your kid up, there's a thousand dollars sitting in the account that you can't touch, that the kid can't touch until he's eighteen, but yet you work a minimum wage job and you can't put anything extra into the account every year. But there's parents who open their accounts and they're constantly throwing in five thousand dollars a year. Well, by the time the kid's ten, that's fifty thousand dollars. By the time the kid's eighteen, add it up. So if you're not putting in five thousand dollars a year, well then you only have a thousand dollars still in the account by the time they turn five, ten, fifteen, depending on what the account invested in, and whether it gained a profit. So this is a program that they're trying to sell you as lifting up the next generation, and instead it will quietly widen the gap between the kids who parents have money and the kids who parents don't have money. So is this a scam? Is this another Trump boozled tactic? Is this something Trump just came up with so that he can make the American people think that he's a family man and he's doing it for everybody and everybody's going to benefit? So, in the real sense, it's not really a fraud, but it's fraudulent in a sense, because they're not explaining how it works. They don't want you to read the fine print, they don't want you to compare what you as parents are making compared to the other parents who can put in five thousand dollars a year, and they're trying to sell it as if this is some amazing deal that only Trump can come up with, and oh, it's gonna save society, and all of our kids are gonna have generational wealth. Bullshit, that's not even close. This is why I do greedy mofos. I want to keep it honest. The greedy move isn't no, and I'm not saying don't put a thousand dollars, take the thousand dollars. If your kid can get a thousand dollars, grab it, but don't expect much of it in ten, fifteen, or eighteen years. That's all I'm saying. If you can put in five thousand dollars a year, or you have a rich aunt, well, they only have to be rich, just have to have some money, or a grandparent and they're like, oh, this year I'm gonna put in five thousand, and maybe an uncle, oh I'm gonna put in five thousand, then maybe uh a grandfather, oh I'm gonna put in five thousand, mom and dad, big brother, big sister. Well, yeah, of course that money's gonna grow because people are putting in five thousand dollars. But if you expect one thousand dollars to turn into a million dollars by the time they're eighteen, then you're delusional. You've been Trump boozled. So here's the real talk. If your kid qualifies for the thousand dollars, and yes, they have a qualification process. I did not try to see what it was. I was not gonna waste my time on this Trump account, and you can go get the app if you got a kid, try it and see. And if you weren't going to invest any money at all anywhere else, like if you don't have your own brokerage account, if you don't have Robin Hood, if you're Charles Schwab, eTrade, Coinbase for crypto, bitcoin, if you don't have any of that, then take the free grand. You know, most kids' savings account doesn't get you a thousand bucks for just signing up. Free money is free money. But the greedy move is grab the seed, but don't pour your five thousand dollars a year in there when you can invest that five thousand dollars somewhere else, and it gives you a better return on your investment. Take the gift, don't touch it, let it sit there, skip the trap. Find the tools and use what you can use to invest any amount of money that you want to invest outside of the free $1,000. And don't let this grand bill that's going to create generational wealth for children everywhere have you trump boozled into falling for it. Just don't. Okay? So do I think it's a scam? Sort of. Because I don't trust Trump. I do not trust Trump. I do not like his business practices, I do not believe a word that comes out of his mouth. If his lips are moving, he's lying. But there's a lot of people who believe this man. So here's the actual scam you should be scared of. And the Treasury Department itself put out a warning. If you get a call or a text about a Trump account, because they don't do that, it's probably a scammer. Any real communication about anything from the government either comes by email only from an email address that has dot gov attached to it. Period. So with technology and everything that's going on, do not, I repeat, do not reply to a text message or an email without the government email address or phone calls, people talking about the Trump account, because there are scammers already circling. They have fake activate your child's account text, fake links, fake urgency, and they want to prey on parents who want to do right by their kid and get them the thousand dollars. So if anybody calls or texts you about setting one up, just hang up, delete it. Okay? Go straight to the real site online. Because scammers will have you Trump boozled, and yes, Trump will also have you Trump boozled. So the bottom line is if I want to point out the greedy mofos, then the greedy takeaways. If your kid can qualify, take the free thousand dollars, so you'd be a fool not to. But please don't get seduced into treating this account like it's the golden ticket. It's taxed on the way out, it's locked up for years, and there are better places for you to actually invest your money, and you can control it, not the government. Take the gift, skip the hype. And whatever you do, don't let anybody calling you on your phones set it up for you. That's how greedy mofos get you. And you don't want to be a greedy mofo and fall for it. So that's my take on the Trump accounts. I hope this saved you from a bad move or even a scammer or getting Trump boozled and from doing something greedy thinking that you're gonna have it made and become a millionaire if you get your kid signed up for this account. Don't fall for it. Okay? So I just want you to know that I'm keeping my eye on things. Every time something happens, if there's a greedy mofo out there trying to take your money, trying to make themselves richer off of your back, I'm gonna point it out. I'm here to give you some truth about these greedy mofos and what's going on. And if you follow greedy mofos on Facebook and Instagram, and we just started our YouTube channel, you'll see who I pointed out as the greedy mofo of the day is. Ah, Phoebe Gates, look it up. I was just flabbergasted, it was such a conundrum, but I had to point it out, she's our greedy mofo of the day. So here's Aston with another episode of Greedy Mofos pointing out that you're not gonna be a greedy mofo, you're gonna be a smart, investment-wise mofo. But all these other gritty mofos, we're gonna call them out, point them out, make sure you know. Because we don't want you to be Trump boozled or stung or be trust. Place your trust in those gritty mofos. So signing off for now, and next time, we're going to fact check and let you know another gritty mofo and the things that they've done.