Transcription
In the last 16 months, President Trump has imposed 12 major changes to your retirement accounts and the biggest changes to retirement in the United States since 1978, when the 401k was first passed. That sounds like a good thing, but most Americans can't name a single change.
Well, on April 30th, 2026, President Trump signed a new executive order which tied all of these changes together, and most people are not paying attention. Now, I know your time is valuable, so I'm not going to waste your time. In this video, I'm going to do two things. Number one, I'm going to go over the 12 major changes that President Trump has made, and then number two, I'm going to go over how all of this applies to you specifically now in 2026. That way, you can find the biggest opportunity to grow your wealth with all of these changes because, yes, this is going to have a change not just to people's retirements, but into the way that our economy works, and that could impact your dollar and wealth in general. So, make sure you stick with me until the end of this video.
So, let me go over the 12 changes to your retirement, starting with number one, the Trump IRA. Because on April 30th, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order creating something called a Trump IRA. Now, to be clear, this Trump IRA hasn't gone into effect yet, but it will go live on January 1, 2027. The idea behind the Trump IRA is it is there to solve three major problems that are there with the 401k. Problem number one is that many people do not have access to a 401k. If your company does not offer a 401k, you can't invest in a 401k. Problem number two is your 401k might have high fees. The average 401k account in the United States today has a 1.26% fee if you have under a million dollars in assets, which might not sound like a lot, but that's going to eat up a huge percentage of your total retirement net worth. And problem number three is if you were to leave your job, well, leaving with your 401k and getting it at a new company could pose some problems.
With this Trump IRA, it's a little bit different. With the Trump IRA now, you have the ability to open up a Trump IRA regardless of your income, regardless of where you work. If you're working in the United States, everybody qualifies for Trump IRA. Low-income, middle-income, high-income people qualify for it. Number two is the fees on the Trump IRA are capped at 0.15% as a way to make sure that you're paying low fees on your Trump IRA investment accounts. And then number three, because it's tied to the United States government, not your employer, it doesn't matter if you change a company, you still have access to your Trump IRA.
The other thing that I want you to know is that if you are on the lower-income or middle-income side of things, you also get to qualify for a free match with the Trump IRA. Now, it's not going to be coming from your boss, it's going to be coming from the United States government, which means, yes, you can get up to $1,000 a year for free into your retirement account with the Trump IRA, paid for by the United States government. Now, you might say, "Well, Jaspreet, doesn't the government not have any money? Aren't we in deep debt?" Yes, but I'll talk more about that a little bit later in this video. However, the advantage with the Trump IRA is, yes, you can qualify for some free money into your retirement accounts from the United States government if you meet the income requirements.
Number two are changes in the federal savers match. So, technically, this went into effect in 2022, but it changed drastically in 2026. And what it said is that if you make under $35,000 a year as a single tax filer or $71,000 a year married filing jointly, the United States government will give you up to $1,000 a person, so $2,000 for a married couple, into your retirement accounts if you meet the income requirements. The problem was it was difficult to qualify for this depending on where you worked and your 401ks and other things like that, but now, with the Trump IRA, the idea is it'll be much easier for you to qualify for this free money from the United States government if you just open up a Trump IRA. That way, you can qualify for this free money from the United States government. Yes, I'm going to talk about the cost of free money from the government at the end of this video. So again, make sure you stick with me until the end.
But this brings me to number three, the auto enrollment mandate. What it says is that if your 401k was created after December 29th, 2022, your employer must auto-enroll you into your 401k with a minimum of 3 to 10% contribution into your 401k. You can always opt out, but the idea was before the default was you were not enrolled into your 401k, so people just didn't invest into it. Now, people are by default being auto-enrolled into their 401k's. That way, by default, money is being invested into your retirement accounts.
Number four is the universal savings account. This has not been passed yet, but it's in discussion with Congress. By the way, I do want to let you know that this is why I created a free investing masterclass because if you are an investor or want to become an investor, it is very important to understand how do you find investment opportunities and build an investing strategy for you. In this masterclass, I'll walk you through my investing strategy that I use and my firm uses to find investment opportunities before they hit the headlines. It's a completely free masterclass, and when you sign up for it, you're also going to get access to market briefs, which is my newsletter for investors. It's read by hundreds of thousands of investors every single morning that breaks down what's happening in the economy. So if you want to get the investing masterclass and market briefs all for free, all you have to do is sign up, and I have the link for you down in the description below.
The idea behind the universal savings account is instead of managing different types of investment accounts and savings accounts and health accounts and emergency savings accounts, you can manage it all out of one universal account. This would be a combination of your IRA account. It would be a combination of your HSA, your health savings account. It would be a combination of your 529 account, and it would be a combination of your emergency savings account. That way, people don't have to worry about managing money at multiple different places. They can manage it all in one place, and hopefully lose less money because of that.
Number five are your investment options in the 401k. So, President Trump signed an executive order on this in 2025. The rollout is still in progress. We'll see what happens in 2026 and in 2027. That's when we're expected to see the actual rollout of what is supposed to happen. But, the idea with this proposal is you're going to have more options on what you can invest in in your 401k accounts. So, instead of just investing in a few mutual funds, you might also have the ability to invest in things like cryptocurrency. You might be able to invest in things like real estate. You might be able to invest in things like private equity or private credit. You might also be able to invest in commodities like gold and oil and silver and agriculture. And maybe you can invest this money by lending it back to the United States government for more infrastructure projects. Again, not approved yet. We don't know exactly what the specifications are going to look like. But, this is what President Trump has approved and we will find out soonish on what's actually going to happen with your 401k.
Number six is when President Trump signed the strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The idea behind this now is that the United States government is going to hold on to some Bitcoin. Why does this matter for your retirement? Because it shows that the United States government is starting to legitimize this idea of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. As we start to hear about these discussions about changes in your 401k, one of the biggest pushbacks against cryptocurrency is it's not a legitimate investment. Well, if the United States government starts to legitimize it with things like a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, it can make it easier for you to consider it as a retirement option in things like your 401k or other retirement vehicles. Again, to be determined, but you can start to see the way that our economy is moving, especially under the Trump administration.
Number seven is a tax change. If you are a higher income earner, meaning you make over $150,000 a year in wages, and you wanted to contribute your money into an IRA, after the age of 50, you could to qualify for something called a catch-up, meaning you can invest more money into your IRA outside of what are of limits. Well, here's the problem. You no longer have the ability to invest that catch-up money into a traditional IRA. It must go into a Roth IRA. And there are some employers out there that only offer traditional IRAs, not Roth IRAs. So, if you were contributing this catch-up money into a traditional IRA, you can no longer do that if you are a high-income earner. It must go into a Roth IRA, and you should confirm if your company has a Roth IRA option.
Then, change number eight is the super catch-up rule that was recently passed. And what this says is that if you are the ages of 60, 61, 62, 63, you have the ability to do what's called a super catch-up, which is additional contributions into your 401k. So, your 401k in 2026 has a limit of $24,500 that you can contribute into your 401k. If you're over the age of 50, you can contribute an additional $8,000 a year into your 401k. But now, with this super catch-up rule, if you're between the ages of 60 and 63, you get not the $8,000 catch-up, you get a super catch-up amount of $11,250 that you can contribute into your 401k that we have more ability to kind of catch up and build your wealth before retirement.
Number nine, through President Trump's new tax proposal, is a new senior deduction. If you're over the age of 65, you now qualify for an additional $6,000 tax deduction just for being over the age of 65. You don't have to do anything else to qualify for it. You're just qualified for an additional $6,000 tax deduction. So, make sure you actually take advantage of it.
Number 10, are changes to the back door Roth IRA. And what this rule said before is that if you were a higher income earner, meaning you make over $165,000 a year as a single tax filer or $246,000 a year married filing jointly, you can't qualify for a Roth IRA. Instead, there was this thing called a back door IRA, which meant you could contribute money to a traditional IRA, which is just a different tax plan, and then immediately after you put it into a traditional IRA, you can convert it to a Roth IRA. So, it was just one additional step to create a Roth IRA. Well, under the Biden administration, there were discussions to cancel this backdoor IRA, and it looks like under the Trump plan, those proposals were canceled, so this backdoor IRA still exists. Why do you have to use a backdoor IRA if it gets you to the exact same point instead of just allowing people to invest into a Roth IRA? I don't know. I'm not a politician. I'm here just to help you be better with money.
Number 11 is a Roth IRA rollover from a college 529 savings plan. The problem with the 529 savings plan that people had was what happens if you invest too much money into your kids 529 college savings plan? They are not going to be able to use the money, and the money just goes to waste. Well, now under this new plan, which just went into effect in the recent years, what this says is if you over contribute to your kids 529 college savings plan, the unused money up to $35,000 can be rolled over into a Roth IRA, so that money doesn't just go to waste. The key is that your 529 plan has to have been opened for at least 15 years.
And last but not least, as of around 2024, if you are offered a 401k, and instead of investing money into your 401k, you pay off your student loans, your employer can now match your contribution to pay off your student loan, even if you're not contributing to your 401k. This is a way for people to pay off their student loans even faster. That way, you don't miss out on the match that your employer might be paying for you to invest your money into your 401k.
Now that you understand some of the biggest changes made to American retirement in the last couple of years, there's a couple of common denominators here. Number one is that all of these, or most of these, are enticing people to put more money into the stock market. The second thing is there's a lot of money that's going into the stock market that doesn't even exist. For example, the Trump IRA, the federal savings match, include the federal government investing money into your retirement accounts, which is going into the stock market. Well, the United States government doesn't have any money because we are about $39 trillion in debt. So, how is the government going to pay that? Well, either we're going to borrow more money or more money has to be printed. What does that mean? Well, in short, this is a way to keep markets boosted because the price of any asset, whether it's a stock, whether it's a house, whether it's gold, whether it's this marker, depends on supply and demand. When you have more buyers than sellers, the price of this asset goes up. If there are more sellers than buyers, the price of that asset goes down. Well, if there are more people investing their money into the stock market because more people have access to a Trump IRA, because the government is funding people's retirement accounts, because more people are investing their money into their 401k, because more money is going into these investment options, well, that means more money is going to be going into the stock market.
Number one, that's great for the money managers because that means they get more fees every single year, which could be an investment opportunity if you're investing into those money managers that are going to make more money, but that also means you have to understand from the point of an investor, this has the ability to make investors wealthier because if more money is going into the stock market, the investors that own those stocks now become wealthier as more money goes in. Again, this is why I keep saying your financial education is so important because in our economic system, it is designed to benefit the investors, not the employees. If we take a look at the last five years or the last five decades, we've seen inflation hurt the value of people's wages. It's also hurt the value of people's savings. But, the people that became wealthier in the last five years and the last 50 years have been the investors. They got a windfall because their investment values grew way faster than inflation, and they grew way faster than wages. So, which side do you want to be on? The saver who's losing value to inflation, or the investor that's building wealth because of inflation?
Now, this doesn't mean that investment values only go up. Investments go up and down. We see recessions, we see market crashes, they are a part of our economic system, but over the long run, investments are the way that you become wealthy. And now, through these huge changes in our retirement, again, some of the biggest changes we've seen in about 50 years, this is going to push more money into the stock market. In 1978, when the 401k was passed, what did that do? That all of a sudden made it much more accessible for the average person to put their money into the stock market, but not just that, it tied your money to the stock market because you can't just leave your 401k, it's tied up until you retire. Well, when your IRA and your 401k is tying up your money in the stock market, that means more buyers, more dollars in the stock market, more money for the money managers. That was a way to prop up the stock market. Well, now, we have a bunch of major changes, which is not just making it more accessible for people to put their money in the stock market, but it also has the United States government putting more money into the stock market with money that it doesn't have. What does that do? It continues to inflate the markets over the long run. Again, it doesn't mean we're not going to see market crashes, in fact, it probably means we're going to see more volatile market crashes because more money has to be printed, more volatile ups and downs, but over the long run, it's going to make the investors wealthier.
This is why, again, I have my investing masterclass for you down in the description. This is why it is so important for you to become financially educated and learn how the economic system works because while everybody is just trying to feed into the same system, the person that's really becoming wealthy is the person that's financially educated and can understand where money is moving, and can then invest their money because of that.
One of the things that I've learned in life is that often times the things you don't pay attention to end up mattering the most. And that's why I want to talk to you about life insurance with our sponsor Policy Genius. Because if you don't have the assets to live off of yet, and something tragically happened to you, the last thing you want is now your spouse and your family trying to struggle to survive financially, and that's where term life insurance can come into play. Now, I'm talking about term life insurance here, not whole life insurance. The whole idea with term life insurance is it's life insurance for a period of time, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. That way you can work to build your assets. It is a lot cheaper than whole life insurance because the whole idea is you're not here trying to get rich off your life insurance. It's just there as a bridge until you can build your assets. This is one of those things where the earlier you start, the cheaper it is. Because if you're a healthy 30-year-old guy, you could potentially get a half a million-dollar term life insurance policy for less than a dollar a day. So, if you have any questions, you want to learn more about term life insurance, or you want to see how much a term life insurance policy would actually cost you, I'll put a link to Policy Genius's form down in the description. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and it'll give you an actual quote on how much term life insurance will actually cost you, and I have that link for you down in the description.
So, what we talked about in this video is that in 1978, that was the last major reform to American retirement through the 401k. Well, over the last few years, we have seen major reforms times 12. And so, we talked about these 12 major reforms with the new Trump IRA, which is going to go live in 2027, along with the United States government investing money into your retirement through things like the federal savings match, through things like auto enrollment to 401k, through things like a potential, again, not passed yet, universal savings account, through things like changing where you can invest your money in your 401k, through things like the strategic Bitcoin reserve to legitimize Bitcoin as a new investment option, through things like the changes with the Roth catch-up, which is if you are a high-income earner and you're investing this catch-up money into your IRA, now it must be a traditional IRA, not a Roth IRA. Through things like the super catch-up that if you're over the age of 60, you can contribute more money into your 401k. Through things like the senior deduction, which is a new deduction that you can qualify for if you meet the age requirements. Through things like the backdoor IRA, which continue to exist, which did not get canceled. Through things like the Roth IRA rollover, which lets you invest in your kids college fund and if that money doesn't get used, it gets rolled over into a Roth IRA that your kid can use. And through things like the student loan 401k match, which let people pay off their student loans and get the match from their employer to pay off their debts even faster.
What does all this mean? More money being tied up in the stock market to help keep the stock market inflated. Something you want to pay attention to as an investor because it's not just money going into the stock market, it's money being created and going into the stock market. And that's the thing that you really want to understand as an investor because anytime money gets created, more inflation happens and the person that becomes richer is the investor. If you got value out of this video, the best thank you is a referral. So if you could please share this video with a friend, family member, colleague or fellow investor, that way we can continue to spread this type of financial education. Thank you.
One year ago, President Trump signed the biggest tax cut bill in the history of America and now your taxes are going to change in 2026. Take a listen. We have officially made the Trump tax cuts permanent. That's the largest tax cut in the history of our country added to substantial.