A future where money isn’t an obstacle
Emily grew up with a single mother who worked hard to ensure she could reach her goal of attending college. As a result, Emily was raised to understand that to achieve what she wanted, she would need to work hard, save, and figure things out on her own. After becoming a mother herself, she decided to make every financial decision with a single question in mind: Will this help my daughter build the life she wants?
For Emily, that future meant having access to financial resources that do not limit what is possible. Between working as a project manager in Idaho and commuting on her bike every day to drop her daughter off at daycare, her mind stays focused on creating a different starting point for her one-year-old daughter than the one she had. And it gives her greater freedom to choose her own path.
Looking beyond the skepticism
This mindset shaped her approach to the new 530A tax advantage account. When she first learned about it while filing her taxes through H&R Block, a service she had trusted for years, she did not fully understand it, but seeing that it was offered through a tax platform she was familiar with, she felt it gave her enough confidence to enroll.
After enrolling, Emily received emails encouraging her to contribute her own money to the account, but she remained cautious due to uncertainty about how the 530A accounts would work over the long term. This reluctance to fully trust the account is a feeling echoed among SaverLife parents. Only 12% have signed up for 530A accounts, compared with 20% who have a savings account, such as a 529 college savings plan. However, rather than viewing the Trump account as a replacement for other saving strategies she has in place, Emily saw it as part of a larger plan for her daughter’s future. If her daughter is eligible for these accounts, Emily wants her to benefit from them, yet she also plans to continue saving through more familiar accounts, alongside the support already being provided by her daughter’s grandfather.
For Emily, the goal and vision she has for her daughter’s future is personal. It goes beyond a particular tax-advantaged account; it’s about creating more choices than she had growing up. She hopes that when her daughter becomes an adult, money won’t be the obstacle that limits her possibilities. Thinking of the life she wants to create for her daughter, she remembers working from a young age and navigating higher education on her own with limited financial support. The experiences she grew up with shaped how she thinks about saving for the next generation.
Seeing the bigger picture
Despite the added benefits she sees in the 530A account for her daughter, she still found the process of setting up the account unclear. She wished for clearer explanations of how the program works, since she wasn’t familiar with additional benefits like seed funding, and she found the account dashboard offered little guidance. However, she was able to look beyond the ambiguity and see the benefits these tax-advantaged accounts could provide to families in building wealth, especially at a time when education, housing, and everyday life continue to become more expensive. Emily views any opportunity that helps parents or grandparents give children a stronger financial foundation as worth considering.
When thinking of the future she wants to build for her daughter, Emily sees financial planning isn’t about chasing every new opportunity but about thoughtfully weighing each option and choosing the ones that best support her daughter’s future. If that means a new program can provide her daughter with an additional boost, she’ll gladly accept it, but only as part of her broader savings strategy built on trust, stability, and the hope of giving her daughter more choices than she had growing up.
Emily’s story is part of a larger picture that centers on our members’ experiences with navigating new ways to plan for the future of both their children and family at large. Through understanding our members’ lived experiences and how that shows up in the decisions they make when signing up for new tax-advantage programs, or how affordability affects their day-to-day decisions, we can use these insights as a guiding light to shape broader conversations about future programs that best reflect the needs of the people they are meant to serve.