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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to expand retirement account access, and said that young workers, if they were to save regularly, would be able to amass $465,000 in such accounts by the time they turn 65 years old.
"In other words, they'll be rich," Trump said during the signing ceremony.
But financial advisors disputed that characterization, saying $465,000 wouldn't necessarily qualify someone as being wealthy in retirement — especially when that nest egg might have to be spread over roughly two or three decades.
"There are advantages to these accounts, but I don't believe they are going to make people rich," Barry Glassman, a certified financial planner and founder of Glassman Wealth Services, wrote in an e-mail.
"While $465,000 could provide a healthy sum for retirement, with 3% inflation, in 30 years that's equivalent to less than $200,000 today," wrote Glassman, a member of CNBC's Financial Advisor Council. "Again, not a small sum, but certainly does not qualify someone as rich."
The average 401(k) investor had a roughly $168,000 account balance at the end of 2025, according to Vanguard Group, an asset manager and retirement plan administrator. The median balance was a bit more than $44,000.
The average IRA balance was about $137,000 at the end of 2025, according to Fidelity Investments.
Trump's executive order aims to provide a pathway for workers without access to a 401(k) or other workplace retirement plan to save for retirement. That's the case for about 56 million Americans, according to 2025 research from Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent public policy nonprofit.
The president's order directs the U.S. Treasury Department to establish a website, TrumpIRA.gov, by Jan. 1, 2027, to connect workers to "high-quality, low-cost IRAs" offered by financial companies in the private sector.
"$465,000 sounds big — and for many, if not most families, it's definitely meaningful," said Winnie Sun, co-founder and managing director of Sun Group Wealth Partners, based in Irvine, California.
However, translating that lump sum into a retirement income makes it look more like a "modest paycheck" than a windfall that screams "I'm rich," Sun said.
Take the 4% rule, for example. The oft-cited guide for households dictates how much money they can safely withdraw from their retirement savings each year over a lifetime.
Households with a $465,000 lump sum would be able to withdraw $18,600 in their first year of retirement. That sum increases annually to adjust for inflation.
In other words, that nest egg would translate into a retirement income of roughly $19,000 a year.
Further, $465,000 is far lower than what the average person perceives as "rich."
On average, Americans think it takes a $2.3 million net worth to be considered wealthy, according to a Charles Schwab survey published last year. Respondents on average said it would take $839,000 just to be "financially comfortable."
However, in the context of Trump's retirement plan, being "rich" may be less about the actual sum of money and more about building a general habit of saving, some financial advisors said.
"Sometimes 'wealth' isn't about excess," said Sun, who is also a member of CNBC's Financial Advisor Council. "I think these programs aren't really about creating millionaires, but more about sparking the inspiration to start saving. So maybe the better question isn't, 'Is this rich?' It's, 'Is this better than where we started?'"
Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that the people without access to employer-sponsored retirement plans are disproportionately lower-income individuals who are currently saving "little to nothing for their retirement" as a result. Desai said that $465,000 in retirement savings could "make a world of a difference" for those workers.
The Trump program is clearly "aimed at lower income workers," Jaret Seiberg, a policy analyst at TD Cowen, an investment bank, wrote in a research note on Friday.
Trump's $465,000 wealth projection suggests this is the case: It assumes the saver qualifies for the full federal Saver's Match every year for 40 years.
The Saver's Match, which takes effect in 2027 and will be worth up to $1,000 per person per year, is like a 401(k) match for lower-income households. To qualify for the full amount, individuals' modified adjusted gross income cannot exceed $20,500 per year. They must also save at least $2,000 in their IRA during the year. Married couples who file a joint tax return can't earn more than $41,000 to qualify for the full match.
Single filers with annual incomes of between $20,500 and $35,500 qualify for reduced matching contributions, and joint filers making up to $71,000 can qualify for a reduced match.
The example also assumes a 25-year-old saves about $165 per month, or nearly $2,000 a year, through age 65. They earn a 6% average annual rate of return on their savings.
Nearly $155,000 of the total $465,000 projection is attributable to the Saver's Match, according to a White House fact sheet.
The math is sound in the projection, Sun said, assuming an investor saves in a diversified stock portfolio consistent with historical, inflation-adjusted stock returns.
However, it may be unrealistic from other points of view, according to financial advisors.
For example, it assumes households qualify for the full Saver's Match every year — meaning their annual income must stay below the threshold over a 40-year working career, Sun said. The threshold is adjusted for inflation each year.
Low earners also likely don't have enough income flexibility or free cash flow to save consistently over their lifetime, financial advisors said.
Zach Teutsch, founder of Values Added Financial in Washington, D.C., pointed to a federal analysis published in 2024 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to illustrate that point.
The aggregate savings rate for the bottom half of U.S. households was negative in 2022, according to the analysis. For the bottom 10% of households, expenditures were more than twice as high as their income, according to the BLS paper.
"In Trump's example, the person would have saved more than 10% of their income every year for 40 years," Teutsch, who is also a member of CNBC's Financial Advisor Council, wrote in an email.
"Among people with incomes below $20,000, the average person doesn't save at all and actually depletes their savings," he wrote. "And that's over a single year. The idea of someone in the bottom quintile saving at all is unusual but saving every year for 40 years would be exceptionally unlikely."
That said, if the hypothetical low-income saver were able to build a $465,000 nest egg, they would likely set themselves up for relative success in retirement, some financial experts said.
Retirement researchers often gauge savings according to an "income replacement ratio." In other words, how much money can one's personal savings and other funds such as Social Security replace relative to their pre-retirement salary? The goal is to roughly replicate their pre-retirement standard of living in retirement.
Someone with a $20,000 annual income who can generate $20,000 of retirement income from sources such as a 401(k) and Social Security would have a 100% income replacement ratio. There's no consensus on the "correct" ratio for retirement success, but some experts say to try to replace at least 70%.
Such a person might be viewed as rich relative to their peers, if not on a broader societal level, financial experts said.
"If the goal of the [defined-contribution] system is to give workers a path to replacing the lifestyle they had before retirement, this would be a big step toward helping low-income workers achieve that goal," Michael Finke, a certified financial planner and wealth management professor at The American College of Financial Services, wrote in an email.