Executive Order 14403, signed April 30, 2026, directs the Treasury to stand up TrumpIRA.gov by January 1, 2027 — an online marketplace where workers can compare private-sector IRAs. The order is aimed at the roughly 41 million Americans ages 18 to 65 who have no retirement plan at work.
If you already have an IRA, that sounds like news for someone else. But buried in the listing criteria is something more broadly useful: a federal number for what a low-cost IRA costs.
The 0.15% Ceiling
To appear on the marketplace, an IRA must meet three tests:
- A net expense ratio of no more than 0.15% — and the order specifies that figure is inclusive of operating costs, management fees, and administrative expenses.
- A simple menu of diversified options — life-cycle or target-date funds, balanced funds, or principal-protection funds, modeled on what federal employees get through the Thrift Savings Plan.
- No minimum contribution and no minimum balance.
The first test is the strict one. Most fee comparisons quote a fund's expense ratio and stop there. This ceiling is all-in, which means custodial fees, wrap fees, and administrative charges count against the same 0.15%.
Most IRA Investors Pay Roughly Triple
The Investment Company Institute's fee data, covering 2025, puts the asset-weighted average expense ratio paid by IRA equity mutual fund investors at 0.47%. Participants in 401(k) plans holding the same funds paid 0.27%. The industry-wide average was 0.40%.
Those are averages, and they have fallen a long way — the IRA figure was 0.98% two decades earlier, and 94% of IRA equity assets now sit in funds charging under 1.00%. But the gap is real, and it runs in the direction most savers don't expect: your IRA is probably more expensive than your 401(k), largely because plan sponsors negotiate institutional share classes that individuals buy retail.
The arithmetic is unglamorous. The spread between 0.47% and 0.15% is 0.32% a year — about $800 annually on a $250,000 IRA, deducted quietly from returns rather than billed.
What the Marketplace Is Not
Three limits are worth stating plainly:
- It is not a government account. TrumpIRA.gov lists IRAs offered by private financial institutions. Treasury is building a filtered directory, not a custodian.
- It creates no new account type and no employer mandate. Standard IRA rules and contribution limits are unchanged — $7,500 for 2026, or $8,600 at age 50 and up.
- Its screen does not extend to self-directed accounts. The investment-menu criteria describe target-date, balanced, and principal-protection funds. Self-directed IRAs holding real estate or physical precious metals will not be on this list, and no federal fee ceiling applies to them. Those products still require the same dealer-by-dealer diligence they always have.
The order also promotes the federal Saver's Match, which begins in 2027 and pays eligible lower- and moderate-income savers a 50% match on up to $2,000 of contributions — as much as $1,000 deposited directly into a retirement account. Treasury and the IRS opened comments on the match under Notice 2026-48, due October 5, 2026.
Practical Takeaways
- Find your all-in number. Add the fund expense ratios you hold to any custodial, platform, or advisory fee. That total — not the fund figure alone — is what 0.15% is meant to be compared against.
- Check your rollover holdings first. Money that moved from a 401(k) to an IRA often landed in retail share classes of the same funds. That is where the 0.27%-to-0.47% gap usually lives.
- Ask about share classes. Many fund families offer a cheaper class of an identical portfolio above a balance threshold you may already clear.
- Wait to compare, not to act. The marketplace opens January 1, 2027. Nothing stops you from auditing fees now.
- Judge cost against what you're buying. A self-directed or advised account may justify more than 0.15%. The point is to know the number and decide deliberately.
Sources: White House Fact Sheet, "President Donald J. Trump Expands Retirement-Savings Access for American Workers by Establishing TrumpIRA.gov" (April 30, 2026); Executive Order 14403; Groom Law Group; J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Retirement Insights; Fidelity Learning Center; Investment Company Institute IRA fee data (2025); InvestmentNews; IRS Notice 2026-48.