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There's a real chance that newborn children in the US will begin receiving $1,000 in an investment account at birth if President Trump's budget bill passes Congress in the months ahead.  CEOs of some major public companies are actually meeting at the White House today to discuss the "$1,000 at birth" provision.

Below is a chart we created showing how much $1,000 at birth would be worth today if it were invested in the S&P 500 at the end of each month going back 50 years (with dividends re-invested).

As shown above, $1,000 invested in the S&P fifty years ago and not touched would be worth nearly $350,000 today.  That number drops to roughly $127,000 if the $1,000 were invested at the end of November 1980 and $40,000 if the start date is August 1987.  Even still, there are a lot of 37-year olds out there born just before the 1987 crash that wouldn't mind having $40k in an investment account right now!

The second chart above shows the same data over just the last 25 years for better scale.  Because of the Dot Com bubble and burst of the late 1990s and early 2000s and the Financial Crisis of the late 2000s, people born in various months during this period would have quite different account values right now.  $1,000 invested in August 2000 just after the Dot Com peak would be worth roughly $6,200 today, while $1,000 invested nearly ten years later in February 2009 would be worth nearly $5k more at $11,000.  If this provision comes to pass, we may see birth rates go up during lengthy bear markets!

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