“They call them Safe Harbor IRAs — but for millions of savers, they are anything but safe.”
A new report from PensionBee and the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) has lifted the lid on a quiet crisis.
By 2030, an estimated $43 billion of American retirement savings will sit stranded in “Safe Harbor IRAs” — low-yield, high-fee accounts that quietly erode people’s lifetime wealth under the guise of fiduciary care.
Workers who change jobs and leave small 401(k)s behind are often forced into these accounts without consent. Once inside, their savings can languish for years, generating fees but little growth. The report shows that many accounts are drained to zero.
It’s a staggering revelation — but it’s not surprising. It’s the predictable result of a structurally untrustworthy system.
The System Is Not Broken — It Was Built This Way
Safe Harbor IRAs were created to “protect” small savers. Yet their structure rewards the custodians, not the customers. They are safe only for those collecting the fees.
This is the essence of structural untrustworthiness: when the architecture of a system extracts value from the vulnerable under the banner of protection.
It’s not a breach of compliance — it’s a design flaw, and it’s everywhere.
Just as the Junk IRA problem traps dormant savings in America, the UK faces its own “small pot” dilemma in auto-enrolment pensions. Millions of workers leave jobs, leave pots behind, and see their savings quietly depleted by charges.
The story repeats: good intentions, extractive design, disempowered users.
The Extractive Cycle at Work
At the Academy of Life Planning, we describe this as the Exhaustive Cycle — the reversed order of creation that begins with execution and ends in depletion:
- Execution first – automatic rollover policies move money without agency.
- Means – custodians profit from inertia, locking in recurring fees.
- Action – savers are disengaged, unaware of what’s happening.
- Goal – is no longer client empowerment, but institutional retention.
This is the hidden machinery of the modern financial system — efficient, compliant, and spiritually empty.
Reversing the Flow: The Productive Cycle
The antidote is the Productive Cycle — the foundation of the Academy’s GAME Plan™:
- Goals – start with human intention and life purpose.
- Actions – align financial behaviour with those goals.
- Means – structure wealth systems that serve, not enslave.
- Execution – act consciously, review regularly, and retain agency.
This cycle restores the natural order of creation — from intention to manifestation — ensuring that money remains a means to meaning, not a substitute for it.
Structural Trust: The Enabling Environment
At AoLP, we teach that trust is not a marketing claim — it is a system property.
Structural trustworthiness means that:
- Transparency is designed in, not promised.
- Fees are visible, fair, and voluntary.
- Data and decision rights belong to the client.
- Portability and interoperability are built into every plan.
Where the old system hides complexity to extract, the new model reveals simplicity to empower.
This is what the Junk IRA story exposes: a system that works perfectly — for the wrong purpose.
It is a call to redesign finance from the inside out.
From Extraction to Empowerment
The Academy of Life Planning stands for a simple idea:
Financial planning should liberate, not entrap.
We are training a new generation of Holistic Wealth Planners who understand that real safety is not in products, but in self-awareness, education, and structural design.
They empower clients to own their plans, question their systems, and reclaim their sovereignty.
When systems drift into darkness, transparency becomes an act of light.
✨ Join the Movement for Structural Trust
If this story resonates with you — whether you’re a planner, policymaker, or participant — we invite you to explore the GAME Plan™ and our work at the Academy of Life Planning.
Discover how life-first, product-free planning can restore trust to finance — and wealth to people.
👉 Learn more: http://www.aolp.co
👉 Join the Academy: Become a Holistic Wealth Planner
👉 Follow the conversation: #StructuralTrust #HolisticWealth #GAMEPlan #FinancialEmpowerment
Academy of Life Planning 