No ‘sympathy’: Joe Rogan stunned after Caleb Hammer says each American boomer should have $2M-$5M nest egg. Is he right?

Moneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below.

"I'm starting to not have sympathy for the boomers. I'm really not," financial influencer Caleb Hammer told Joe Rogan on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (1).

"If you were 25 in 1990 and made an average U.S. salary for 40 years, saving 5% to 10% per month in the S&P 500, how much would they have now?" Rogan asked.

Jeff Bezos backs a platform that lets anyone invest in rental homes for as little as $100 — 6 ways to build wealth like a landlord without actually being one

JPMorgan sees gold hitting $5,000/oz by Q4 — and savvy investors are protecting their wealth with a tax-advantaged Gold IRA. Get your free guide from Priority Gold

The tax breaks in Trump's 'big beautiful bill' expire after 2028. Here are 4 moves to make before the window closes

"If they just put 5% to 10% a month aside, in the stock market that they had, that they had , they would be multimillionaires," Hammer said.

Rogan asked Perplexity AI to confirm and it responded: "They would have around $2 million to $5 million, depending on exact assumptions."

It's a provocative claim and one that's likely to inflame the persistent cultural narrative that boomers have hoarded money and cut younger people out of both the job and housing market.

But does the math actually support Hammer's claim?

The math is less explosive than the clip suggests. Based on Social Security Administration (SSA) data, the national average wage rose from $21,028 in 1990 to $69,847 in 2024 (2).

Using Slickcharts' S&P 500 total return data (3) and assuming contributions were made at the end of each year with dividends reinvested, an average earner investing from 1990 through 2025 would have accumulated:

$1.1 million at a 10% annual savings rate.

Hitting higher figures would require variables not accounted for in the clip, such as above-average earnings, employer matches, or a longer timeline.

The S&P 500 has gone through crashes, recessions, bubbles and bear markets (4) since 1990. Investors, including boomers, have lived through the dot-com collapse, the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 crash and the 2022 bear market.

And yet, the long-term outcome for disciplined investors has still been powerful. That's because investing doesn't require every year to be good. It requires enough time for the good years to overwhelm the bad ones.