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“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.

He wasn’t expecting Hammer’s response.

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“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.

After initially cursing in surprise, 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 resonate with younger workers facing high housing costs and rising living expenses. After all, there’s a 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.

According to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) national average wage index (2), the average wage in 1990 was $21,027.98. By 2024, that figure had risen to $69,846.57.

For our calculations, Moneywise used annual S&P 500 total return data from Slickcharts (3) and assumed contributions were made at the end of each year — a conservative assumption, as many investors contribute monthly. Because the SSA’s wage index currently ends in 2024, we used the 2024 wage figure for 2025.

Assuming that someone saved 5% of that average wage each year (in this example, they were making the national average wage) and invested it in the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested from 1990 through 2025, they’d have roughly $550,000 today, using year-end contributions. At a 10% savings rate, they’d have about $1.1 million.

That’s substantial, but well below the $2 million to $5 million range Hammer referenced during the interview.

For that kind of wealth, you’d likely need a combination of higher savings rates, above-average earnings, employer retirement matches, a longer investing timeline or stronger market assumptions. If these elements were factored into the AI calculations, they might account for some of the discrepancies.

Read More: Here’s the average income of Americans by age in 2026. Are you falling behind?

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.

Remember, a person saving 10% of average wages from 1990 through 2025 would have contributed less than $150,000 total, but could have ended up with more than $1 million. Most of the final balance would have come from compounding, not from the money they personally put in.

That’s the part Hammer is right to hit home about: Small percentages become large sums when added up over decades. Most investors don’t fail because of a bad stock pick — they fail because they never got started, according to Assante Wealth (5)Management (5).

For investors looking to start the process, SoFi’s easy-to-use DIY investing platform lets you buy stocks, ETFs with no commission fees and no account minimums.

SoFi is designed for both beginners and seasoned investors, with real-time investing news, curated content and the data you need to make smart decisions about the stocks that matter most to you.

Plus, for a limited time, you can get up to $1,000 in stock when you fund a new account.

But while the math highlights the power of long-term investing, pointing the finger at boomers for retirement shortfalls overlooks reality.

Not every Boomer had equal access to things like steady employment, affordable housing, employer retirement plans or disposable income. Medical bills, layoffs, divorce, caregiving, disability and long periods of stagnant wages can all destroy a clean spreadsheet.

And that’s to say nothing of behavior. A worker would have had to keep investing through major market crashes, avoid panic-selling, resist lifestyle creep and maintain contributions for decades to edge close to Hammer’s figure.

That sounds simple in hindsight. However, according to Dalbar’s Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior study (6), over 20 years, the average retail investor underperformed the S&P 500 by just over 6% annually.

If you’re worried about making costly investing mistakes, it may be worth speaking with a qualified financial advisor. Research from Vanguard (7) suggests that working with a financial advisor can add about 3% in net returns over time through a combination of portfolio construction, tax efficiency, rebalancing and behavioral coaching.

That difference can become substantial over a multi-decade investing horizon. For example, a $50,000 portfolio that benefits from an additional 3% annual return could potentially generate more than $1.3 million in extra growth over 30 years, depending on market conditions and investment choices.

Finding the right advisor is simple with Advisor.com. Their platform connects you with licensed financial professionals in your area who can provide personalized guidance based on your financial goals.

A professional advisor can also help you build an investment plan that matches your time horizon and tolerance for market volatility — two factors that can make it easier to stay invested when markets inevitably decline.

Once you enter some basic information, like your ZIP code, you can schedule a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss your retirement goals and long-term financial plan.

If you’re well past a $50,000 portfolio, you may want to explore other options — although Advisor.com works with portfolios of many sizes.

For those with account holdings of $250,000 or more, platforms like WiserAdvisor can connect you with vetted professionals who specialize in this kind of planning.

Simply start by answering a few questions about your savings, retirement timeline and overall investment portfolio. From there, WiserAdvisor reviews its network to match you — for free — with up to three vetted, reputable advisors aligned with your specific needs.

You can then schedule no-obligation consultations with your matches to determine who is the best fit for your long-term goals.

WiserAdvisor is a matching service and does not provide financial advice directly. All matched advisors are third parties, and specific financial results are not guaranteed.

Of course, a financial advisor isn’t the only tool investors use to manage risk. Many also build diversification directly into their portfolios, adding assets that may behave differently from stocks during periods of market stress.

Stocks have historically generated strong long-term returns, but they can also experience significant declines over shorter periods. That’s why some investors choose to diversify beyond the traditional 60/40 stock-and-bond portfolio by adding a portion of assets that don’t move in lockstep with the market.

No one investment can entirely eliminate risk. That’s why some investors use physical gold to help balance portfolio volatility and maintain confidence (8) during turbulent markets as an extra countermeasure against inflation or a market drop.

Gold has historically attracted attention during downturns because it isn’t tied directly to corporate earnings, and has often been viewed as a store of value. It also can’t be printed at will by big banks during an inflationary run, given its inherently limited supply.

If you’re curious about adding precious metals to your broader inflation-hedging strategy, a gold IRA from Goldco lets you hold physical gold and other metals while still getting the tax advantages of an IRA. They also offer a guaranteed buyback program, meaning they’ll repurchase your metals at the “highest price” according to market value if you ever decide to sell.

Plus, the company will match up to 10% of qualified purchases in free silver.

If you want to explore whether precious metals could be a helpful hedge for your portfolio first, you can download Goldco’s free gold & silver guide to see if it’s a good fit for you.

Whether an investor prefers stocks, bonds, precious metals or a combination of assets, the lesson from Hammer’s argument remains the same — the earlier you start building ownership in assets, the more time compounding has to work in your favor.

That’s especially relevant for younger Americans, who may not have enjoyed the same economic conditions as previous generations. After all, boomers started ahead, and many ended up behind anyway.

Younger workers may not have the same housing market or college costs that older generations did. But they do have one advantage — time.

A 25-year-old who starts investing today doesn’t need to predict the next Nvidia, time the next recession or perfectly optimize every dollar — although getting lucky is certainly possible. A safer bet would be to find a repeatable system that turns income into ownership.

That could mean automatically investing a percentage of every paycheck, using a workplace retirement plan, opening an IRA or building a diversified portfolio through a low-cost investing platform.

For investors seeking guidance on identifying opportunities, Moby offers expert research and recommendations to help you find strong, long-term investments, backed by advice from former hedge fund analysts.

In four years, and across almost 400 stock picks, Moby says its recommendations have beaten the S&P 500 by almost 12% on average. Their research keeps you up-to-the-minute on market shifts, and they’ll deliver it straight to you.

Plus, their reports are easy to understand for beginners, so that you can become a smarter investor in just five minutes.

The key, however, is contributing before the money disappears into rent, takeout, car payments or impulse purchases.

If that sounds like a little bit too much management, you could instead take a set-and-forget approach to investing. Besides, one of the most commonly held pieces of investing advice is to invest in index funds or ETFs if you’re unsure what to do when you start out on your investment journey.

Even small amounts can grow over time with tools like Acorns, an app that automatically invests your spare change.

Signing up for Acorns takes just minutes: Link your cards, and Acorns will round up each purchase to the nearest dollar, investing the difference — your spare change — into a diversified portfolio. That morning coffee for $3.25? It’s not a 75-cent investment in your future.

With Acorns, you can invest in a dividend ETF with as little as $5 — and, if you sign up today, Acorns will add a $20 bonus to help you begin your investment journey. All you have to do is set up a small recurring monthly contribution.

Hammer may have overstated how much wealth the average worker could have accumulated. But his broader point survives the math: time and consistency matter far more than most people realize.

A 5% savings rate may not make everyone rich. A 10% savings rate won’t guarantee millionaire status. But over decades, small, repeated investments can create life-changing wealth.

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PowerfulJRE/ YouTube (1); Social Security Administration (2); Slickcharts (3); TradingView (4); Ferguson Financial Planning (5); Dalbar (6); Vanguard Canada (7); Investopedia (8)

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.