Baby boomers now control more than half of all U.S. household wealth, and by the end of 2025 their total will be close to $90 trillion. On average, their net worth is expected to top $1.6 million, a figure that makes the generation the wealthiest in the country even as the typical household sits far lower.
That gap matters because the average can hide how unevenly the money is spread. The median boomer net worth is closer to $370,000, which means a relatively small slice of very wealthy households is pulling the average sharply higher. Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964, so they now range from 61 to 80, an age span that covers both people still building assets and others already drawing them down.
The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, last conducted in 2022, breaks net worth into six age groups, and the boomer-heavy bands show how wealth accumulates over time. For the typical 65-to-74-year-old, the numbers are plain: a $320,000 home and about $200,000 in retirement savings. Those two pieces explain much of the generation's balance sheet. Net worth is measured by adding assets and subtracting liabilities, including cash, savings, investments, home equity and valuables, then reducing that total by debts such as mortgages, loans, credit card balances, medical debt and taxes.
But the snapshot is not the whole story. Net worth can look strong on paper while leaving a household vulnerable in practice, and it does not show whether someone can retire comfortably or survive a financial shock. Some boomers are renting and have little saved. Others face high healthcare costs or caregiving responsibilities. And for many, much of the wealth is locked in home equity and retirement accounts rather than cash that can be used quickly.
That is why the boomer wealth story is both enormous and uneven. Much of the generation benefited from a period of rising home values, employer-funded pensions and decades of stock gains, but those advantages did not reach everyone equally. The next Federal Reserve installment of the Survey of Consumer Finances is due later this year, and it will show whether the wealth gap inside this oldest large generation has widened further or begun to narrow as more households move from accumulation to spending.
