Boomers hold a record $90tn and half of household wealth. The monthly budget disagrees.

Fortune reported this week, citing Federal Reserve data, that baby boomers hold a record of nearly $90 trillion in wealth in 2026 and more than half of all US household wealth, up from 19.5% in 1989 ^[1][2]. That is the headline number every wealth manager, annuity desk and retirement-product marketer builds a pipeline on, and it is close to useless as a guide to how much cash these households can actually spend each month.

Start with concentration. The top 10% of boomer households controlled 71% of the generation's wealth in 2022 ^[3], which leaves 29% to be shared among the other 90% of households ^[4]. Nearly a third of Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all, and about half of those who do have saved less than $100,000 ^[5]. Boomers are 20% of the population ^[6], so the wealth share is roughly two and a half times the population share ^[7] and the aggregate tells you almost nothing about the median.

Then the liabilities. More than half of households headed by someone aged 75 or older carried debt in 2022, up from 41.3% a decade earlier, according to a separate Federal Reserve analysis ^[8]. Experian data put average boomer debt at $92,619, mostly credit cards ^[9]. Set that against the savings distribution and the average boomer's debt load is larger than the retirement balance held by roughly half of those who saved anything at all ^[10]. "Someone's net worth and cash flow are two very different things," Ashley Morgan, a Northern Virginia bankruptcy and debt attorney, told Fortune ^[11]. Michael McAuliffe, president of the nonprofit Family Credit Management, told Fortune that more people are carrying high-interest debt later in life, which becomes a bigger problem once income is fixed ^[12].

The illiquidity is visible in borrowing behaviour. HELOC balances have risen 20% from their late-2021 low after nearly 13 years of decline, according to the New York Fed, and about 57% of the roughly 1.8 million HELOCs originated in 2023 and the first half of 2024 went to borrowers aged 50 and older ^[13] - roughly one million lines ^[14]. Selling is not a clean exit either: a large capital gain on an appreciated home can trigger the Medicare surcharge known as IRMAA and push monthly premiums up by hundreds of dollars ^[15]. Morgan said home equity has created a false sense of financial security for some households ^[16].

Costs are moving the wrong way. Medicare premiums have climbed faster than both general inflation and Social Security's cost-of-living adjustment ^[17]. Home care prices rose 7.9% over five years, nearly triple the rate of medical inflation, and nursing home costs jumped 25% between 2019 and 2024 against 22% income growth for over-65 households in the same span ^[18], a three-point gap that compounds ^[19]. Morgan also said it is not uncommon for boomers to borrow or delay their own saving to support children and grandchildren ^[20].

For anyone selling decumulation, the implication is that the addressable market is not $90 trillion of assets under management. It is a thin top decile with genuine portfolio problems, and a much larger cohort whose binding constraint is monthly income against high-interest balances, property tax and care costs.