Baby boomers look richer than ever—but many are retiring with record levels of debt

Baby Boomers may be the richest generation in American history, but that doesn’t mean they have the money when the bills are due.

Many of them enter retirement still carrying credit card balances and other debts, turning what looks like a strong balance sheet into a tighter monthly budget.

The problem gets exacerbated as Boomers retire: their paychecks disappear, and they become reliant on Social Security and pensions to cover both everyday living expenses and debt payments.

“Someone’s net worth and cash flow are two very different things,” Ashley Morgan, a Northern Virginia bankruptcy and debt attorney who works with consumers facing financial and credit problems, told Fortune .

Boomers had first built extraordinary wealth as home prices and stock markets soared, going from holding just 19.5% of household wealth in 1989 to more than half of it in 2026, according to Federal Reserve data .

They also hold a record of nearly $90 trillion in wealth in 2026—twice that of Gen X’s household wealth, and more than quadruple that of Millennials’—despite making up just 20% of the population.

But that wealth is unevenly held, and riddled with debts.

The top 10% of Boomer households controlled 71% of the generation’s wealth in 2022 , while nearly a third of Americans 55 and older have no retirement savings at all.

Of those who do, about half have saved less than $100,000.

Crucially, debt accompanies that wealth.

Over half of households headed by someone 75 or older carried debt in 2022, up from 41.3% a decade earlier, according to a separate Federal Reserve analysis .

Experian data show the average Boomer carries $92,619 in debt mostly stemming from credit cards.

“We’re seeing more and more people carrying high-interest debt later in life, which becomes a much bigger problem for them when they retire, and their income is fixed,” Michael McAuliffe, president of the nonprofit Family Credit Management that helps people manage debt, told Fortune .

Morgan said she regularly encounters older clients with significant home equity or retirement savings who are also juggling credit cards, car loans and other monthly obligations.