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

Caleb Hammer, a financial influencer, recently expressed his lack of sympathy for boomers on The Joe Rogan Experience. He claimed that if someone born in 1990 had saved 5% to 10% of their salary in the S&P 500 for 40 years, they would have accumulated a multimillion-dollar nest egg. Rogan asked Hammer to confirm this claim, to which Hammer said that an average earner would have around $2 million to $5 million.

However, upon further research, it appears that the actual outcome may be less explosive than Hammer's claim suggests. Based on Social Security Administration data, the national average wage increased from $21,028 in 1990 to $69,847 in 2024. Using S&P 500 total return data and assuming annual contributions with dividends reinvested, an average earner investing from 1990 through 2025 would have accumulated more than $1 million, even with conservative assumptions. This demonstrates the power of compounding over decades, which Hammer correctly emphasizes.