Baby Boomers generally have significantly less debt than younger generations like Millennials and Gen X, with average household debt around $82,000 (Australia) or under $93,000 (US), often lower mortgage balances as they approach retirement, though some have notable credit card debt and HELOCs. While they carry less total debt, they often hold more assets, but the focus shifts to managing debt effectively in retirement, with some data showing high percentages of boomers with no debt at all.
Average Baby Boomer Debt Continues to Decline
With total average debt under $93,000, baby boomers owe less than younger generations on average.
People ages 40-49 tend to carry the highest average debt, largely because of home mortgages and other long-term loans. Not all debt is bad debt. Mortgages and student loans are considered better forms of debt than credit cards and auto loans.
Quick stats: Average Australian debt levels
The average Australian household carried $313,633 in total debt in June 2025, with the majority coming from home loans. Mortgages remain the dominant source of debt, while personal loans, car loans, and credit cards continue to add pressure on household budgets.
Generation X Debt
Gen X (ages 43 to 58) not only carries the most debt on average of all the generations, but is also the debt leader in credit card and total non-mortgage debt.
Michael Sheen has written off £1 million ($1.29 million) of debt for 900 people using £100,000 ($129,000) of his own money. The Welsh star, famed for roles in Good Omens, Twilight and more recently, A Very Royal Scandal, has started a debt acquisition company to help the group in his native south Wales.
Generation X has slowed down its spending more than any other generation, as children, parents and debt make increasing demands on their softening income. Gen Xers' slowed spending could be the result of decelerating wages this year.
The average age to pay off a mortgage in Australia has risen significantly, with estimates placing it between 60 and 65, often extending into retirement, up from around 52 in the 1980s, due to higher house prices and later first-home purchases, with many Australians now facing debt into their 60s and even 70s, making debt-free retirement a challenge.
1 in 4 Americans who carry credit card balances currently owe $10,000 or more in credit card debt. Key insights from a survey of 1,447 Americans who have a credit card and do not pay their bills in full*:
Australians have an average of $42,246 in savings, with Boomers leading the way with an average savings of $56,300.
The credit limit you can expect for a $70,000 salary across all your credit cards could be as much as $14000 to $21000, or even higher in some cases, according to our research. The exact amount depends heavily on multiple factors, like your credit score and how many credit lines you have open.
The average first-time buyer will not pay off their mortgage until they are aged 63 years and 8 months, according to research from Mojo Mortgages.
Of course, there are outliers in the data that represent the exacerbation of wealth inequality in the United States. The difference between the median net worth of a baby boomer, sitting at $206,700, and the average net worth of $1.2 million exemplifies this disparity.
Baby boomers' good timing
As home values soared in the following decades, so, too, did the generation's equity. The older generation has also been boosted by stock ownership, with baby boomers holding 54% of stocks worth more than $25 trillion, according to an early 2025 analysis of Fed data by the Motley Fool.
Theirs was the largest generation in history and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. What wasn't foreseen was how long Baby Boomers would live. When the first Boomers were born, the average life expectancy was 63 years old. Today, Boomers can expect to live to almost 79 years.
The average credit cardholder in Australia has a monthly balance of $3,540 and uses their card around 26.8 times each month.
Recent data from credit bureau Experian reveals that Generation X has the highest average credit card debt among the age groups of U.S. adults.
While exact real-time figures vary, recent analyses suggest hundreds of thousands of Australians hold over $1 million in superannuation, though it's a minority, with estimates from around 2021 pointing to over 400,000 people, a number that has grown significantly due to investment returns, though many still don't reach this milestone. About 2.5% of the population held >$1 million in super as of mid-2021 (around 417,000 people), with forecasts indicating a larger number, while projections suggest over 10% of women and 15% of men retiring by 2060 could reach this goal, and recent studies highlight that a large majority (around 94%) of retirees don't hit $1 million.
For households headed by those aged 65 to 74, average debt has more than quadrupled over the last three decades, climbing from about $10,000 in 1992 to around $45,000 in 2022.
Yes, $600,000 can be enough to retire at 60 in Australia for many, especially if you're a single person aiming for a comfortable lifestyle, but it depends heavily on your spending, assets, and eligibility for the Age Pension. While some sources suggest $600k covers a single's comfortable retirement (around $52k-$53k/year), it's near the lower end, and couples might need closer to $700k for a similar standard, making financial planning crucial for a stress-free retirement.
Millennials will be inheriting the most ($46 trillion) of any generation over the course of the next 25 years. However, Gen X stands to inherit the greatest portion of assets in the next 10 years, totaling $14 trillion to Millennials' $8 trillion, the report further advises.
Whilst boomers and millennials may use the 😂 emoji, this has long since been deemed 'uncool' (or 'cheugy') by Gen Z. Instead, this has been replaced by the skull (💀) or the crying emoji (😭), dramatising the idea of 'dying with laughter'.