The MCU’s Disney+ series, Clint Barton, once a SHIELD Agent and superhero member of The Avengers, has since retired and devoted his time to his family, finally spending Christmas with his children following their resurrection in Avengers: Endgame. However, a brief moment in Hawkeye’s pilot acknowledges that, despite being a superhero, he still has bills to pay like everyone else.
The Avengers in general and Hawkeye, in particular, didn’t need to worry about money for most of the MCU. Tony Stark was one of the richest people in the world, providing housing and funding for the other Avengers. Aside from that, Barton, Romanoff, and Rogers were all on the SHIELD payroll, and may have continued to receive financial from them following the agency’s collapse (since SHIELD still existed after Project Insight, albeit in secret).
This seems to have changed when Tony Stark died at the end of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and Hawkeye. In the latter, Clint and his children are enjoying a rather large meal, which the restaurant nicely gives Barton for free in gratitude for him saving New York in 2012 and helping restore half of Earth’s population in Endgame. This was a far more optimistic version of this issue than what Falcon and Winter Soldier showed.
In Falcon and Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson accompanies his sister to get a loan approved, hoping to avoid selling their family boat while also making some much-needed repairs to their house. The bank’s loan officer doesn’t recognize Wilson at first, but even after realizing that he’s speaking to an Avenger, he refuses to approve the loan. He mentions, rather insensitively, that Avengers can’t get by on goodwill and he asks if there’s a fund of some sort for superheroes.
Clint Barton, on the other hand, is nicely given a free meal in Hawkeye (much to Barton’s discomfort), showing how goodwill does occasionally benefit Avengers. In Barton’s case, the fact that he was in New York City, which he took part in saving during the Chitauri Invasion in 2012, was likely the main reason why the restaurant gave him his meal on the house upon recognizing him. Considering his arrangement with Nick Fury to keep his family secret and safe, Barton may receive a flow of funds from SHIELD to help them all remain off the grid.
In keeping with their focus on realism, financial woes are fairly common in Marvel comics and their adaptations, especially with Falcon and Winter Soldier and Hawkeye showing two vastly different instances of how an Avenger’s superhero status could affect their money problems.
