https://screenrant.com/young-sheldon-big-bang-theory-rich-money-meemaw/

Young Sheldon season 5, episode 16 offers an explanation as to why Sheldon (Jim Parsons) appears to be secretly rich on The Big Bang Theory.

Interestingly, when The Big Bang Theory started, Sheldon and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) had to resort to a sperm bank to get some money.

Yeah, no. That's in a pilot that never aired.

Since then, however, Sheldon, in particular, never had personal financial problems, aside from that one time he wanted to fund his lofty study. At one point, he was even able to easily lend Penny (Kaley Cuoco) some cash with no pressure from him on her to pay right away.


Sheldon's one of the few sitcom characters for whom we have a good fix on salary, because we had a job title at a real life institution. He was sitting at around $90k when the show started, and it would have gone up from there. Sheldon says in the referenced episode that he lives on only a portion of his salary. Elsewhere, he has paychecks stashed in his desk because he doesn't have anything to spend the money on yet.

Makes sense. He shares an apartment and doesn't have a car. He has to feed himself and amuse himself and that's about all. How much can haircuts and soap cost?