As part of the sandwich generation, the dream of downsizing and living a quieter life has had to be put on hold
When we first bought our terraced house in a London suburb in the late noughties, we had just upsized from a two-bedroom flat. We’d welcomed our first baby and the flat felt cramped and pokey. By comparison, the new home with four bedrooms, two (ish) reception rooms, spread across three floors, felt cavernous. The perfect place to raise a family.
But, fast forward 20 years, and we are still here. When we bought it I hadn’t thought ahead about how long we’d stay, but I certainly hadn’t anticipated having to accommodate my multi-generational family of five adults under this one roof (in a house meant for two adults and a couple of children at most).
I spend my time daydreaming about being able to downsize, about not having to carry the burden (and cost) of being the sandwich generation – caring upwards and downwards for parents and children – which it feels like our living situation sums up.
American author, Douglas Coupland, is often credited with bringing the term Gen X into common use back in the late 80s. At the time, he was writing about a group of weary, anti-establishment twentysomethings (born between 1965 and 1981). The generation between boomers and millennials, the lost generation, finally had a name of its own. It felt hopeful.
Now, as most of us Gen-Xers reach middle age (I am 54) I feel like that hope has left. By this point in life, previous generations – my parents included – were thinking of retiring, cashing in on their nest egg, downsizing from a family home and getting somewhere for the next chapter. For us, however, the reality is somewhat different.
Like many of our peers, we had our kids in our 30s, having spent our 20s trying to build careers and a life, and just generally doing all the procrastinating that people do in that decade. This means that we are still parenting now – our children are 15 and 19 and one is still living at home while the other has gone to university – but with the added responsibility of caring for an elderly relative too. My father passed away before Covid hit, and my mother is in her mid-80s.
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My husband and I have gone straight from the trenches of early years parenting to caregiving. My mother moved in with us during the Covid pandemic. She’d been struggling on her own, and after a few falls, we decided she needed to be closer to us. At the time, we thought that moving in with us would be a temporary solution. But, a few more falls, and illnesses later, and she has stayed.
It’s been a squeeze to accommodate her. My mother is in the fourth, and one of the largest bedrooms, while my younger son, now a tall 15-year-old, was squeezed into the smallest bedroom. It was depressing; we had bought this house so that the boys would have space and room to grow but I just couldn’t let her live anywhere else without full-time care.
Our generous four-bedroom house has never felt smaller.
I kept telling myself that it was temporary, as my older son, 19, was going off to university in autumn last year. The reality is of course that he is likely to move back home at the end of his degree – as living elsewhere is so expensive – and he still needs to come home during the long holidays.
We are not alone in our predicament: data published by financial services company Just Group, found that 50 per cent of Gen X have adult children, aged 18 plus, living at home full time. Added to this 11 per cent are supporting older relatives, which is costing them on average £237 per week.
We are both exhausted and I can’t escape the feeling that we should be downsizing and thinking about leading a quieter life, but it’s just not on the cards right now. We need the space. And moving further out from this area would be a massive upheaval for both my elderly mother and children.
Like many of our generation, we still have a mortgage to pay too. We could have paid it off at various points, but home renovations, and other financial demands meant that we didn’t. I have loved bringing up my kids in this house, and in this leafy suburb of London, but it’s starting to feel more and more like an albatross around our necks.
The payments are manageable, but I can’t see how we will ever actually be able to pay it off before retiring, without selling our house, which we can’t right now. About a quarter of Gen X don’t think, or are unsure, whether they will have paid off their mortgage by the time they get to state retirement age. About a third of this group have extended their term because they had home improvements and 23 per cent because interest rates have gone up.
We live on a street full of boomers, and it’s startlingly apparent to me how different our lives are. We won’t be retiring any time soon, although physically and mentally we are very ready for it.
My husband has a neurological condition which he developed during Covid. He now works remotely and so needs an office. Meanwhile I freelance; my new caregiving responsibilities make a full-time job difficult. It works on some level, but financially it’s not ideal. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that almost 27 per cent of ‘sandwich carers’ are more likely to report symptoms of mental ill-health. In addition, 41 per cent of sandwich carers looking after a relative in their home say they are unable to work at all or as much as they’d like.
“Policy makers rarely talk about this group,” says Stephen Lowe at the Just Group. “They are the forgotten generation. They are of course homeowners, even if they haven’t paid off their mortgages, but they are cash flow challenged.”
For us, the dream of downsizing and living a quieter life has had to be put on hold, at least for another few years.
