The Key to Affordable Living Is Moving In With Your Sibling
It’s getting harder to rent or buy a home. So more people are living with a brother or sister.
3 min
Grant Gechtman had a dilemma.
He was preparing to meet a date at his place when he realized he hadn’t mentioned something important: He has an identical twin brother, Dylan, who lives with him.
Grant and Dylan Gechtman , 25, share a rented three-bedroom home in Fremont, Calif. They do almost everything else together too. They work as senior associate scientists at the same pharmaceutical company, share a Mazda CX-5, and even joined the same Jewish fraternity in college.
They have another roommate, college friend Vedant Vaidya —whom their co-workers sometimes call the “third twin”—but they don’t view it as a permanent situation.
“We definitely don’t want to live in a big house with both of our wives and stuff like that,” said Dylan.
More adults have moved in with their siblings in recent years, a reflection of how it is becoming harder and more expensive to buy a home or make the rent. With Americans living longer and having fewer children —and divorcing late in life —siblings can be the closest people left for support.
There are about 1.1 million adults ages 50 and older living with a sibling, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research. That represents about 1.6% of that age group in 2022, up from about 1.3% in 2012.
There are also about 1.9 million adults ages 18 to 29 living with a sibling. That works out to about 3.6% of that cohort.
“Often when young adults talk about moving back in with their parents, there’s a sense of defeat,” said Krista Westrick-Payne, the center’s assistant director. “Moving in with a sibling…may feel less like a failure.”
Bowling Green’s analysis didn’t include those in their 30s or 40s.
Sherry Campbell , a certified financial planner, has noticed a small yet significant rise in clients seeking guidance on managing finances while owning a home with siblings. Most of her clients are women over 50, looking for emotional and financial support to get through a divorce.
“Men will a lot of times remarry, and women will not remarry,” Campbell said. “So that causes them to search for other ways to have that second income.”
Rooming with a brother or sister can come with challenges. Just because two people were raised the same way doesn’t mean they have the same views about cleaning, privacy or dating. And it is a lot harder to kick a roomie off the lease when you are blood relatives.
But there are perks too. The person in the other room already knows your life story; no need to explain it. And lots of sibmates said it was easier to get over a fight with a sibling than with a friend—perhaps because of the years of experience.
“Obviously you know what you’re getting into,” said Ben Karlin , who recently moved into the rented two-bedroom apartment of his triplet sister, Allison Karlin . “We kind of had a test run for 18 years.”
Ben and Allison have been living together in New York City since September. Their fridge is small, so Ben is careful about what he buys, picking up apples one trip and grapes the next. They don’t share groceries—only condiments.
“Our mom said before we moved in we have to operate like we’re not siblings,” said Ben, a 26-year-old publicist. “I feel like we make an effort.”
They enjoy having their grandparents just a few minutes away. Other family is close by as well. Their other brother, Jason, lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Boston with his girlfriend. He’s jealous of how much time Allison and Ben get to spend with the extended family.
“It’s harder sometimes to feel closer to family members when they’re not down the hall,” Jason said.
‘The modern-day Golden Girls’
The pandemic sparked a big run-up in home prices, and mortgage rates remain high even though the Federal Reserve has started cutting its benchmark interest rate. That has made the idea of buying a home with friends or family members a lot more enticing for many Americans.
Sisters Cheryl Sutton and Sandra Sutton recently bought a five-bedroom home in Portland, Ore., with their best friend. They were ready to leave California and wanted more space for their three dogs.
They knew it would work because they all have been living together for the past 25 years, leveraging each move into an upgrade. Each year, they travel somewhere new together. Next year, they’re going to Scotland. They call themselves the modern-day Golden Girls.
“At this point, anybody that gets married, they’re gonna have to just take the other two as well,” said Sandra, a 52-year-old talent coordinator for a tech company. “There’s no plans to not live together.”
Lauren Rogers , a real-estate agent in Southern California, recently sold a two-bedroom condo in Upland, Calif., for $603,000 to two brothers. The older brother, in his mid-30s, couldn’t afford to buy on his own. So his mother proposed the idea of buying with his younger brother, who is in his late 20s.
Rogers thought it was a great idea to invest together at an early age but says things might change as they get older. “I just told them, ‘This is not your forever home, but it’s your stepping point to get to the next,’” she said.
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At least for people who carry the APOE4 genetic variant, a juicy steak could keep the brain healthy.
3 min
Must even steak be politicised? The American Heart Association recently recommended eating more “plant-based” protein in a move to counter the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidelines calling for more red meat.
Few would argue that eating a Big Mac a day is good for you.
On the other hand, growing evidence, including a study last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that eating more meat—particularly unprocessed red meat—can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s in the quarter or so of people with a particular genetic predisposition.
The APOE4 gene variant is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s.
You inherit one copy of the APOE gene from each parent. The most common variant is APOE3; the least is APOE2.
The latter carries a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while the former is neutral. A quarter of people carry one copy of the APOE4 variant, and about 2% carry two.
APOE4 is more common among people with Northern European and African ancestry. In Europe the variant increases with latitude, and is present in as many as 27% of people in northern countries versus 4% in southern ones. God smiled on the Italians and Greeks.
For unknown reasons, the APOE4 variant increases the risk of Alzheimer’s far more for women than men.
Women’s risk multiplies roughly fourfold if they have one copy and tenfold if they have two. Men with a single copy show little if any higher risk, while those with two face four times the risk.
What makes APOE4 so pernicious? Scientists don’t know exactly, but the variant is also associated with higher cholesterol levels—even among thin people who eat healthily.
Scientists have found that cholesterol builds up in brain cells of APOE4 carriers, which can disrupt communications between neurons and generate amyloid plaque, an Alzheimer’s hallmark.
The Heart Association’s recommendation to eat less red meat may be sound advice for people with high cholesterol caused by indulgent diets.
But a diet high in red meat may be better for the brains of APOE4 carriers.
In the JAMA study, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined how diet, particularly meat consumption, affects dementia risk among seniors with the different APOE variants.
Higher consumption of meat, especially unprocessed red meat, was associated with significantly lower dementia risk for APOE4 carriers.
APOE4 carriers who consumed the most meat—the equivalent of 4.5 ounces a day—were no more likely to develop dementia than noncarriers. (
The study controlled for other variables that are known to affect Alzheimer’s risk including sex, age, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education.)
APOE4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat were at significantly lower risk of dying over the study’s 15-year period and had lower cholesterol than carriers who ate less. Go figure. Noncarriers, however, didn’tenjoy similar benefits from eating more red meat.
The study’s findings are consistent with two large U.K. studies.
One found that each additional 50 grams of red meat (equivalent to half a hamburger patty) that an APOE4 carrier consumed each day was associated with a 36% reduced risk of dementia.
The other found that older women who carried the APOE4 variant and consumed at least one serving a day of unprocessed red meat had a cognitive advantage over carriers who ate less than half a serving, and that this advantage was of roughly equal magnitude to the cognitive disadvantage observed among APOE4 carriers in general.
In all three studies, eating more red meat appeared to negate the increased genetic risk of APOE4.
Perhaps one reason men with the variant are at lower Alzheimer’s risk than women is that men eat more red meat.
These findings might cause chagrin to women who rag their husbands about ordering the rib-eye instead of the heart-healthy salmon.
But remember, the cognitive benefits of eating more red meat appear isolated to APOE4 carriers.
Nutrition is complicated, and categorical recommendations—other than perhaps to avoid nutritionally devoid foods—would best be avoided by governments and health bodies.
Readers can order an at-home test from any number of companies to screen for the APOE4 variant.
The Swedish researchers hypothesize that APOE4 carriers may be evolutionarily adapted to carnivorous diets, since the variant is believed to have emerged between one million and six million years ago during a “hypercarnivorous” period in human history.
The other two APOE variants originated more recently, during eras when humans ate more plants.
APOE4 carriers may absorb more nutrients from meat than plants, the researchers surmise. Vitamin B12—low levels have been associated with cognitive decline—isn’t naturally present in plant-based foods but is abundant in red meat.
Foods high in phytates (such as grains and beans) can interfere with absorption of zinc and iron (also high in red meat), which naturally declines with age. So maybe don’t chuck your steak yet.
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