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financial hardship

Modern Families

Husband who lost his job reluctantly moves family in with mother-in-law. Pure joy ensued.

Families moving in together isn't failure. Sometimes it's their greatest success.

Katie Bunton shares her family's journey with multigenerational living.

Multigenerational living is not as common in our independent, self-sufficient American culture–but Instagrammer Katie Bunton (@ktbunton) is hoping her experience will open more people's minds to it. Bunton, her husband Harry, and their twin boys recently moved in with their mother-in-law Louella Beale (@nana_lulu_love) after experiencing financial hardship, and opened up about the experience with her followers.

"We moved in with my MIL (mother-in-law) 2 months ago when my husband lost his job and I just keep thinking...it must have taken a lot of propaganda to make us believe this was failure," she writes in the video's caption.

In the inspiring video, Bunton showed her viewers some of the incredible benefits they've had with the extra support of Nana Lulu. From making and eating meals together to time spent in the garden and doing other menial daily tasks, she shows that life has truly improved–even though society may look at their living situation differently. "So you’re telling me, this isn’t how it was supposed to be all along ? #multigenerationalliving with @nana_lulu_love 🫶🏽," she captioned the video.

Viewers responded with great delight and support.

"I wholeheartedly believe that we’re supposed to be living with family❤️," one wrote.

Another added, "It’s the best. My grandmother and mother live with us. I could never asked for a better support system. I would never ever live without multiple generations in the same house or compound."

Another offered, "This has forever been my dream 😢 I’m with you, we’ve been lied to in the west. Intergenerational living is beautiful and to me the gold standard for living in harmony and raising children well ❤️."

Nana Lulu herself even commented, "🥹🥹😭😍😍 I’m such a lucky lucky so and so. 🙏🏽Thank you 🙏🏽 thank you 🙏🏽 thank you 🙏🏽 for the beautiful blessings of family love. 💛💛💛💛"

In another video, Bunton shared a vlog with her followers sharing more about living with her MIL and the benefits of living multi-generationally. "You’re telling me we could have both parents present and hands on, all we have to do is just lower our cost of living? spend less money? And pool our resources with family? 🤯" she wrote.

In the video, she explains that her family moved in with Nana Lulu at the end of January 2025. "It's taken us quite a while to get into the swing of things. We moved into a new town as well," she adds.

Their routine has completely changed, but in a good way. She has even noticed positive changes in her relationship. "My husband has felt happier, lighter and more himself than I have ever seen him," she says.

The second video also got tons of positive comments from viewers who are loving the new living situation.

"This is my definition of rich ❤️," one wrote.

Another offered, "As someone that doesn’t have a MIL to fall back on, I just want you to know that I’m so happy you have that. So happy you know the peace that extended family can bring and that you/your husband have the support you need to get to the next stage 🫶🏼💕."

And this commentor praised the situation while sharing about their own: "My husband and I live with my parents. They built us a basement apartment and I am forever grateful to them not only for that but for the bond it has allowed them to have with my kiddos ❤️ I definitely get caught up thinking we’ve done something wrong but we’ve just done what we can with the cards we are dealt. I am so grateful for my village."

This article originally appeared in March.

When customers at one San Francisco grocery store went to the checkout one day, they were outraged. The cost of their groceries had increased astronomically.

Look, we've all cringed once or twice while the cashier rings up the fancy yogurt we decided to get last minute because "screw it, I wanna eat fancy yogurt," but this wasn't a few pennies or dollars here and there. This was $25 for a box of spinach and $40 for a loaf of bread and some cigarettes.

The cost of their groceries had inflated. But why?

It was all part of a social experiment meant to show people what buying groceries is like for people living in poverty.

1 in 10 families in the Bay Area live on $24,300 or less per year, below the poverty line and well below the Bay Area average. The experiment was set up by Tipping Point Community, a poverty relief organization, which set up a register in a Nob Hill grocery store where customers checking out would be given "poverty line prices," or prices that were proportionally representative to living in poverty.

"If eggs cost $6 for someone living on the poverty line, or 1.4% of their weekly salary, the adjusted price would be $29.64 for someone living on the average San Francisco salary," TPC's website explains.

Tipping Point also set up a website where anyone can plug in their annual salary and see what grocery shopping would be like if they lived in poverty.

While those skyrocketed prices were temporarily frustrating for the people trying to buy groceries, the sticker shock they experienced is one millions of Americans face every day.

In 2015, over 43 million people in the United States were living in poverty. That's down 1.2% from 2014 but is still a massive number. Sticker shock doesn't just affect people below the poverty line either. According to the Corporation for Enterprise Development, nearly half of all Americans are one financial shock — a job loss, a medical emergency, etc. — away from poverty. Feeling financial discomfort while you shop for basic needs is something that could happen to any of us.

The income gap between the rich and poor in the United States is ever-widening, and closing it would require landmark financial restructuring, or at least some out-of-the-box thinking.

If you had to pay $30 for cold medicine or $15 for a gallon of milk, you might be outraged like the folks in the video. Most of all though, you'd want to do something about it. You'd want somebody to recognize that it's an unfair burden on you and your family.

You'd want things to change.

Watch people react to poverty line prices here: