Being in the sandwich generation is costly. Here's how much.
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Madeline Mitchell, USA TODAYSat, April 11, 2026 at 9:04 AM UTC
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Deanna Adkins, 28, filed for bankruptcy in February.
Between taking in her mother-in-law nearly three years ago and having her first child shortly afterward, she said her credit card debt became unmanageable. Her 66-year-old mother-in-law was scammed into homelessness before moving in with Adkins and her husband in Florida, she said, so Adkins bought her clothes, furniture and then things for the new baby. Each month, after paying for rent and her car loans, Adkins said she didn't have any money left over.
"I couldn't keep up with [the credit card payments], so I just let everything go delinquent until I had to deal with it," she said.
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Sandwich generation caregivers like Adkins are out tens of thousands of dollars every year in care costs. Some families spend money directly on care, and other families, like Adkins', lose wages by stepping away from work to care for their loved ones. Other families spend on care and simultaneously cut work hours, compounding their losses.
The bottom line: Many sandwich generation families' bottom lines are in the red.
A new study from Choice Mutual, a life insurance agency, found the average yearly cost to support both child care and senior care is just under $104,000, and the average family accumulates $64,000 in annual debt in those circumstances. Care.com ran its own analysis, breaking down the average child care and senior care rates weekly. They found the average day care cost per week for two children is $585 and the average senior care cost for one adult is $795, totaling $1,380 per week.
"Parents are being pushed well beyond their limits by the demands of caregiving," Brad Wilson, CEO of Care.com, said in the care marketplace's latest Cost of Care Report release. "If this continues, care pressures risk pushing more parents to cut back or step away from their careers. That will only deepen financial strain and emotional stress, trapping them in a system that continues to fail them."
Deanna Adkins, 28, and her husband Kaysie Adkins, 31, and their 18-month-old son, Duncan.
Adkins stopped working when she was pregnant because her sales job ended its remote work option. Between her mother-in-law's dementia care needs and the skyrocketing costs of child care, she said it doesn't make sense for her to go back to work any time soon. Her husband works full time and puts in a good amount of overtime, but still, Adkins said, her family has paused spending on anything extra like going out to eat, vacations or even savings.
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"It's hard to have any hope that I will get out of this trap," Adkins said.
Care costs, debt 'has a ripple effect.'
Nearly 1 in 4 American adults are in the sandwich generation, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Several recent reports have found this group − which is mostly made up of women − is struggling emotionally, health-wise and financially.
The Choice Mutual study found the sandwich generation is under the most financial pressure in Hawaii, Vermont, Oklahoma, Montana and Maine. In Vermont, child and senior care costs ($138,752 annually) exceed the median household income ($137,525).
A 2025 study from Finance of America, a mortgage lender, of about 2,000 adults found 69% of sandwich caregivers feel financially exhausted and 76% struggle with the fears and emotions associated with caring for a parent. BioLife, a plasma services company, published a similar study around the same time and found most sandwich generation caregivers balance their responsibilities with full-time jobs and average 24 hours of caregiving each week. About 28% of these caregivers spend $1,000 or more on caregiving each month, and nearly half have reduced their retirement contributions because of the financial strain of caregiving.
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"People are having children later in life, so they've found themselves caring for their aging parent and their young children," said Lakelyn Eichenberger, a gerontologist and caregiver advocate at Home Instead, a senior in-home care network. The financial impact of that "has a ripple effect. It's preventing them from saving for their own retirement or perhaps taking away from their income to do things like go on family vacations or save for their child's tuition."
Stressed young woman has financial problems with credit card debt to pay crucial show concept of bad personal money and mortgage pay management crisis.
Juggling child and senior care can feel so overwhelming, Eichenberger said, that many in the sandwich generation are turning down job promotions or stepping back to part-time work.
Samantha Davenport, 45, just starting working part time again as an ER nurse after being away from work for a year to care for her 74-year-old mother with Stage 4 COPD and her children, including a 9-year-old son with disabilities. Davenport is also paid $23 per hour for 20 hours of caregiving work per month for her son, through North Carolina's Medicaid program for home and community-based care. Her husband works full time, but still, she said, it's been a difficult time for their family.
"The electric bills have become higher, the food costs have become higher. I mean, just everything in general has just become more [expensive]," she said. "And just not having two incomes in the household has been stressful."
Adkins, who now has a toddler, wants to return to work. She anticipates her mother-in-law's needs will only grow, even by the time her son starts school. She's looked at adult day care options for her mother-in-law in the meantime, but the program she found only supports families for five hours a day and costs $100 per day with insurance.
"Even that, with schedules and jobs, I couldn't find anything that I'd be able to work after dropping off and picking her up," she said.
Having open conversations about care early on is key
A lot of adult children, including Adkins and Davenport, want to promise their parents that they will "never put them in a nursing home," Eichenberger said. But for many families, that's just not realistic.
"That actually is doing more harm than good because we don't know what the future holds," she said.
There are a lot of different care facilities and in-home care options for aging parents, Eichenberger said. It's important to have open, honest conversations early so that sandwich generation caregivers can plan accordingly and avoid financial stress along the way. Home Instead has an online guide to help families have those conversations.
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"I think so many families wait until they're in crisis to make any sort of decision around care," Eichenberger said. "And a lot of times, in those crisis moments, you have more limited options. And so you might end up spending more money because you haven't had time to look at all the options, weigh the financial implications − you just have to address the immediate need."
Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here's how much care costs for those in the sandwich generation
Source: “AOL Money”
