We have downsized to a smaller home and it has freed us to live the life we want

theguardian.com:

Downsizing is, let’s be clear, a privileged problem – and not one I ever expected to have. I grew up in a series of well-built council houses in Scotland at a time when Margaret Thatcher might turn up with the keys in exchange for a sports bag of dirty fivers if you exercised your right to buy. My parents never could or would. A “bought hoose” was a distant dream, even as “luxury units” mushroomed around our village, neat new boxes popping up where slag heaps once sat. They triggered my aspiration, but also made me feel ashamed.

I didn’t live in private accommodation until university. Neither of my parents were supported to finish high school, so they knew nothing about university. They couldn’t warn me about petty rules, how repairs can be late but rent never can be, and how you are always living on borrowed time. My landlady evicted me after finding me in bed with my first boyfriend – she cited the “moral” clause in my contract, which I had missed. Legally, she was in the right. Luckily, I found a shared house to move to and swore I would never be so vulnerable again. Buying became about security, not prosperity.

The classic Kirstie’n’Phil trajectory is: a one bed flat in an up-and-coming area with your first partner, followed by a two-bed flat with a new partner, then a three-bedroom house close to good schools with your eventual spouse, where you will have fever dreams of a Georgian for ever home. This, of course, assumes that there are two of you, you are having children and you have access to inherited wealth (something that will probably never be discussed, because you don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, least of all yourself).

I now live with my husband, we are not having children and our parents will not