This week’s mood: sticker shock. A new AARP report looked at what older adults are paying out of pocket for long-term services and supports — think home health aides, homemaker services, adult day care, assisted living, and nursing homes. The numbers are, in technical terms, bananas.
Between 2019 and 2024, the cost of the most commonly used home and community-based services rose by nearly 50 percent. Meanwhile, median household income for adults 65 and older rose just 22 percent. Translation: the dream of Mom staying in her house with a little extra help is getting more expensive by the minute.
ICYMI (in case you missed it)
💊 A U.S. Senate committee says some seniors may be paying higher premiums due to alleged Medicare Advantage overpayments to insurers.
💼 As more Americans juggle jobs and caregiving, companies are starting to expand benefits like paid leave, flexible schedules, and elder care support, according to reporting from Associated Press.
🚿 The Family Caregiver Alliance released new resources to help families navigate two of dementia caregiving’s toughest challenges: behavior changes and difficult family dynamics.
🗽 Gray Monster announced its first in-person event. Learn more here, additional details soon.
Care Costs How Much?
Nothing says adulthood quite like asking Siri “what does assisted living cost?” and then needing to lie down.
AARP’s Public Policy Institute released their latest report on long-term care services and it reads like a real-life horror story. In 2024, the median annual cost of homemaker services hit $51,480. A home health aide cost $53,040. Assisted living came in at $70,800. A semiprivate nursing home room ran $111,325, and a private room hit $127,750. For context, the median income for a household headed by someone 65 or older was $59,648. The average annual Social Security benefit for retired workers was $23,700. So yes, the math isn’t great. And no, your dad insisting he is “doing just fine” does not change it.
The frustrating part? The things families usually want first, help at home, a few hours here and there, support that keeps someone independent longer, is exactly where costs have surged the most. Back in the 2010s, incomes actually rose faster than care costs. That is no longer the case. The script has flipped.
AARP also breaks the numbers down another way: how many months of care a median older household income can actually cover. Adult day services stretch the farthest at 27.5 months. Homemaker services cover 13.9 months. Home health aide care covers 13.5. Assisted living gets you 10.1. A semiprivate nursing home room? 6.4 months. A private room? 5.6. In other words, if your plan was “we’ll figure it out when we need it,” that plan could get very expensive very fast.
And before your uninformed cousin says, “Well, Dad has savings,” take a deep breath. Median financial assets for households age 75 and older were just $50,000. That is roughly enough to get through about a year of part-time home care, or only a few months in assisted living or a nursing home. Which helps explain why so much of this system still runs on unpaid family labor and an adult child crying in the CVS parking lot.
None of this means aging in place is impossible. It does, however, highlight the need for families to stop treating care planning like a rainy day project they’ll get to later.
What to do now before care gets even more expensive:
Don’t wait for a crisis to make a plan. Aging in place is a preference, not a strategy. Ask now what kind of help your mom would actually accept, how much she may need to achieve her goals, and who can realistically help out if and when things change.
Get the real numbers before you need them. Price out home care, adult day programs, respite care, and assisted living in her area now, not from the ER. Ask about minimum hours, waitlists, assessments, and how often rates go up.
Build the bench beforehand. Decide who can help with what, rides, meals, bills, appointments, tech, house stuff, and identify paid backup before the default becomes one overwhelmed adult child doing everything.
People say family caregivers are essential and they’re not wrong. The subtext is pretty clear: families are essential because the formal system is too expensive to function without them.
What’s Good
Helpful care-focused finds we’ve identified and researched so you don’t have to.
No Wrong Door is a federally backed initiative led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Administration for Community Living, in partnership with CMS and the Veterans Health Administration.
Its goal is simple: give older adults, people with disabilities, and their caregivers one place to start when they need help finding long-term care services and support, without having to call every agency and repeating the same story each time.
Pop Quiz
You can’t fail this one. Answers and another quiz drop next week.
What kind of caregiver are you?
- 🦅 Solo and handling it — no backup, no brother
- 🤝 Tag-teaming it — sharing the load with a sibling
- 📞 Remote control — I coordinate from afar and stress locally
- 🏠 Full-time, live-in — caregiving is basically my second job
- 👶 Sandwich generation — raising kids and caring for a parent simultaneously
- 🆕 Newly drafted — this just became my life and I'm still catching up
Parenting Parents
You said it. This week’s submissions.
"Caregiving is grief, sadness, frustration, gratitude. Repeat."
"I try to not let my mom's mood or reactions dictate how I feel, but they often do."
"I finally got my mom to agree to a Care Manager! So now I'll have some backup."
"I asked my mom if she needed anything. She said a new brain and a new daughter."
"Another passive aggressive "hope I see you soon" after a long day of work and parenting."
