What this calculator shows you
- Five Types of Care
- From adult day care to a private nursing-home room
- Future Cost
- Today's national medians, grown to when care starts
- What to Set Aside
- Lump sum needed and the monthly amount to invest
- Insurance Gap
- What a policy covers and what's left
What It Costs
CareScout's 2025 survey put U.S. median costs at about $80,000 a year for an in-home aide 44 hours a week, $74,400 for assisted living, about $115,000 for a shared nursing-home room and about $130,000 for a private one. Costs vary widely by state, and they have risen faster than general inflation.
How Likely You Are to Need It
According to the federal government's long-term care site, someone turning 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some type of long-term care. Women need it longer on average (about 3.7 years) than men (about 2.2 years), and about 1 in 5 people need it for more than five years. Many people need only a little, and some need none.
What Medicare and Medicaid Pay
Medicare does not cover long-term custodial care, the help with daily activities like bathing and dressing that most long-term care is. It covers only short skilled-nursing stays after a qualifying hospital stay. Medicaid does pay for long-term care, but only once your assets are spent down to your state's limits, and it looks back five years at gifts and transfers.
Ways People Plan
The main options are paying from savings (the calculator shows how much), traditional long-term care insurance, hybrid life insurance policies with a long-term care benefit, and relying on family. Each has trade-offs in cost, flexibility and what happens if you never need care.
Questions people ask
When should I think about long-term care insurance?
Premiums are lower and approval easier in your 50s than in your 60s or 70s, and health changes can make you uninsurable. Compare a policy's cost with what self-funding would take; the calculator gives you the self-funding side.
Can I use my HSA for long-term care?
Yes. Qualified long-term care services are a qualified medical expense, and part of long-term care insurance premiums (an age-based amount) can be paid tax-free from an HSA.
Does the calculator include my state's costs?
It starts with national medians. Look up your area on CareScout's cost-of-care tool and type that yearly cost into the calculator for a local estimate.
Education only, not personalized financial, tax or investment advice. Results are estimates based on the numbers you enter; real returns vary and losses happen.