How Long Will Mom's Savings Last Paying for Home Care in Massachusetts?

Nobody will give you this number. Agencies will not publish a rate, so you cannot build the math, so you end up guessing. Here is the math with our actual rate in it.

The short version

Our home health aide rate is $45 an hour , one to eight hours a day, no minimum contract. Here is roughly how long a pot of money lasts if the care is paid entirely out of savings and nothing else comes in.

Starting with $100,000

• Three hours twice a week, about $1,170 a month: roughly 7 years
• Two hours a day, about $2,730 a month: roughly 3 years
• Three hours a day, about $4,095 a month: roughly 2 years
• Four hours a day, about $5,460 a month: roughly 18 months
• Six hours a day, about $8,200 a month: roughly 12 months
• Eight hours a day, about $10,900 a month: roughly 9 months
• Every night at $540 a night, about $16,200 a month: roughly 6 months
• Around the clock at $1,080 a day, about $32,800 a month: roughly 3 months

Starting with $250,000

• Three hours twice a week: roughly 17 years
• Two hours a day: roughly 7 and a half years
• Three hours a day: roughly 5 years
• Four hours a day: roughly 3 years and 9 months
• Six hours a day: roughly 2 and a half years
• Eight hours a day: roughly 2 years
• Around the clock: roughly 7 months

If those numbers landed badly, keep reading, because almost every family we meet is doing this calculation wrong in the same direction.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Families subtract the whole cost of care from savings. That is not what happens. Your mother has income, and that income keeps arriving every month whether she is paying for care or not.

What actually drains savings is the gap between the care bill and the money left over after her ordinary living costs. Suppose she takes in $2,600 a month from Social Security and a small pension, and her house, food, utilities, insurance and medications run $1,900. That leaves $700 a month of real income available for care.

Now put her on two hours a day at $2,730 a month. The savings are not covering $2,730. They are covering $2,030. Her $100,000 does not last 3 years at that rate. It lasts closer to 4. At three hours twice a week, $1,170 a month, the gap is $470 and the money lasts well over a decade.

So before you decide anything, write down two numbers. Monthly income in. Monthly living costs out. The difference is your real budget for care, and the care bill only eats savings above that line.

Four things that are not in the savings number

Most families count the bank account and stop. These four are real money and they change the runway substantially.

• A long term care policy. Dig through the filing cabinet. People bought these in the nineties and forgot. See how long term care insurance pays for a home aide.
• VA Aid and Attendance. If she or her late husband served during a qualifying wartime period, this is a monthly benefit that goes toward care. Our page on VA Aid and Attendance for home care covers it.
• The house. Equity is not savings, but it is money, and a reverse mortgage is one way people fund years of care without selling.
• Family contribution. Four siblings at $250 a month each is $1,000, which is a lot of hours. It is an awkward conversation and it is usually worth having.

Does the money last longer at home or in a facility?

At low and moderate hours, home is dramatically cheaper. The crossover happens when the hours get long. We ran that comparison against Massachusetts facility costs on our home care cost page, and the honest answer is that home care costs less than a nursing home until you are buying somewhere around eleven hours a day.

If your mother needs two to six hours a day, home wins on money and she gets to stay in her own house. If she genuinely needs someone awake and present around the clock, the math flips and it is worth looking honestly at home care versus assisted living.

How to stretch the runway without cutting care that matters

• Buy the hours that prevent a hospital stay, not the hours that feel reassuring. A shower done safely and a real meal cooked beat an extra afternoon of company every time.
• Start smaller than you think and add. Families who start at four hours a day often discover two would have done it. Going up is easy. Going down feels like taking something away.
• Use short visits. Because we bill one hour at a time with no weekly minimum, three one hour bath visits a week is about $585 a month, and that is the single highest value schedule we sell.
• Front load after a hospital stay, then shrink. The first two weeks home need real coverage. Week six usually does not.
• Cover the one shift that fails. If nights are the problem, buy nights and nothing else.

What about MassHealth later?

Plenty of families pay privately for a stretch and later qualify for state help as assets come down. That is a normal path and nothing about paying privately now prevents it.

What can cause trouble is giving money away, transferring the house, or moving assets around to speed eligibility up. MassHealth looks back at transfers and the rules are not intuitive. Talk to an elder law attorney before you move anything. We are a home care company and we are not financial advisors, so treat everything on this page as arithmetic to take to a professional, not as a plan.

Want this run with your actual numbers?

Call 781 957 8076 or email info@careremedyinc.com. Tell us what she needs help with and roughly what is coming in each month, and we will tell you what schedule fits and what it costs. We will also tell you if the schedule you are asking for is more than she needs, because a client who runs out of money in nine months is no good to anybody.

We serve Greater Boston from Woburn, Western Massachusetts from Springfield, and the South Shore from Brockton.