Free tool
How many hours of your parent's week are uncovered
Count the hours your parent should not be alone, subtract everyone's actual contribution, and see what is left before the next family meeting.
Free tool, no sign up
How long will the money last at this level of home care
Put the aide hours, the hourly rate and your parent's monthly income in one place and see the real gap and the runway behind it.
Agencies quote an hourly rate. Families budget in months. The translation between the two is where plans fall apart, usually about a year in, when the savings that felt substantial turn out to have been covering a gap of eleven hundred dollars every single month.
This calculator does that translation. It multiplies your weekly paid hours by the rate across an average month of 4.33 weeks, adds the other care spending families forget, subtracts your parent's income and any long term care or VA benefit, and tells you how many months the money set aside for care will cover the difference.
Your result
Paid care per month
$2,858
Weekly hours times the rate across an average month of 4.33 weeks.
Total monthly care spend
$3,308
Paid caregiver hours plus the supplies, copays and transportation around them.
Monthly gap after income
$1,208
What the family covers each month once income and any benefit are applied.
Months the savings cover
49.7
How long the earmarked savings last at this gap, capped when income already covers the cost.
These figures are a planning estimate, not a quote, and they assume the current hours hold steady rather than rising as your parent needs more help.
The costs families leave out
The hourly rate is the number everyone repeats, and it is rarely the whole bill. Shift minimums mean a two hour visit is often billed as four. Holidays and weekends carry a different rate at many agencies. Mileage for errands, a live in arrangement's room and board, and the overtime that appears when one caregiver covers more than forty hours a week all land on the invoice.
Then there is everything that is not the aide. Incontinence supplies, a shower chair, the pharmacy copays after a plan change, gas for the fifty mile round trip to the neurologist, and the meals someone buys because there was no time to cook. Put a real number in the other costs field. Four hundred fifty dollars a month is a common floor, not a ceiling.
What to do when the runway is short
A runway under twenty four months is a signal to start the slow paperwork now rather than later. That usually means checking whether your parent qualifies for a Medicaid home and community based services waiver, which has an application timeline measured in months, and finding out whether your state pays a family caregiver through a structured family caregiving or consumer directed program.
It is also worth testing cheaper coverage in the calculator. An adult day program covering three weekdays often costs less per hour than one to one aide time and gives your parent something an aide cannot: other people. Lower the paid aide hours, add the day program hours to your coverage plan, and see what happens to the gap.
Questions about this calculator
Why 4.33 weeks instead of four?
A month averages about 4.33 weeks, and using four undercounts the annual bill by roughly a month of care. Families who budget at four weeks are usually surprised in the fall when the money runs out earlier than planned. The extra fraction is real money at these rates.
Should I include what family members do for free?
Not in this calculator, which is about cash out the door. Unpaid family hours belong in the coverage gap calculator, where they show up as hours covered. Keeping the two separate stops a family from mistaking free labor for a solved budget.
Does this work for assisted living instead of home care?
Partly. Put the monthly community fee in the other monthly costs field and set the paid aide hours to zero, then add any hours of private aide you expect on top. Many assisted living residents still hire a few hours a week for bathing or escorting to meals.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The one page care handoff sheet for your parent's home
Fill this in once, keep it on the refrigerator, and any sibling, aide or paramedic who walks in can take over without a phone call.
Turn that figure into a schedule someone owns
The number above is only as honest as the week behind it, and right now that week lives in a group text and one sibling's memory. In a short demo we will put your parent's doses, rides and paid aide hours into one shared log and see how the figure moves once the real coverage is written down. The calculator stays free and open whether or not you ever book that call.