How long will the money last in memory care?

The short answer

A first rough number is the savings divided by the monthly bill.
Three corrections move it: monthly income, the yearly rate increase, and what you count as savings.
In the example below, the same family gets 24, 35, or 33 months, depending on which corrections are made.
The answer is a deadline for conversations. It does not say whether Medicaid will help, or when. That takes an elder-law attorney.

Start with the rough number

Add up what your parent has in savings and investments. Divide by what the facility charges each month. If there is $150,000 and the bill is $6,200, the rough answer is 24 months.

For a sense of scale, the national median cost of an assisted living community was $6,200 a month in 2025, according to the CareScout Cost of Care Survey. Your own invoice is the number that matters. Use the full monthly amount, with any care-level fees included, not the base rate from the brochure.

A great many families are doing this sum. In a federal survey of residential care communities, about two in five residents had a diagnosis of Alzheimer disease or another dementia.

The rough number is a start. Three corrections make it something you can plan around.

Correction 1: count the income

Your parent probably still has money coming in every month: Social Security, perhaps a pension or an annuity. That income pays part of the bill, so the savings only have to cover the rest.

With $2,000 a month coming in, a $6,200 bill draws $4,200 from savings, not $6,200. The same $150,000 now lasts 35 months, not 24. Leaving income out gives you a lower bound: the real answer can only be longer.

Correction 2: the bill goes up every year

Facilities raise their rates. The national median for assisted living rose 5 percent in 2025, and CareScout notes that this was slower than the double-digit increase it reported for 2024. The cautious assumption is that income stays flat while the bill climbs.

Nobody knows next year's increase in advance, so the honest approach is to pick a figure and then test it. Ask the facility how much its rates went up in each of the last three years, and use that. Then run the sum again two points lower and two points higher. If the answer barely moves, you can stop worrying about the guess. If it moves a lot, you know which question to press the facility on.

Correction 3: be strict about what counts as savings

For this sum, count money that can actually be spent on the bill:

Checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit
Brokerage accounts
Retirement accounts, such as an IRA or a 401(k)

Use the ending balance on the latest statement for each one. Leave out the house and the car. They may matter later, but they do not pay next month's invoice.

Two cautions keep the number honest:

Retirement accounts. Money taken out of some retirement accounts is taxed as income, so less of it is spendable than the statement shows. Ask a tax professional how much.
One-time charges. A move-in or community fee comes straight off the top. Subtract it before you divide.

A worked example

One made-up household: $150,000 in savings, a $6,200 monthly bill, and $2,000 a month of income. The plan starts in October 2026.

Worked with the planner's own arithmetic. The bill rises once every 12 months, and income is held flat. A month counts only if its bill is paid in full.
What is counted	Months covered	First month that falls short
Savings divided by the bill	24	October 2028
With the $2,000 of income	35	September 2029
With income, and the bill rising 3% a year	34	August 2029
With income, and the bill rising 5% a year	33	July 2029
With income, and the bill rising 7% a year	32	June 2029

The rough number was off by most of a year. Income added eleven months, and a 5 percent yearly increase took two back. For this household the size of the increase matters less than whether income was counted at all. Your own figures may behave differently, which is the reason to run them.

What the number is for

Treat the answer as a deadline for conversations, not as a forecast. Three of them are worth having while there is still plenty of time:

With the facility. Does it accept Medicaid, and what happens to a resident whose money runs out? Here are the questions to ask.
With an elder-law attorney. Medicaid has rules that reach back in time. It reviews gifts and transfers made in the 60 months before an application, so the useful time to get advice is long before the money is gone.
With the rest of the family. A date on a calendar is easier to talk about than a worry.

Medicare is not part of the answer. Its own site says that Medicare does not pay for long-term care. What it does cover is explained here.

What this arithmetic leaves out

A spouse, whose own needs and whose share of the savings change the picture.
The home, and whether it will be sold.
A rise in the care level, which can lift the bill between yearly increases.
Long-term care insurance and veterans' benefits, if your parent has either.
Medicaid, and everything about whether and when it would help.

None of these belongs in a quick sum. Each belongs on the list you take to an elder-law attorney.

Run your own numbers

The free estimate on the home page does the rough division in your browser. The full plan makes all three corrections, shows every month in a table, and gives you the dates to act on.

Try the free estimate

Sources

CareScout, 2025 Cost of Care Survey results. Released March 2, 2026. Rates gathered July to November 2025
National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief 506: Residential Care Community Resident Characteristics, United States, 2022. Published August 2024
Medicare.gov, Long-term care
42 U.S.C. 1396p, the federal law on transfers of assets and estate recovery. Subsection (c) holds the look-back and the penalty period

This guide is general education. Rules change, and they differ by state and by household. Planning education, not legal, financial, or medical advice. Not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.