How Long a Quarter Million Dollars Lasts in Long-Term Care, by State

How to read this

Every row divides $250,000 by twelve times the state's published 2025 monthly median for that setting, under cost model cost-model-v1.4.0. The composite is the plain average of the three results, which is a planning yardstick rather than a prediction: most families move through settings in sequence instead of paying for all three.

The spread between states is mostly a labor-market spread. In-home care and nursing home care are priced from wages first, and the states at the top of this table are the states where aides and nurses earn least.

A savings figure is not the whole budget. Social Security, a pension, home equity, long-term care insurance, veterans benefits and Medicaid all change how long the money lasts. The table measures the price of care against one fixed sum, nothing more.

Methodology

For every state where we publish a monthly median for all three settings, we divide the savings figure by twelve times each median to get the years it covers. In-home care uses the survey's own full-time week as its hours basis, the same basis as every cost page on this site, so the home care row here matches the figure a family sees when they look up their own state.

The composite is the plain average of the three results. It is a planning yardstick, not a forecast: families usually move through settings in sequence rather than paying for all three at once, and a household's real runway depends on income, equity, insurance and public programs that this table deliberately leaves out.

States missing any one of the three medians are absent rather than estimated. Each row prints the medians it divided and the model period and version behind them.

Sitewide cost and data method: Methodology · Data sources · Corrections

What this cannot tell you

The medians are modeled statewide figures. A named community in the same state can sit well above or below them, assisted living usually adds a care-level charge to its base rate, and nursing home private rooms cost more than the blended figure used here.

The savings figure is a round number chosen for comparability, not a typical balance. Most households facing a care decision hold less in liquid savings and more in a home, and home equity does not appear in this arithmetic.

Care costs rise over a multi-year stay and the arithmetic holds them flat. A real runway at today's prices is longer than the runway a family will experience.

The three-setting average weighs a year of home care, a year of assisted living and a year of nursing care equally, which no family's path does. Read it as a way to rank states, and read the setting columns for the figure that matches a real situation.