How to use this calculator
Enter your age, the kind of care you want to plan for, how many years of it, and the age you expect care to begin. The calculator projects what that care will cost in the year you actually need it, then prices three ways to pay for it: out of your own savings, with traditional long-term care insurance, or with a single deposit into a hybrid policy that returns the money if care is never needed.
Add the single deposit you could realistically put up today. That is the only input the hybrid column uses, and it is what decides whether a hybrid covers the projected bill or falls short of it.
Read the two numbers that matter: what each path costs per dollar of care, and what your family keeps if the care is never needed. No path wins both. The whole decision is which of those two you care about more.
What long-term care actually costs
A private room in a nursing home runs a national median of $129,575 a year, or $355 a day. A semi-private room is $114,975. Assisted living is $74,400 a year, and in-home care at 44 hours a week is $80,080. Those are 2025 medians from the CareScout Cost of Care Survey, and they are national: the same room can cost half as much in one state as in another.
Three years of private nursing home care therefore costs about $389,000 at today's prices. If care begins twenty-five years from now, the same three years costs roughly $839,000 at 3% care inflation. That gap between today's price and the price in the year you need it is the reason this is a planning problem and not a budgeting problem.
How likely is it that you need care at all
About 70% of adults who live to 65 will develop a severe long-term care need before they die. But only 48% ever receive any paid care, and among everyone turning 65 the average severe need lasts 2.2 years, 2.6 years for women and 1.6 for men. Only about a quarter of older adults receive more than two years of paid care.
Both halves of that are worth sitting with. Most people will need some care, so planning for none is a bad bet. But the average need is shorter than the three years the industry usually quotes, and the real financial danger is not the average case. It is the tail: the minority whose need runs five years or longer, which is where families spend down everything they have.
- Medicare does not pay for long-term care. It covers up to 100 days of skilled nursing after a qualifying hospital stay, and only while you are improving.
- Medicaid does pay, but only after you have spent down nearly everything, and it limits where you can receive care.
- Out-of-pocket spending and Medicaid together cover the large majority of long-term care in the United States. Private insurance covers a small share.
The three ways to pay, and what each one really costs
Paying cash means paying full price for the care, but losing nothing if it never happens. Money you earmark and leave invested compounds while it waits, which is why self-funding gets cheaper the longer your runway. The catch is that it has to actually stay invested and untouched, and a long care event can drain it in a way no other household expense can.
Traditional long-term care insurance is the cheapest way to buy a dollar of care, and the only option here whose benefit grows with care costs when you buy the compound inflation option. It is cheap for a reason: if you die without a claim, every premium you paid is gone. Premiums are also not guaranteed, and carriers have raised rates on existing policyholders.
A single-deposit hybrid policy, meaning life insurance or an annuity with long-term care benefits attached, sits between the two. One deposit buys a care pool several times its size, and the deposit comes back as a death benefit or a return of premium if care never comes. The weakness is the one the brochures do not lead with: the care pool is usually a level amount while the cost of care is not. A pool worth 3.8 times your deposit today is worth less than 2 times it in real terms twenty-five years later.
Why cheapest per dollar is not the same as best
Traditional insurance almost always shows the lowest cost per dollar of care in this calculator. That is arithmetic, not a recommendation. It is cheap precisely because the insurer keeps the money in the roughly half of cases where no paid care is ever received.
Which path fits depends on something the numbers cannot tell you: whether an unused premium would feel like money wasted or like a fire insurance policy you were glad not to use. Someone with enough assets to absorb a five-year care event honestly does not need insurance. Someone whose plan collapses under a two-year event does, and the question is only which kind.
Frequently asked questions
How much does long-term care insurance cost?
For a $165,000 initial benefit pool with 3% compound growth, the 2026 AALTCI price index puts a 55-year-old man at about $2,200 a year and a 55-year-old woman at about $3,750. A couple both aged 55 pays about $5,050 combined, and a couple both 65 pays about $7,030. Premiums rise with the age you buy at, roughly 3% to 4% for each year you wait, and the same applicant can be quoted up to 56% apart by different carriers for identical cover.
Does Medicare pay for long-term care?
No. This is the most expensive misunderstanding in retirement planning. Medicare covers short skilled-nursing stays after a qualifying hospital admission, up to 100 days, and only while you are actively improving. Custodial care, meaning help with bathing, dressing, eating and moving, which is what long-term care mostly is, is not covered at any point.
What is hybrid long-term care insurance?
A life insurance policy or annuity with long-term care benefits attached. You put in a single deposit, or a short series of payments, and that buys a pool of care benefit worth several times the deposit. If you never need care, the money comes back to your family as a death benefit, or back to you as a return of premium. You are giving up the growth that money would have earned, and in most designs the care pool does not grow with care costs unless you pay extra for an inflation rider.
Is long-term care insurance worth it?
It depends on the size of your assets relative to the bill. If a five-year care event would not change your family's finances, you are already self-insured and the premium buys you little. If a two-year event would force the sale of a house or drain a surviving spouse's income, some form of cover is doing real work. The uncomfortable middle is the group with enough to lose but not enough to absorb it, and that is where this comparison is worth running carefully.
Is it better to pay cash or buy a policy?
Cash is the only option where nothing is lost either way, and it is the strongest choice when you have a long runway and the discipline to leave the money invested. A policy wins when the care event would be large relative to what you have, because insurance moves a risk you cannot absorb onto someone who can. Running both columns in this calculator with your own numbers usually makes it obvious which situation you are in.
What does a money-back guarantee on a care policy actually guarantee?
Usually that the premiums you paid come back, either to you if you surrender the policy after a vesting period, or to your beneficiaries at death. It does not guarantee any growth on that money, and the terms vary by contract: some return the full amount only after all scheduled deposits are paid, and some return a rising percentage over time. The real cost of the guarantee is the growth the deposit did not earn while it sat in the policy, which this calculator shows as a dollar figure.
How many years of care should I plan for?
Three years is the common planning default and it is what this calculator starts at, but the government's own figure for the average severe care need is 2.2 years. The reason to plan for more than the average is that the average is not what ruins people. Roughly one in seven will need care for more than five years, and that case is the one worth insuring against if you insure at all.
Can I still buy long-term care insurance in my 70s?
Traditional cover becomes hard to get after about 75, and underwriting tightens well before that: a declined application is common once health conditions appear. Hybrid policies are often issued later, but the leverage falls sharply with age, so the same deposit buys a much smaller pool at 72 than at 58. Waiting is not free, and the thing that most often ends the option is health rather than age.
Keep reading
- Long-term care insurance explained
- 9 alternatives to long-term care insurance
- Protecting assets from nursing home costs
- Retirement home vs nursing home: the differences
- What is a single premium immediate annuity?
- Learning Center: estate and inheritance
- Net worth calculator: what you could self-fund
- All free calculators
This calculator gives estimates for education only. It is not personalized financial, tax or legal advice. Check your numbers with a qualified professional before you make a decision.