Planning for the Unexpected: Why Long-Term Care Planning Should Be a Part  of Your
Financial Plan

As part of learning more about long-term care in our community, I have visited or spoken over the phone with several assisted living and memory care facilities in Idaho, including A Better Solution in Home Care, Havenwood, Hallmark Home Care, The Cottages, and Table Rock.

Those visits reinforced an important point: there is no single cost for long-term care. Pricing can vary significantly depending on the type of care, location, level of assistance required, room arrangement, and additional services.

According to CareScout’s 2025 Cost of Care Survey, the national median cost for an assisted living community is $6,200 per month, or $74,400 per year. In Idaho, the 2024 survey reported a median assisted living cost of $55,200 per year, or approximately $4,600 per month. Actual costs can vary considerably by community and level of care.

Other forms of care can cost more. The 2025 national median cost for a private nursing home room was $129,575 per year, while a semi-private room had a median annual cost of $114,975. Home care also represents a meaningful expense, with the 2025 national median annual cost for a non-medical caregiver reaching $80,080, based on 44 hours of care per week.

These figures are national or statewide medians, not quotes for any particular facility. Actual costs can differ based on the community, services provided, and the individual’s care needs.

And the cost of care is only one part of the equation.

The Impact on a Family

For married couples, one of the biggest considerations is what happens financially if one spouse needs significant care while the other remains healthy.

The challenge isn’t simply paying the monthly care bill. A family may also need to consider housing costs, everyday living expenses, retirement income, investment assets, taxes, and the lifestyle of the healthy spouse.

For someone who is single, the questions may look different.

Who would provide care?

Where would you want to receive that care?

Who would make decisions if you could no longer make them yourself?

And how would the cost of that care be funded?

These aren’t necessarily questions that need to be answered today. But they are worth discussing before a crisis makes the decisions for you.

Long-term care planning is sometimes treated strictly as an insurance or investment question. In reality, it involves several different areas of financial and personal planning.

It can include:

• Where you would prefer to receive care
• Who you would want involved in your care
• How much of your own assets you would be comfortable using
• How care costs could affect a spouse
• How much financial responsibility you would want to place on children or other family members
• Whether insurance could play a role in funding future care
• How your estate plan and other financial decisions would work together

There is also an important distinction between planning for care and planning for a specific product.

Insurance is one possible way to address long-term care expenses, but it isn’t the only consideration. Depending on a person’s circumstances, potential approaches may include traditional long-term care insurance, life insurance policies with qualifying long-term care or accelerated benefit features or using existing assets to self-fund future care.

Each approach has different costs, benefits, limitations, and eligibility requirements. There is no universal solution that is appropriate for everyone.

One of the most useful things a person can do is simply begin the conversation before care is needed.

Talk with your spouse or family about what kind of care you would want. Discuss who you would trust to help make decisions. Review your financial resources and consider how different levels of care could affect your overall plan.

It can also be helpful to revisit the conversation periodically. Financial circumstances change. Health changes. Family circumstances change. The cost of care changes.

Planning does not mean assuming that you will need long-term care. It means recognizing that it is a possibility and deciding how you would want to handle it if it happens.

My father-in-law’s dementia journey reinforced something that financial planning can sometimes make easy to forget: behind every financial plan are real people, families, relationships, and decisions.

Long-term care planning is ultimately about more than paying for a facility. It is about understanding your choices, preparing for uncertainty, and giving yourself and your family more options if care becomes part of your story.