Retirement Community Comparison Calculator

Type A (Life Care) charges the same monthly fee whether you're in independent living or receiving skilled nursing care, so the years-needing-care split between the two doesn't change the total -- that flat-fee structure across care levels is the entire premise of a life-care contract. Type B and Type C, by contrast, charge a higher rate once you need assisted living or nursing care, so for those two contract types, shifting more years into the higher-care category directly raises the total cost.

Total years of stay is one of the two largest levers on Type A's net cost, along with Type A's own monthly fee -- every additional year adds another full year of inflated monthly fees to the running total. Type B's and Type C's entrance fees, monthly fees, and market care rate, by contrast, have zero effect on Type A's number at all, because each contract type is calculated as a fully separate scenario before the three totals are compared.

If you need no higher-level care at all, Type C (Fee-for-Service) is typically the least expensive of the three in this calculator, since it usually carries the lowest entrance fee and its market care rate -- the input that makes it expensive if you do need higher care -- never gets triggered. Type A's higher entrance fee is effectively insurance against needing extensive care later, so if that need never materializes, you're paying for protection you didn't use.

Total net cost only captures the dollars in this model; it doesn't score the community's financial health or its ability to actually deliver on a life-care contract's promise decades from now, something industry analysts weigh as heavily as price for Type A in particular. It also leaves out how entrance-fee tax treatment differs by state and contract structure, which can shift the real after-tax comparison independent of anything this calculator computes from the dollar figures you enter.