Caregiving Cost & Hours Calculator

Most families have never added it up. Put in the hours each person gives and what you're spending out of pocket, and this shows the annual total — and how it's split. Free, no signup, and nothing you type leaves your browser.

Who's helping, and how much

One row per person who does any of the caring — including you. Estimate an ordinary week, not the worst one.

What it costs out of pocket

Money the family spends that insurance doesn't cover. Leave anything blank if it doesn't apply — a blank is treated as zero, not as a guess.

Per month — copays, equipment, in-home help

Per month — fuel, flights, parking, rides

Per month — food, bills, rent you help cover

Past 12 months — grab bars, ramps, a stairlift

Past 12 months — unpaid leave, dropped hours

Per month

The maths runs in your browser and we don't store your figures. If you create a share link, the numbers are encoded in the web address itself — so opening that link puts them in browser history and in ordinary server logs, like any URL.

Your results

What your family gives in a year
$0
 
Unpaid time
$0
 
Out of pocket
$0
 
Who carries what
Person Hours / week Hours / year Share of the time
Total 0 0 100%

The number is only half the picture. The other half is that it's rarely split the way anyone intended — and nobody can fix a split they can't see.

Share the load with your family

How this calculator works

Two things get added together, because a family's caregiving costs it both money and time — and only one of them ever shows up on a bank statement.

  • Out-of-pocket spending is the straightforward half. Monthly figures are multiplied by twelve; the one-off boxes — home modifications, lost income — are taken as entered.
  • Unpaid hours are valued at $20.41 an hour. That is not a number we picked. It is the average economic value of an hour of family caregiving in 2024, from AARP's Valuing the Invaluable 2026 report, which put 59 million caregivers, 49.5 billion hours and just over $1 trillion of unpaid care on the same page.

Nothing is pre-filled. Every box starts empty, because a default you didn't choose quietly becomes a number you didn't mean — and this is a figure people take to family conversations.

Why the hours matter as much as the money

Ask a family what caregiving costs and you'll get a receipts answer: the copays, the flights, the grab bars. That answer is usually the smaller half.

Twelve hours a week is not a favor. Over a year it is more than six hundred hours — the better part of four months of full-time work — and it is almost always one person doing most of it while everyone else is genuinely, sincerely willing to help if asked. The hours column in the table above is usually the one that changes the conversation, because it is the first time anyone has seen the split written down.

What counts as a caregiving cost

People undercount, consistently, and in predictable places. Worth including:

  • The groceries and bills you quietly cover. Household support is one of the most common categories and one of the least tracked.
  • Travel that doesn't feel like travel — the twenty-minute drive, four times a week, that you stopped noticing a year ago.
  • Income you gave up. Unpaid leave, declined shifts, the promotion you didn't put your name in for.
  • Time on the phone. Insurance, pharmacies, scheduling. It is caregiving even when nobody is in the room.

If you want the fuller picture of where this lands financially, the hidden cost of family caregiving goes through what nobody tells you about the money.

What to do with the number

A total on its own is just a heavier feeling. What makes it useful is the split — and a specific ask that follows from it.

  • Send the link to whoever else is involved. A shared number is harder to argue with than a shared impression.
  • Convert one row into one handoff. Not "help more" — one named task, one person, one day of the week. Splitting caregiving duties among siblings covers how to make that stick.
  • Check what it's costing you personally. If the hours column has your name on most of it, the caregiver burnout quiz takes two minutes.

Common questions about caregiving costs

It varies enormously with the level of care, but AARP's 2021 Caregiving Out-of-Pocket Costs Study found family caregivers spent an average of $7,242 a year out of pocket — around 26% of their income. That figure covers cash spending only. It does not count the unpaid hours, which for most families are worth considerably more than the receipts.
Because leaving it at zero is the more misleading choice. Unpaid care is real work that would otherwise be bought, and pricing it makes the scale visible. We use $20.41 an hour, the average value of a family caregiving hour in 2024 from AARP's Valuing the Invaluable 2026 report, rather than a number of our own.
We store nothing. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and using the calculator on its own sends your figures nowhere. The share link is the exception worth understanding: it encodes the numbers in the web address, so when that link is opened they appear in browser history and in ordinary web server logs, the same as any URL. That is the trade for a share feature that needs no account and no database — and it is why you should only send the link to people you would tell anyway.
Yes. Scheduling, insurance calls, pharmacy runs, and the mental work of keeping track are all caregiving, and they are the hours families most often leave out. If you are the person who knows what happens next, that knowing is work — count it.
Sometimes — you may be able to claim a parent as a dependent, deduct qualifying medical expenses, or use a Dependent Care FSA, and eligibility depends on income, support share, and what you spent it on. This calculator is not tax advice and does not produce a deductible figure. Take the itemised breakdown to a tax professional or check IRS Publication 502.
That is the common case, and seeing it as a percentage is usually the point at which something changes. An uneven split is not automatically unfair — distance, health, and money differ between siblings. What is unfair is when nobody has ever looked at the numbers, so the person carrying most of it is the only one who knows.