Illinois Private-Pay Runway Calculator: the facts

1. Illinois Medicaid pays for nursing-home care once countable assets are down to $17,500 for the person in care. A spouse at home may keep $143,172 on top of that (the community spouse resource standard), the home up to $752,000 of equity, one car, and personal effects.
2. Countable assets are everything else: bank and brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, cash value in life insurance, a second property. Illinois counts a couple's assets together whichever spouse owns them.
3. The runway is arithmetic: countable assets above what may be kept, divided by the monthly gap between the care bill and the income that pays toward it.
4. Example: a couple with $400,000 of countable assets, a $9,000 monthly private-pay rate, and $3,000 of monthly income: $239,328 to spend down at $6,000 a month, about 40 months, a little over 3.3 years.
5. Once on Medicaid, the person in care keeps $60 a month, and the spouse at home may be allotted enough of the couple's income to reach $4,067 a month (the maintenance allowance).
6. Spending down is not the only path: paying off the home, buying an exempt car, prepaying a funeral, and certain annuities and transfers are what elder-law attorneys plan, inside the 60-month look-back that the penalty calculator covers.

Educational only, not investment, tax, or legal advice. Results are hypothetical estimates that vary with each use and over time and are not guaranteed accurate or complete. Using this tool creates no client relationship with Considerate Capital, and the site that linked here is not affiliated with it. By using it you agree to the tool terms.