Summary: The Cost of Staying

He sits at the kitchen table with a calculator. Property taxes: $8,400 a year. Insurance: $2,100. Utilities: $4,200. Maintenance: last year the furnace, $4,800; the year before, a roof patch, $3,200. He owns the house outright. People tell him he is lucky. They do not understand that owning a house is not the same as being able to afford one.

The costs of staying home arrive in dozens of small bills, easy to dismiss individually, crushing in aggregate. Property taxes tend to rise while income stays flat. Home maintenance does not pause for retirement. Home modifications for accessibility run $10,000 to $50,000; Medicare covers none of it. And then care: a home health aide at the national median of $30 per hour costs $31,200 a year for just twenty hours a week. Medicare covers almost none of ongoing custodial help.

Home equity is simultaneously the greatest asset and the greatest trap. Median home equity for homeowners 75 and older exceeds $200,000, but equity is not income. Reverse mortgages exist to convert it, with significant downsides: high fees, accruing interest, and the likelihood that little equity remains for heirs. Selling converts equity to cash but means leaving the home. Many seniors would rather run out of money than give up the house that holds their history.

The calculation of staying versus moving depends on health trajectory, local costs, family geography, and emotional weight. Staying makes sense when modification is cheap, care needs are low, and family is near. Moving makes sense when the house requires major modification, care needs exceed what home can provide, or isolation is dangerous enough to shorten life. The longevity risk complicates everything: a person who plans for ten more years and lives twenty runs out of money.

The financial analysis connects directly to Series 1. The Medicaid spend-down applies. Estate recovery targets the home after death. Unpaid family care subsidizes the gap. The broken promise of retirement underlies all of it: pensions gone, Social Security covering only basics, savings never enough because wages did not support saving.

At the personal level, honest financial planning helps: aging-in-place cost projections, not just retirement income projections. At the policy level, property tax relief, expanded home care waivers, ADU legalization, and long-term care financing reform could change the equation. None is happening fast enough.

The man closes the calculator. The house is still his home. The costs are still real. Tomorrow he will open the calculator again.