$5,500. That’s the yearly, out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent or spouse, according to a recent in-depth study. This is over double the amount of previous estimates and more than the average American household spends each year on health care and entertainment combined.

Family caregivers often pay for many other expenses of care recipients, including groceries, household goods, drugs, medical co-payments and transportation. These additional expenses bumps the average cost per year to $8,728 for those who must travel long distances to care for ailing elders.

“Typically, when people talk about services for caregivers, they mean respite care, support groups and things like that,” said Gail Gibson Hunt, president of the National Alliance for Caregiving. “They don’t think of the financial side being tied into the burden. If you’re spending 10 percent of your income, that’s part of what’s weighing on you, and policy makers haven’t paid enough attention to that.”

The survey, conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and Evercare, a division of the UnitedHealth Group, was done as a telephone survey of 1,000 adults caring for someone over age 50 who needs help with activities like bathing, using the toilet, preparing meals, shopping or managing finances. Of the 1,000 respondents, only 2 said they had never laid out any money. The rest said they spent on average $5,531 a year, or 10 percent of their salary.

Most common expenses that family caregivers pay out of pocket are household goods and food (42 percent of respondents), transportation (39 percent), medical co-payments and pharmaceuticals (31 percent), clothing (21 percent), and home repair and maintenance (13 percent).

Along with the telephone survey, the report also included narrative accounts from 41 men and women who were paid $100 to keep expense diaries. This subgroup, which can’t be considered a representative sample because they were self-selected and paid for their time, spent an average of $12,348 a year on expenses. This is more than double the telephone participants.

The discrepancy was not explained in the study, but both Ms. Hunt and Donna Wagner, a gerontologist at Towson University in Maryland who analyzed the data for the new report, speculated that the diarists’ situations were atypically complex or that day-to-day record-keeping produced more accurate information than did recollection.

As a part of the release of this study, AGIS.com has been invited to a congressional briefing on Tuesday, November 27th. The briefing will cover the “true costs of caregiving” in America today. The National Alliance for Caregiving will be highlighting three important studies including an Evercare/NAC Study of Caregiver Financial Costs: What They Sacrifice.”

Related News:

New York Times - Study Finds Higher Costs for Caregivers of Elderly

San Francisco Chronicle - Study details high costs of caring for elderly relative

More Resources from AGIS.com:
Planning for Long Term Care
Long term care insurance comparison checklist
Family Caregiving Overview

Filed under: AGIS, Caregiving, Long Term Care, Research