How the planner works.

What this is

The planner is a private, three-to-five-minute readiness check for memory care affordability. It asks eleven qualitative questions — no dollar amounts — and gives you a personalized plan in PDF form. It exists because the affordability question is the one most families don’t feel comfortable asking out loud, and we’d rather you have a clear, honest read of where you stand than spend weeks guessing.

What this is not

It’s not a cost calculator. It doesn’t produce a dollar figure for how much you can afford. It doesn’t quote pricing for The Cordwainer or anywhere else.

It’s not a Medicaid (MassHealth) eligibility tool. We don’t evaluate your assets against state thresholds.

It’s not financial advice. We don’t recommend specific investments, withdrawal strategies, or insurance products. We do point you toward the kinds of professionals who can — financial advisors, elder law attorneys, and VA-accredited claims agents.

The four readiness tiers

Every family who completes the planner lands in one of four tiers. None of them is a verdict. They’re a starting point for a conversation, not the end of one.

• Well-Positioned — your resources look well-matched to private-pay memory care over an extended stay. The remaining work is more about choosing the right community than whether memory care is affordable.
• On Track With Planning — you have a strong starting point. Memory care looks workable with some sequencing of your funding sources.
• Some Planning Needed — a few funding sources may need to come together. Many families in this tier find a path forward by combining insurance, VA benefits, family contributions, and home equity.
• Significant Gap — your current resources may not stretch to private-pay memory care over an extended stay. We’ll be honest about that and point you to MassHealth-funded community options through the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs.

How the tier is calculated

Your eleven answers produce four sub-scores, each from 0 to 100:

• Assets score — your savings runway and home equity picture.
• Income score — the number and reliability of monthly income sources.
• Coverage score— long-term care insurance, VA Aid & Attendance, family contributions, and other resources.
• Urgency score— how soon care is needed. This one helps our team prioritize outreach; it doesn’t affect your readiness tier.

The first three sub-scores combine into a single readiness score using these weights:

The readiness score maps to a tier:

• 75 and above → Well-Positioned
• 50 to 74 → On Track With Planning
• 25 to 49 → Some Planning Needed
• Below 25 → Significant Gap

Assets carries the most weight because, in our experience, it’s the variable that most strongly predicts whether a family can sustain private-pay memory care for the long term. Income matters but rarely covers full cost on its own; coverage (insurance, VA, family) is the lever that closes the gap when one exists.

Why we don't ask for dollar amounts

Three reasons. First, we believe families think more clearly about “a year or two of savings” than “the balance of mom’s 401(k) as of this morning.” Second, qualitative answers are more accurate when memory is imperfect, which most families’ recall of an aging parent’s exact finances is. Third, asking for dollar amounts dramatically lowers completion rates — and a family who bounces off question three because they’re not sure of the exact number gets no value from us at all.

Two honesty rules baked into the report

MassHealth disclosure. The Cordwainer is a private-pay community and doesn’t accept MassHealth. If your tier is Significant Gap and your loved one is already in a memory or nursing community, the report surfaces this early and gives you the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs phone number (1-800-AGE-INFO) so you can be pointed to MassHealth-eligible options on the South Shore. We’d rather be useful to a family who isn’t a fit for The Cordwainer than burn anyone’s time pretending otherwise.

VA Aid & Attendance. Wartime veterans and surviving spouses can qualify for up to roughly $2,800 per month in additional benefits, which often changes the math meaningfully. If you said yes or maybe to wartime service and your tier is Some Planning Needed or Significant Gap, we put VA Aid & Attendance at the top of your plan with a path to evaluate eligibility.

What the report includes

The PDF you receive is four to six pages, personalized to your answers. It contains your tier with a plain-English summary, an honest cost range for South Shore memory care, specific funding sources that apply to your situation — and only those — relevant benefits to evaluate, three concrete next steps for your tier, and Erica’s contact information if you’d like to talk through what you read.

Limitations

The planner is built on the funding patterns we see most often across South Shore Massachusetts families. It may not account for unusual situations — complex trust structures, international assets, ongoing inheritance disputes, or specialized care needs that exceed standard memory care scope. For those, please talk to a financial advisor and an elder law attorney before relying on what the report says.

We update the cost band, the VA Aid & Attendance number, and other tunable values as those figures change. The “Updated” date at the top of this page reflects the last meaningful change to the methodology itself.

Questions about the model

Email Erica at elathrop@cordwainermemorycare.com or call 781-871-5550. We’re glad to walk through how a specific tier was calculated for your family or to explain why a question is worded the way it is.