AARP data shows caregivers spend roughly 26% of their annual income on care costs. A quarter of what you earn — gone to medical bills, home modifications, medications, in-home assistance, transportation, the endless small expenses that accumulate into a permanent drain on resources most people were already stretching to make adequate.
Amy Goyer — AARP’s national caregiving expert — depleted her entire retirement savings. She had more resources than most people in her situation. She had professional knowledge about the financial landscape of caregiving. She had a network. She still ended up here. The story is not about her failing to protect herself. It’s about how structurally brutal the financial reality of caregiving is, regardless of how well-prepared you think you are going in.
I know the specific arithmetic. I know what it costs to make sure someone is safe in a way they can’t ensure for themselves anymore — the direct costs and the opportunity costs, the hours that come out of something else, the ways the math of two households operating simultaneously doesn’t work regardless of how carefully you manage it.
Bréné Brown writes: “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” Financial boundaries in caregiving are among the hardest to set precisely because the moral weight of the situation — a person you love, dependent on you, declining — makes any limit feel like abandonment.
Sharon Salzberg writes: “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” Financial self-compassion means acknowledging that depleting your future for someone else’s present is not love. It is martyrdom, and it ends in two people without resources instead of one. Protecting your own sustainability is part of sustaining your ability to care.
This is hard to say and harder to practice when the need in front of you is immediate and human and someone you love. But Amy Goyer’s story is a warning. The expert couldn’t protect herself without deliberately drawing lines. Neither can you.
