If you compare the costs of different senior residences or communities against staying at home, this is a complex calculation. You have to factor in all of the stay-at-home expenses against all the senior residence benefits included in the price. And very often some of the benefits of being in a senior residence do not exist at home.

A simple Google search will bring up a number of online calculators that will crunch numbers, but often these calculators lack the discussion of the issue which we will address below. Let’s look at some of the key points.

Meals

If you stay at home you not only have the food shopping but you also are preparing the meals. In a senior community some or all of the meals are shared in a common eating area and prepared by professionals.

So, in order to compare these two things, you would have to factor in the cost of someone else doing the food shopping and someone else preparing and serving meals. There is also the added benefit of a social aspect to meal time which may help some seniors to eat better. How does one quantify that?

Activities

When you live alone at home, you plan for, arrange, and pay for the cost of any outside activities. In a senior residence, these are all or almost all included in the price. Then there is the added benefit of having a large choice of activities already planned which you can participate in. Again, this social aspect could help a senior individual to be happier and more active than he or she would be alone. How much participation in activities helps someone’s physical or mental health is difficult to count or quantify.

You will likely be surprised to learn that being in a senior community with all of its advantages is probably cheaper than staying at home. In addition, there are benefits to senior residences that are hard to quantify. If you are considering the move to a senior residence, consider one of our properties in western Canada, and look carefully at the numbers. We suspect you will be pleasantly surprised when you consider the economics and the benefits of senior residences.

H&H Total Care Services is a privately held company based in Surrey, BC, that is a leader in providing senior and young adult residential care services. With communities in both British Columbia and Alberta, H&H Total Care Services offers a wide range of compassionate care services from independent living to long-term complex care.