educatorsfinancialgroup.ca
Updated: 26th, 2026
How to manage the financial costs of caring for aging parents
When we are young and vulnerable, our parents protect and care for our every need. As time moves on, we grow up, our parents age, and along the way, we fail to think there could ever be a day that they would be the ones that need looking after.
And yet 1 in 4 Canadians currently provide some form of unpaid care to a senior parent or relative.
We use the term ‘unpaid’ to emphasize the fact that family caregivers take on this responsibility without any kind of financial compensation. Quite the opposite in fact, with many paying out-of-pocket expenses totaling close to $6,000 a year.
When care needs become too great for family members to handle, hiring professional help tends to be the next course of action. However, this type of care often comes at a premium.
Personal Support Workers (PSWs), for example, can cost in the ballpark of $25 to $35 an hour, with families often spending between $2,500 and $4,000 a month. And that’s just for part-time PSW assistance. With numbers like those, it’s quite understandable how the costs of caregiving can feel overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. Like any challenge in life, overcoming the financial burden of looking after an aging parent all starts with a plan.
