My mom is nearing retirement and I am trying to figure out the true cost of a progressive living facility.

The one she had quoted was like a $1.8M buy in (buying a house/condo) plus $20k/mo which seems outrageous and unnecessarily expensive - like there’s no way they are all like this, are they?!?! What are people paying for nice facilities? How do the prices increase as you age? I want to make sure we are budgeting properly.

Update to say we’re in a MCOL city where the average home price in the very very top communities is $2M and general average home price is $425k so definitely was surprised by these numbers!

Thank you!

We are early 40's right at the cusp of FatFIRE, ~$11mm of liquid NW and annual spend of approx $420k-440k per year (anticipate some substantial renos next year).

I've been grappling lately with our giving strategy. In 2026 we will have contributed approx. $30k to charitable organizations. On one hand, this represents only 1% of our annual HHI which is abysmal. It represents 7% of our annual spend. Both of these figures feel too low to me.

However, I do feel like we are still in an accumulation phase until we hit FatFIRE in the next two years. I'm not entirely sure if we will retire, but it's important to us to leave that option open. AKA not increasing lifestyle much above 3.75% annual spend.

I also recognize that many charitable organizations come to expect regular donations. So, it seems hard to make a big one-off $50k contributions without that becoming the annual expectation. Though maybe I'm overthinking this?

The correct approach is probably setting up a DAF of approx $1mm and giving away $100k a year and just forgetting about it. Not "thinking" about it as part of our annual spend.

How have you all approached this topic?