How to Pay for Assisted Living in Tennessee (2026)

If you are working out how to pay for assisted living in Tennessee, plan on more than one source, because TennCare can help with care services but not room and board.1

Assisted living in Tennessee runs about $5,845 a month, and the sources to weigh are personal income and savings, long-term care insurance, VA benefits for those who served, and, for low-income seniors, TennCare CHOICES, which can fund the care services in assisted living but never the room and board.1,2 This guide walks through each source, with Tennessee's real numbers, so you can build a plan that lasts.

In This Guide

• What Assisted Living Costs in Tennessee
• Private Pay: How to Pay for Assisted Living in Tennessee
• Long-Term Care Insurance
• VA Aid and Attendance
• TennCare CHOICES and Assisted Living
• Putting Together a Plan to Pay for Assisted Living in Tennessee
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Assisted Living Costs in Tennessee

Seeing the monthly number for the first time is the moment this gets real for most families, so it helps to start with what you are actually planning against. Assisted living in Tennessee runs about $5,845 a month, or $70,140 a year, for a private one-bedroom unit, per the state data tables of CareScout's 2025 Cost of Care Survey. That is below the national median of $6,200 a month ($74,400 a year), but only modestly.1 Two bounds worth holding onto: it is a statewide median built from provider-reported prices gathered between July and November 2025, and CareScout itself notes that actual costs vary with care needs, provider availability and the local market. This guide carries no city-level Tennessee figure, so ask each community for its own rate, including whether memory care or a higher care level is priced on top.1

Here is how Tennessee's median long-term care costs compare with the national figures, so you can see where your parent's setting sits.1,4,5

Treat the median as a planning anchor, not a quote. Ask each assisted living facility for an all-in monthly price that separates the base rent from the care-level add-ons, because that all-in number is what every source below has to cover.

Private Pay: How to Pay for Assisted Living in Tennessee

Private money often carries the early months, and the hardest part is watching savings drain without a plan for what comes next. Mapping your own runway in advance is what turns that worry into a timeline you can act on. The common sources families draw on are:

• Income. Social Security, pensions, and retirement-account withdrawals are the steadiest base.
• Savings and investments. Drawn down on a planned schedule, so you know how many months or years they cover at about $5,845 a month.1
• The family home. Selling the home, or borrowing against it through a home-equity line or a reverse mortgage if a spouse still lives there, can free up money for care. One caution: TennCare excludes the home itself while it is the principal residence, but a home-sale or reverse-mortgage lump sum still sitting in the bank the next month is no longer the home, and it can push your parent over TennCare's $2,000 limit on countable resources, so the timing matters if Medicaid is on the horizon.6
• Annuities and life-insurance conversions. Some families convert a life-insurance policy to a long-term-care benefit, or use an annuity to turn a lump sum into predictable monthly income. If VA Aid and Attendance is in the picture, buying an annuity that lowers net worth can count as a transfer under VA's 36-month look-back unless your parent can cash out the whole balance (in which case it simply counts as net worth), so check before you buy.7

Build a written timeline of how long private funds will last. Knowing the month at which savings would run low is exactly what lets you plan for TennCare in time, instead of in a crisis.

Long-Term Care Insurance

If your parent bought a long-term care insurance policy, it can cover a large part of the assisted living bill, and pulling the policy out now is worth the hour it takes. Read it for three things:

• How much it pays. The daily or monthly dollar maximum the policy pays out. Set it against the community's all-in monthly price to see the gap your family still has to cover.
• The elimination period. The stretch you pay out of pocket before benefits start. The policy states how long it is.
• The covered setting. Whether assisted living, not just nursing-home care, is a setting the policy will pay for. Read the policy's own definition rather than assuming.

File the claim as soon as care begins, and ask the insurer exactly how it counts the elimination period, since every day of that wait is one your family pays for.

There is a Tennessee-specific reason to check whether the policy is a Partnership policy. Under TennCare's Long-Term Care Partnership program, TennCare disregards your parent's assets dollar for dollar up to what a qualified Partnership policy has paid out as of the effective date of TennCare's first approval of your parent's eligibility, and those disregarded assets don't count toward the asset limit. Benefits the policy pays after that first approval don't raise the eligibility disregard, though they can count toward what is protected from estate recovery after death. A Partnership policy doesn't guarantee TennCare, even once its benefits run out: your parent still has to meet every other rule, and not every long-term care policy qualifies.1 If the policy was sold as a Partnership plan, it changes the spend-down math, so flag it when you talk to a TennCare caseworker.

VA Aid and Attendance

If your parent or their late spouse served in wartime, this source of help is worth checking even if you assume your parent will not qualify. A wartime veteran or a surviving spouse who needs help with daily activities may qualify for VA Aid and Attendance (A&A), an increased monthly payment added to a VA pension that you can apply to assisted living.7 Because the benefit is federal, the amounts are set nationally rather than by Tennessee.

Eligibility turns on these tests:7

• Wartime service. At least 90 days of active duty with at least one day during a wartime period for those who started service before September 8, 1980; generally at least 24 months (or the full period called to active duty), also with at least one day during a wartime period, for those who enlisted after September 7, 1980.
• Age or disability. At least one of these: age 65 or older, a permanent and total disability, a nursing-home stay for long-term care because of a disability, or Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income. A dishonorable discharge rules the pension out.
• A care need. At least one of these: needing another person's help with daily activities such as bathing, feeding, or dressing; having to stay in bed for much of the day because of illness; being a nursing-home patient because of a disability; or severely limited eyesight.
• Net worth under the limit. Net worth (assets plus annual income for VA purposes, with the primary home, the car, and basic home items left out of assets) under $163,699 from December 1, 2025 through November 30, 2026.7

VA publishes the benefit as a maximum annual rate. For December 1, 2025 through November 30, 2026, the Aid and Attendance ceiling is $29,093 a year for a veteran with no dependents, $34,488 a year for a veteran with one dependent, $18,697 a year for a surviving spouse with no dependents, and $22,304 a year for a surviving spouse with one dependent child. Those figures are ceilings, not payments: VA subtracts your parent's countable income for VA purposes from the ceiling and pays the rest in monthly installments, and medical expenses insurance does not cover may lower that countable income.3 Apply through the VA pension program. In Tennessee, you can make an appointment with a Veterans Resource Coordinator at a Tennessee Department of Veterans Services field office to file the claim, and VA says help from an accredited veterans service organization representative is always free. That is worth doing even if you are unsure your parent qualifies.1

TennCare CHOICES and Assisted Living

This is the section families most often get wrong, so it is worth being precise. TennCare, Tennessee's Medicaid program, does not pay the room-and-board cost of assisted living.1,2 What it can do, for eligible seniors, is pay for the care services in assisted living through TennCare CHOICES, the state's managed long-term services and supports program, while the resident still pays room and board. On the CHOICES Member Benefit Table that benefit is the Assisted Care Living Facility benefit, covered for Group 2 and Group 3 members and limited to 1 unit per day and 12 months per year.1,2

Two real-world catches matter before you count on it:

• It is not an entitlement, and there can be a wait. CHOICES Group 2, and Group 3 for people not on SSI, enroll only up to state enrollment targets. In its most recent quarterly report to CMS, covering January to March 2025, TennCare put the statewide Group 2 target at 11,000, with 8,759 members enrolled. Once a target is reached, the state stops enrolling new members except through set routes, such as reserve slots for people leaving a nursing facility or a hospital, and it may keep a waiting list. Group 1, for nursing-facility care, has no enrollment target and no waiting list.2
• Room and board is still your parent's to pay. The benefit covers the care services, not the housing, so the facility's base rent still needs its own source even with CHOICES in place.1 CHOICES is delivered through TennCare's three managed care organizations, BlueCare, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan, and Wellpoint, and a parent already on TennCare contacts their own plan to apply for or ask about CHOICES.8

To qualify financially for Group 2 in 2026, a single applicant must have monthly income at or below $2,982 and countable assets at or below $2,000.6 That income figure is TennCare's Medicaid Income Cap, 300 percent of the 2026 SSI benefit rate of $994 a month, and an applicant whose gross income runs over it can set up a Qualified Income Trust (Tennessee's name for a Miller trust) to redirect the excess and then be tested again. The home is excluded while it is the principal residence, and so is one vehicle used for transportation. When one spouse stays in the community, that spouse generally keeps half the couple's countable resources, with that half held between $32,532 and $162,660 for a January 2026 assessment; a court order or a hardship ruling can set a different amount.6 For Group 2, your parent must also meet a nursing-facility level of care; Group 3 is for people who fall short of that level but are at risk of needing it without help at home.2 If your parent's finances are near these limits, getting advice before applying can prevent costly missteps and help time the application.

You can learn more about Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration, since the SSI benefit rate is what TennCare's income cap is built on.6

Putting Together a Plan to Pay for Assisted Living in Tennessee

A workable plan often layers these sources, and there is no shame in needing all of them. Private income and savings cover the early months; VA Aid and Attendance or long-term care insurance fills part of the gap for those who qualify; and TennCare CHOICES becomes the backstop for care services once income and assets are low enough, provided a CHOICES slot is open.2 Room and board stays your parent's to pay either way.1

Your concrete next steps are to reach the three places that gate each source of help:

Learn More

Find personalized help paying for assisted living in Tennessee at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.