dementia care – An Orlando real estate agent says his father’s March 2025 dementia diagnosis has turned retirement savings into a scramble—selling his parents’ home to cover an assisted living bill of about $9,000 a month and the even higher costs he expects later.
When Keith Alan Pavlick’s father can’t always remember his name. the question isn’t just medical anymore—it’s financial. urgent. and nonstop.. Pavlick. 53. says he plans to sell his parents’ Orlando home by next month and move his mother and father into an assisted living community that he estimates will cost about $9. 000 a month.
The figure is already a strain.. Pavlick says the $9. 000 monthly price for room and board is “almost all of what their pension brings in. ” even before insurance and other medical expenses.. And he adds that the number may be temporary—because he expects the cost to rise once his father’s care needs intensify and he may have to transition to a memory-focused facility.
Pavlick’s father, 80, was diagnosed with dementia in March 2025 and is also diabetic. Pavlick says his mother, 79, is currently serving as his father’s caretaker, but she has heart problems and lives with fear about what happens next—especially for them financially.
“They’ve been living in fear of what’s going to happen to her husband and them financially,” Pavlick says, describing how quickly the situation has shifted inside their home.
He says the decline has happened fast: his father sometimes can’t remember his name and the day, and will enter a “repeat mode,” checking the mail every 10 minutes for hours. Pavlick says that even a year ago his father was able to travel and remember things.
That speed is part of why Pavlick says he’s running out of time to get ahead of the costs. New deals at work can’t wait—he says he’s had to focus on his parents’ needs, even as he works as a real estate agent in Orlando.
But the financial pressure isn’t only about the facility bill. Pavlick says he’s learned there are other expenses that can appear around a diagnosis, including bills built up and purchases that don’t necessarily help—along with the risk of predatory sales.
He says his family is now fighting a timeshare contract he describes as being sold to his father after the dementia diagnosis. Pavlick says the contract included $1,500 in monthly fees.
The family’s problems also spilled into day-to-day emergencies.. Pavlick recalls an episode “a few weeks ago” when his father left the house after deciding he needed chlorine for the pool.. He says his father took the car keys when his mother fell asleep and was gone all day. unable to find his way home.
Pavlick says his father ran out of gas about 10 miles from the house, and police took him in an ambulance to a hospital. He says he was admitted and that doctors found he had shingles, and Pavlick says his father spent a week recovering in the hospital.
Another day, Pavlick says his father tried to go out again.. Pavlick says he got into the car and made an assumption about which direction his father would travel. describing it as “like trying to find a ghost” until he located him.. Pavlick says his father recognized him and followed him back home—after which Pavlick says he moved into the house.
The living situation, he says, had become untenable. Pavlick describes “so much hoarding” that he concluded they couldn’t manage the home anymore. He says he is now taking on his family’s assets, selling everything, and trying to place his parents into a safer housing setup.
He estimates he will net about $25,000 from the closing of his parents’ home.. But he says the sale involves hard choices. including items he doesn’t feel comfortable liquidating—such as a signed Salvador Dali lithograph and a coin collection.. Pavlick says he did have to sell his father’s gun, which he says he owned since the military.
In the past two weeks alone, Pavlick says he has thrown out more than 60,000 envelopes and listed about 60 items on multiple platforms to sell. His goal, he says, is to create space— even if that means selling some items for “pennies on the dollar.”
There is also a personal cost.. Pavlick says his emotional state and lack of time have “stunted everything else” in his life—he says he isn’t able to see his wife and daughter. and that he doesn’t know if he will get to attend his niece’s graduation in a few weeks.. He says he can’t spend time with friends.
Underneath the family’s scramble is a broader frustration about how expensive long-term care can become once insurers and facilities get involved. Pavlick says he believes some facilities know there are insurance companies they can work with, and that costs can end up “gouge[d].”
He argues that when someone faces a “bad need for something,” others can exploit that urgency.
For now, the plan is to start with assisted living.. Pavlick says the facility’s cost will be $9. 000 a month for room and board. and he adds that it comes with a discount based on his father’s military background.. He says he also has confirmation the assisted living cost “will never increase” while his father is there.
But Pavlick says the care journey doesn’t end there.. He describes considering an independent living facility as well. saying it includes a kitchen. appliances. and places where residents can come and go.. He also says his father “isn’t going to be able to stay in that for very long. ” because he expects the dementia to progress to the point where his father may sit on a couch watching television all day without moving.
Pavlick says that if his parents pass away in the facility, at least he will have placed them in a “pretty and clean” environment where “they’re taken care of.”
Still, he warns that the $9,000 figure can be misleading. After touring options across the city, Pavlick says the place his family liked wasn’t a “memory center.” He believes his father will eventually need a memory-focused setting.
Looking ahead, Pavlick says inflation could drive insurance costs higher each month. He also says he expects his father may eventually have to go to a memory center, where the $9,000 cost could jump to $14,000.
He attributes the increase partly to the way care approvals work. Pavlick says that with insurance, “any time you need a memory, cognitive, or emotional test,” the family must get a specialist and get approvals. He says by the time approvals arrive, the condition may have already worsened.
For Pavlick, the central issue is the gap between need and process. He says it’s important to care for older adults without forcing families to jump through “60 hoops” and receive “60 different answers” from multiple people.
He says what will finance the care is his parents’ financial growth over the years and whatever “little nest egg” they built through their house and collection—along with the possibility of investing part of it, including “maybe in a life policy.”
His hopes are both practical and protective: a monthly stipend to help cover the facility costs. If that isn’t available, he says he will have to pull from the family’s resources to cover any shortfall.
Even as the home sale approaches and the timeline tightens, Pavlick’s message is shaped by one immediate reality: the decline he’s watching doesn’t wait for paperwork, and the bills don’t wait for comfort.
dementia care costs long-term care assisted living memory care home sale Orlando insurance approvals timeshare dispute elder care financing