What caring for your parents costs your own retirement

We've written a good deal about care from one side: the Carer Payment, caring for an ageing spouse, respite, the services that help. All of it is about the person being cared for. This article is about the other person in the room — the one doing the caring — and the thing nobody ever puts a number on: what it costs their retirement.

Because here's what's actually happening when a daughter goes to three days a week at 58 to look after her mother. It's a transfer of wealth. Real money moves out of her retirement and into her mother's care. It just never appears anywhere, because nobody issues an invoice. This article is general information only, not personal advice.

What is the scale of it, and who is doing it?

This is not a niche situation. In 2022 there were an estimated three million people — 12 per cent of the population — providing informal care in Australia, and more than one in three of them, about 1.2 million people, were primary carers, up from 33 per cent in 2018 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/informal-carers). Two facts from that same data explain why this article exists. First, primary carers are mainly female: 68 per cent women against 32 per cent men. Second, and this is the one that matters financially, the average age of an informal carer is 50.

Fifty. Which is to say the typical Australian carer is standing at the start of the most valuable earning decade of their life at precisely the moment the caring begins. And it bites: the 2024 National Carer Survey found 57 per cent of participants were employed or looking for paid work while providing care, and 59 per cent reported experiencing financial stress — up from 51 per cent in 2020 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/informal-carers).

What does it actually cost?

The damage lands in four places, and the first two are the ones people badly underestimate. The first is contributions in your peak years: cutting back hours — or stopping — somewhere between 55 and 65 means forgoing super contributions at the highest salary you will ever earn. These are, financially speaking, the most expensive years of your life to step back from work.

The second is the compounding you never see, and it's the bigger one. Money not contributed at 58 doesn't just cost you those dollars; it costs you everything those dollars would have grown into by the time you retired and beyond. A few years out at 58 costs disproportionately more than a few years out at 30 — which is exactly the opposite of what most people assume.

Third is getting back in. Re-entering the workforce after several years out, at sixty-something, into a market with real and well-documented age bias, often means fewer hours, less pay, or simply not at all. The break is frequently not a pause; it's an ending. And fourth is your own money and your own health. Carers routinely spend their own money on the person they care for — petrol, groceries, the gap fees, the bits and pieces — usually untracked and often thousands a year. Carer health takes a beating too, which carries its own downstream costs, and our articles on falls, nutrition and loneliness apply to the carer as much as to the cared-for.

Should this be a decision, not a drift?

Let's be very clear: nothing here argues against caring for your parents. It's honourable work, most people are glad they did it, and this article is not a case for walking away.

It is a case for seeing it. Because the thing that does the damage isn't the choice — it's the drift. Almost nobody sits down and decides to give up a decade of contributions. What happens is smaller: a day less this year, another day next year, then a resignation that felt inevitable by the time it arrived. And then at 67 there's a hole in the super where a decade should be, and no one can point to the moment they chose it. If you're going to do it — and many people will, gladly — do it as a decision, with the cost visible. That's the whole argument.

What actually reduces the damage?

Start by checking Carer Payment and Carer Allowance, because they are different things and a lot of eligible carers claim neither. Carer Payment is income support; Carer Allowance is a supplementary payment of $162.60 a fortnight for caring for someone who needs daily support (Services Australia, https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/how-much-carer-allowance-you-can-get, as at 1 January 2026). Depending on your circumstances you may be able to get both, and you can lodge a combined claim. There's also the Carer Supplement, an annual payment of $600 for each eligible payment you receive (Services Australia, https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/carer-supplement). None of this is a wage and none of it replaces super — but it's real money, and our article on the carer payments covers eligibility.

The bigger lever is to stop being the only resource. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme and Support at Home fund genuine services — personal care, cleaning, meals, transport — and they exist precisely so that one person doesn't have to be everything (Department of Health, https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/support-at-home). Using them is not abandoning your mother. It's what makes the care survivable, for both of you, and our articles on the CHSP and Support at Home explain how to get an assessment. Take respite regularly, too — not just when you're already broken.

Then share it with your siblings, early. The ones who "can't help" often can, in some form: money instead of hours is a completely legitimate contribution from the brother interstate. Have that conversation before resentment sets, not after. Keep some paid work if you possibly can, because even part-time keeps contributions flowing and keeps the door open — and the door is much harder to reopen than to hold ajar. Know the catch-up levers for later: when you're earning again, or if you have a working spouse, there are real tools — carry-forward (catch-up) concessional contributions, spouse contributions and the spouse tax offset, and contribution splitting. Each has its own eligibility rules, each has its own article here, and this is precisely the sort of thing worth getting advice on. And track what you spend on them. Not to bill anyone — just so it's visible. Invisible spending is the kind that never stops.

What do the worked examples show?

These show the same caring role costing two people very differently. They are illustrative only, and not personal advice.

Consider Susan, 58, single, earning $95,000 and salary-sacrificing modestly, who drops to three days a week to care for her mother and expects to stop altogether within two years. On these facts Susan is the archetype the data describes — a woman near the average carer age of 50, in her peak earning decade (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/informal-carers) — and her exposure is not the two-fifths of salary she's forgoing now but the compounding on nine years of missed contributions between 58 and 67. Carer Allowance at $162.60 a fortnight (as at 1 January 2026) does not begin to replace that, and it isn't meant to. On these facts it is generally rational for someone in Susan's position to treat the three-day arrangement as the thing to defend rather than the first step down — using CHSP or Support at Home services and regular respite specifically to protect those three days of contributions, and getting advice on carry-forward concessional contributions for any later period when she's earning again.

Now consider Helen, 62, married to a still-working husband, who has already left work to care for her father. On these facts the contributions have stopped and re-entry at 62 is genuinely uncertain, so the levers shift from protecting income to rebuilding super from the household's other side: spouse contributions and the spouse tax offset, and contribution splitting from her husband's fund into hers. Each has its own eligibility conditions and caps, which is exactly why this is a conversation for a licensed adviser rather than an article. It is generally rational for a couple in Helen's position to have that conversation now, while her husband is still contributing, rather than at 67 when the options have closed.

What is the fairness question nobody wants to raise?

And now the hard part, which our article on family conflict describes from the other end. If one child gives up income and super to care for a parent, and the estate is then split equally, that child has effectively paid for her siblings' inheritance. That's not greed talking — it's arithmetic. It's also why that particular family fight is so bitter and so common: both sides genuinely have a point.

The clean fix isn't a fight after the funeral. It's the parent deciding, deliberately and out loud, while they're alive: recognise the carer in the will, or don't, but say which and why. That single conversation prevents most of what follows. If you're the carer, raise it early and gently — awkward as that is, it's infinitely less awkward than the reading of the will.

What if you're the parent?

Understand what's being handed to you. A daughter cutting back her hours to look after you is moving money out of her retirement and into yours. That may be exactly what everyone wants, freely given and gratefully received — but it should be seen, and named, and dealt with in your estate plan. The one thing it shouldn't be is quietly consumed while everyone pretends it's free.

What should you do in short?

Caring for a parent is one of the better things people do, and one of the most expensive — and almost uniquely, it's a cost that gets borne in total silence. Three million Australians are doing it, most of them women, at an average age of 50. Make it visible. Claim the payments, use the services, take the respite, get your siblings involved, keep a toe in paid work, and know the catch-up levers for when you're back. And whichever side of it you're on, get the estate question out in the open early, while everyone can still talk about it. Nobody should have to fund a retirement they don't get to have.

Sources

• AIHW — Informal carers
• Services Australia — Carer Payment
• Services Australia — How much Carer Allowance you can get
• Services Australia — Carer Supplement
• Department of Health — Support at Home program