How to Make $10K a Month With One Room in Assisted Living
Sep 03, 2026
What if you could generate more than $10,000 a month from one room in your assisted living home? It sounds like a big number, but when you understand how Medicaid payments, level of care, and shared rooms work together, the math starts to make sense. Let’s break down how two residents in one room can create over $10K in monthly revenue.
Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below👇
You Need to Understand Medicaid Before You Look at the Math
The first thing you need to know is the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.
Medicare is common among assisted living residents, but there is no Medicare benefit for assisted living. Medicaid is what we care about because it can help pay for the care and services your residents need.
In many states, residents qualify through a waiver program. One example is the EBD waiver, which stands for elderly, blind, and disabled.
Once you understand Medicaid, you can learn how to become a Medicaid provider, how billing works, and what rates you can receive.
đź’ˇ Medicaid can feel confusing at first. I have found that learning the process can help you keep beds filled and create more consistent income.
Your Medicaid Income Can Come From Two Payments
In this example, we are looking at two main sources of income.
The first is the daily rate. Your state Medicaid program sets the rate you can bill based on the resident's level of care, or LOC. The more care a resident needs, the higher the rate may be.
For example, if your daily rate is $100 and you have 30 days in a month, that gives you $3,000.
The second payment is for rent, utilities, and food. This comes from the resident. The amount is tied to the resident's Social Security income and the rules in your state.
For this example, let's say the resident receives $1,000 and you receive 90%, or $900.
That gives you:
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$3,000 from the daily rate
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$900 for rent, utilities, and food
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$3,900 per resident
With two residents, that becomes $7,800 per month.
Now we are getting closer to the $10,000 goal.
Level of Care Can Change the Math
This is where understanding your resident's level of care becomes important.
You are not simply picking a higher rate because you want more money. You need to document the care you are actually providing.
In my facilities, we use assessments and our EHR to document the level of care. That documentation helps show the state how much time and care a resident needs.
Here is the example from the video:
Resident 1
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$160 per day × 30 days = $4,800
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About $1,000 from the resident
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Total: $5,800
Resident 2
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$120 per day × 30 days = $3,600
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About $1,000 from the resident
-
Total: $4,600
Add those together and you get:
$5,800 + $4,600 = $10,400 per month
That's more than $10,000 from one room with two residents.
Shared Rooms Must Still Put Residents First
Putting two residents in one room only works if it follows your state regulations and zoning rules.
In the example I shared, a single resident may need around 100 square feet, while a shared room may require around 80 square feet per resident. Your exact requirements can be different, so you need to check your local rules.
But this isn't about seeing how many people you can fit into a room.
Your residents come first.
I have found that some residents actually enjoy having a roommate. It can feel like having a friend nearby, which can help with the loneliness that many older adults experience.
You need to be thoughtful about roommate selection, room setup, privacy, and dignity.
âś… Follow state and local room-size rules.
âś… Choose roommates carefully.
âś… Make the room comfortable and respectful.
You Can Also Use This Idea With Private Pay
The same basic idea can work with private-pay residents.
Instead of relying on a Medicaid daily rate, you can have a base monthly rate and then add a fee based on the resident's level of care.
For example, you could have a $5,000 monthly base and add another amount for the care you provide.
The exact rates are market-based, so you need to understand your local market and your residents' care needs.
The big lesson is simple: understand your numbers before you choose your home, your rates, or your room setup.
Wrap Up
The $10,000 number doesn't come from one magic trick. It comes from understanding Medicaid, daily rates, rent, utilities, food, level of care, room requirements, and how two residents can fit into the right space.
When you understand each part, the math starts to make sense. And remember, revenue is not the same as profit, so you also need to understand your expenses before deciding what a home can really earn.
If you need help creating a business plan for your assisted living business, check out the Free Business Plan Checklist.
And if you’re ready to figure out your next step, join me for the next Roadmap Challenge where I’ll walk you through how to get started.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
In today's video, I am going to show you how you can get $10,000 in 1 month, not just in one single home, but in one room in that home with two residents in it. That's it. We're going to show you how to take this, turn it into that per month, and I'm going to show you how to do it using Medicaid. Okay? So, if you are interested in learning how to implement this strategy for your assisted living business, stick around for today's video. And if you want to get really crazy, I'm actually
00:00:36
going to show you how to do this in a home that has eight to 10 bedrooms. So, you could get 80 to $100,000 per month in one single home right here. So, if you're interested in learning how to do that, stick around for today's video. I'm going to show you exactly how this works, how the math works, how you can get to this using this, and get all the revenue that you need in one single home. Hey friend, my name is Brandon Gustafson. If you are interested in learning more about strategies like this
00:01:07
and how to start your assisted living business, go down to the pinned comment and join me in my upcoming free workshop. We'd love to have you there. Now, before I get started into this, I want to share a story with you. So, I'm sitting at my parents' house at their kitchen table. We're getting ready for a Sunday dinner. We're making some pork, and it just like it smells great. And I'm talking to my dad about this video that you're watching right now. And I'm like, I need some help just kind of
00:01:30
figuring out how to create this video. It's going to help my viewers and help them understand what they're getting into when it gets into this. And he's like, "Yeah, I was watching YouTube, and your video, I'm going to link it up here above for you somewhere." Uh He's like, "Your video that talks about how we make $12,000 per month with one room in assisted living came up." And he's like, "How do we do that?" Like, he didn't even know this. We have owned our
00:01:54
facilities for over 6 years now. It never clicked for him that we can make $12,000 per month with one single room in assisted living. And then he's like, I watched the video and all of a sudden the lights went off in my head and I knew exactly how we did that. He's like, I just never had thought of it that way. So, I'm going to show you this method, $10,000, a little bit less than that $12,000 that we make in our facilities, so you can see that this actually works. I'm going to show you the math. We're
00:02:19
going to break it down. We're going to get into Medicaid and show you how that works. So, before I do that, let me Let me erase this. I want to explain to you a little bit about what Medicaid is and what it's not, maybe more importantly, what the difference between Medicare and Medicaid is. This is a really important thing for people to understand because so many people just get confused by it. So, let's start up here. Medicare. All right, you're going to have to deal with my my bad handwriting. You'll be fine,
00:02:50
right? Medicare and Medicaid, these are two things I really wish they would call them something different because they just start off in the exact same way, but let let's talk about it. Medicare is something that is at a federal level, okay? It is something that funds are handled at a federal level. It has part A, which is inpatient, part B, which is outpatient, part D, which is prescriptions. It is handled There there's going to be different components to it. There's Medicare Advantage plans. It's just
00:03:21
really confusing. It's overwhelming for a lot of people. Most people qualify for it when they hit a certain age. That's like the most common way for you to qualify for Medicare. But, that's something that a lot of your residents in assisted living will be on Medicare, but in the world of assisted living, there is no Medicare benefit, okay? So, we actually do not live in the world of Medicare. We don't. We have residents that are on Medicare. It doesn't matter. It doesn't impact us at all. Uh it
00:03:53
doesn't matter, okay? Medicaid, on the other hand, is something that people are going to qualify for for a couple of reasons. One could be financial. We could see somebody qualify for Medicaid for financial reasons, um or it could be for some other program. It could be maybe they're in the foster system, or the thing that we see most commonly in our assisted living business is people qualify under a certain waiver, and we call it the EBD waiver. Now, your state may be something different.
00:04:24
This stands for elderly, blind, and disabled. EBD. And if you're new to healthcare, welcome. We love acronyms. It's one of the things we do best. It's really confusing. Anyways, we have the EBD waiver, elderly, blind, and disabled. That's something that that people can qualify for Medicaid with. And when they qualify for that, they get a certain type of benefit. And we need that benefit to kick in so we can get to our 10,000 our $10,000 per month. Remember, that's where we're going.
00:04:55
We're trying to figure out how do we get to $10,000 per month? We need a person to qualify for Medicaid under a waiver program like the EBD, elderly, blind, and disabled waiver, and that's going to allow us to help them like serve them, have them come into our home, and it's going to allow us to get the funds that we need to have, okay? Now, you have this base understanding of Medicare. It's a part of healthcare. It's a part You're going to have residents on Medicare. Doesn't impact you. Doesn't
00:05:25
matter if they have Medicare or not. It doesn't matter, okay? Even if they're private pay, they can be on Medicare. Doesn't matter. We don't care about Medicare, okay? Just take it off the board. What we care about is do they qualify for Medicaid, and are we a Medicaid provider? If you're interested in learning more about Medicaid, type in Medicaid down below. I have some videos that we can point you to that tell you a little bit more about Medicaid, how it works, but I'm going to share with you a
00:05:49
little bit more about the Medicaid process and what it looks like and how you get to this 10,000. Let's keep going. But before I do, but while I'm erasing this, what I want you to understand with Medicaid is so many people don't like it. Let me explain to you why people don't like the idea of working with Medicaid. The reason why so many people don't like it, it's confusing, it's more paperwork. Uh actually, what I hear from a lot of investors is I don't even want to touch
00:06:16
Medicaid. It's It's confusing. It's overwhelming. It's more paperwork. I don't even want to think about getting involved with Medicaid. And I'm actually seeing a lot of big box type facilities get out of the world of working with Medicaid. And for me, it's curious why they would do something like that because what I have found is Medicaid is like the best kept secret in all of assisted living. It helps me keep my beds filled. It gives me consistent income from a payer that's never going
00:06:45
to run out of money, right? The state, the government. They're always going to have that money to pay me. So, why would I not do it? And what I have found, if I learn how to understand that process, not take advantage of it cuz I'm doing care the right way, I'm documenting all of my stuff. This is not something that is fraud or something that's like in the news that you see that's like uh that's a little bit sketchy. That's not what we do in our facilities at all. And I do
00:07:10
not want you to do that. We want you to do it the right way. But once you learn how to do it the right way and you take advantage of it, it opens a ton of doors. So, let's talk about how the payment process works. And remember, we are trying to understand how we can get to this $10,000 per month number. That's what we want to hit, right? Okay. Let's talk about how payments here in Medicaid work. There are going to be in most states two different types of payments, okay? First one that I want to talk to you
00:07:39
about is the daily rate. And all of the sudden I am writing in all caps. Not sure why I did that. Um we're going to do the daily rate, and then we're going to do another one that I call the rough payment. Okay? Again, this is another acronym, stands for rent, utilities, food. We're going to talk about that here in just a second. Now, our daily rate, what this is going to look like, and what you need to understand, is the state Medicaid, the Medicaid payer that you're going to work with, they are
00:08:10
going to set a daily rate for you that you can bill. All right? So, that rate, uh I have seen, having done this now for 6-plus years, can be anywhere from like uh $60 per day up to like 180 plus. I I've actually seen one of my students in my Launchpad program, uh where we were looking at this, I think the rates were like $225 per day. Okay? So, it just kind of depends on the state, the level of care that you're going to be serving people with, LOC, again, another acronym, level of care.
00:08:47
It's going to depend on the amount of care that a resident needs. Okay? But, we have the daily rate here. So, let's just say, really quick, to make numbers really, really easy on us, there's 30 days in a month, right? So, if I am getting somebody that is a $100 per day right here, so, kind of in the middle there, maybe even the low end, and I have 30 days in a month, that's going to equal $3,000 per month. Okay? Boom. And you're And you're like, okay, how how How do we go from $3,000 up to
00:09:21
$10,000, right? Now, stick with me. This is what we're going to look at, right here. I want to I want to show you what this looks like. We haven't touched on the rough payment, our rent, utilities, and food. This one, by the way, is coming from the state. It comes directly from Medicaid. So, you need to understand that payment comes from Medicaid. Now, your resident, they're going to be getting social security income. Somewhere along the way, they're going to get a social security benefit if they are qualified
00:09:50
for Medicaid. All right? So, I want you to keep that in mind. They're getting that number. But, remember we talked about how if somebody wants to qualify for Medicaid, then they need to qualify from a financial perspective as well. So, it's really important to understand that. In order for them to qualify from a financial perspective, they need to not have money in the bank. So, what do we do? They have to spend it down. So, this rent, utilities, and food budget right here comes directly from
00:10:17
the resident. It comes from their social security income, their SSI. And let's say that they get a full $1,000 per month. Now, you don't get to collect all of that money. Unfortunately, you don't get all of it. But, you do get a huge chunk. The state's actually going to tell you what percentage of this you get to keep. So, let's say in our example that you get to keep 90% of it, okay? So, you get $900 right here of that SSI, of that social security income that comes in for that resident. They pay you directly,
00:10:55
okay? They're going to pay you directly. So, this piece right here comes from the state. This one is coming directly from the resident. We collect ours using ACH, using an automatic clearinghouse, going through our bank. You can set it up how you want. You can collect cash, you can collect it via check, you can get it through ACH. Whatever is going to work best for you, that's how you want to collect this money. Now, we have this 3,000 and this 900 right here. We're going to add those things together.
00:11:23
Um we're at $3,900, right? And now I know you're looking at this $10,000 and you're like, that's still not there, Brandon. What are you talking about? Um remember, this is a house. This is a room where we have two residents, right? So, now we have two. We're going to multiply that together. That's going to get us up to $7,800. All right. Cool. We're a lot closer now to this $10,000 number. We're still not there, but I'm going to show you exactly how we take this number right here cuz
00:11:52
we actually have control over this daily rate. We have control over that number and we can turn that up. We can increase this number right here and help us get there. I'm going to show you how to do that here in the next step, but I want you to understand this is how the money part of assisted living works when you're working with Medicaid. We have a daily rate. We have the rough, the rent, utilities, and food. And once we understand those mechanisms, it's going to let us leverage that into the next phase. And
00:12:20
that's going to help us get to this 10,000. Let's talk a little bit here about the idea of having two residents in a room. Now, I know a lot of you, you hear me say that and you're like, "Brandon, that is a horrible idea. Why would we put two residents in a room? Why would we do something like that?" Um, and and for some of you, that's part of the reason why you're looking at getting into assisted living because you have had a loved one. You've had a person that you care about and they were
00:12:46
in a situation, they were in a home that wasn't up to your standards. Not something that you would want your loved one, your mom, your dad, your grandparents to be in. And part of that is something that you feel guilty about that. And that's why you were trying to get into this world of assisted living. What I want to share with you is how the strategy of multiple residents in one room works. It starts off with state regulations. It starts off with zoning. We have to understand those rules. In most states,
00:13:18
when I look at this, when when we're trying to figure out how to do it. And again, understand we are trying to show you how we get to that $10,000 per month number. So, how this works is we have in one room, if we have one resident in there, that room needs to be, on average, 100 sq ft. Okay? For that one single room. That means it's a 10 by 10 room if we do a single room. However, if I have a bigger room like this, and I'm going to have multiple residents in it, then I need to have 80 sq ft
00:13:54
per resident in this room. So, this means I've got a 10 by 10 room right here. This room is going to be 16 by 10. Now, it's a little bit smaller, right? 80 sq ft per resident versus 100 sq ft. We We understand that's smaller, but these are not tiny rooms. I am not trying to make this a thing where I can see, "How many old people can I fit in a room?" That is not at all what I am trying to look at here. What we are trying to do is serve these residents with dignity, making sure that
00:14:23
we have space that is large enough for them, and often times, what we like to do is we'll put some type of partition in there, whether that's like a pony wall that goes here in the middle, or uh we're putting them on opposite sides of the room. And what I have actually found is my residents, after talking with them, they actually really like having shared rooms. It's like having a roommate. It's like having a friend that is there with you. And a lot of these people who end up in assisted living,
00:14:52
what they struggle with the most is feeling lonely. And that is like one of the biggest complaints, and one of the things that people uh struggle with so much is just feeling alone. And when you're in a room by yourself, it's really easy to feel lonely. But when you're in a shared room, and you have a roommate, and we're very careful with how we select roommates, it makes everything go so much easier for that resident. They're happier, they enjoy what they're doing, and they have a
00:15:20
friend that they get to be with. And so, you do have to be careful with it. It's not something that we take lightly. We still make it an incredible experience for our residents. We love them. We want them to be happy and have the things that they need. So, we don't take this lightly that we have this strategy. But, again, we are trying to show you how to get to $10,000 per month with one single room in assisted living. All right? So, this is how we do it. Let's Let's get into the math here and show you exactly
00:15:48
how this works. And I just want to share with you really quick. This is like real This is real numbers from my facility. The The numbers I'm going to share with you are actually not uh roommates. So, ours Ours are actually a slightly higher, but I wanted to illustrate how we get to this $10,000 per per month number in one single room if we were to take this combination of residents. But, this comes from my facility. So, let's get in here. Let's do the exact math for our residents so we can show you how we
00:16:18
get to this $10,000 per month number. That's what we really want to hit, okay? So, daily rate for resident number one, we are at $160 per day. Pretty cool, right? If you remember, right, I told you the range was like somewhere between 60 and 180 plus dollars per day. We have taken this and we demonstrate through the way that we document our processes, through our assessments, through documenting on our EHR, the level of care LOC that level of care. Once we document that, we're able to raise rates. And
00:16:55
we're not charging the resident more. We're just demonstrating that and then showing the state, "Hey, we actually have to spend a lot of time with this person. These are the things that we are doing to provide care for them and we're taking a lot more time to do this. We need a higher daily rate." So, I get to raise my rates without creating an impact on my resident. Kind of cool, right? Okay, $160 per day. Again, we have 30 days in a month. Their social security income is actually higher than
00:17:21
1,000, so we're able to do this like proportionally. It's about that 90% that we're talking about earlier, okay? So, $1,000 here, that equals $1,000. Our total number for resident one is $5,800. All right, cool, right? That's great. Resident two in this example, again, these are not roommates, by the way. They're two residents in my facility. They do not room together. This resident actually rooms with a different person, um and and so the income is actually a little bit higher than that. Uh if
00:17:52
you're interested in learning more about that, type in 12 down below, by the way, and I will get you a video that shows you this resident's roommate and what their numbers actually look like. Okay, resident two, their daily rate right here is $120 per day, all right? So, what we've got here is times that by 30, uh that's going to equal $3,600 right there. Okay, that's their daily rate. Their rough payment also is actually $1,000. Kind of cool. Makes it really convenient when I'm doing math to
00:18:26
make these round numbers. I am slightly adjusting these. Uh th- this is not 160, it's like per day. Uh this daily rate I think is like $121.83 or something. So, I'm actually adjusting these numbers slightly and and bringing them down. But this person is at $1,000 right here. And that brings this total up to $4,600 right there. Okay. So, now what we got to do is take this 5,800 and we're going to do this 4,600, and we're going to add that together. Do the math with me. We have $10,400
00:19:10
right here for that single room. We have $10,400, which by the way, if you're doing the math right here, that's a bigger number than that. It's kind of cool, right? So, what I wanted to show to you is you can use this strategy where we create one single house, right? And we have one room in that house, and we have two residents in there. And those two residents, by the way, they're not just numbers to us. They are They're individuals. We love them. We're so happy to have them in our home, and
00:19:40
we treat them with dignity. We treat them with respect. We want them to be happy. But, when we learn the Medicaid process and how it works, and we understand how to become a certified Medicaid provider, and we understand how the billing works, and what this daily rate is, and what this rough payment is, and how to demonstrate level of care, and how to keep it at that square footage, and everything, we can combine all of that stuff, and we can get up to this $10,000 per room in one single month in assisted living. Now, if we are
00:20:11
able to take that, and we extrapolate all of this information, and we have a home, a Medicaid home that has eight to 10 bedrooms, and we can put one to two residents in each of those rooms, that's going to get us up to 80 to $100,000 per month in one single home. What I want you to realize though is this is not This is not everything. Okay? That's just the revenue side. Now, if you wanted to see how much profit you can make with this, then you need to uh understand the profit formula. And the
00:20:45
profit formula, if you want to learn more about exactly how that works, I want you to go down to the pinned comment below, and join me in my next workshop. Cuz we go through the three M's, including the money and how money works in the world of assisted living. So, if you want to learn exactly what that looks like, go check out the pinned comment. Would love to have you on our live workshop. We We time for Q&A as well. So, you can get on there, you can hop in, and you can really learn what
00:21:11
that looks like. Now, what I just showed you was obviously Medicaid, but I want to show you that you can actually do this with private pay. It works very similar. So, you can do that daily rate, or you can do a monthly rate right there for assisted living. But, all of it is going to be based off of level of care. So, what you have to do when you are working with a private pay resident is you have typically a base. Let's Let's say it's $5,000 per month, and then you're going to evaluate them. How much care are you
00:21:44
providing that resident with on a normal basis? So, let's say that my base is somewhere around here. It's like $5,000 per month, and then I have a monthly or a daily rate that is based off of level of care. I just take that number. Let's say that this is at 50. Uh we're going to times that by 30. That equals uh $1,500 right here for that one, and then we just add that to the base. Let's say our monthly rate, again, it's based off of level of care. Let's just say it's $1,500 to keep this
00:22:13
really simple. Uh we get to set this however we want, and then we do evaluations based off of level of care. This is basically what it costs for them to live in the home, have all the things that they need, and then this level of care daily rate or monthly rate that we're doing is going to be based off of their care needs, how we're helping them. But, you can follow the exact same thing when it comes to private pay. You get Here's the really cool thing. While assisted living is heavily regulated,
00:22:39
you still have the ability to set these rates. They are market rates. You get to choose them, and that's how it works. If you're interested in learning a little bit more how this process would work to get to $10,000 per month with one room in a private pay facility, then just type in private down below, and that'll help me know that you want to see exactly how this works in a private pay community, and how you can set those rates and actually make it work. So, we talked about a ton in this video. We
00:23:07
talked about the different rates, we talked about how this works, how Medicaid versus Medicare works, how Medicare doesn't matter when it comes to assisted living. Medicaid is the thing to look at. We looked at room sizes. We looked at the math, showed you how you can actually get to $10,000. $10,000 in one single room inside of a house. Right? This is the thing that we want to do. Those two residents in that one house, that gets us up to the $10,000 in one single room. Now, Dad, if you are watching this, I hope
00:23:40
this made sense to you. And you're like, "Ah, there it is. That's That Now I understand it." Because what I want all of you to take away is the math here works. It's just understanding the process and understanding exactly how these things work so that you can turn your home with assisted living residents in it. And let you learn how you can understand the process to leverage the systems that are in place so that you can reach this $10,000 goal while having an incredible impact on your residents, which are the
00:24:12
most important part of of owning an assisted living business. But when you understand all the components, it makes everything that much easier for you. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. Would love to help you out as you are trying to launch your assisted living business as well. Go over to assistedlivinginvesting.net for more information or just go down in the pinned comment down below. Join me
00:24:36
in the next free workshop. Would love to have you in there. But I want to remind you that it doesn't take a lot. Just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step and I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. Hey, it's future Brandon. I totally forgot when I was recording a little bit earlier today that I needed to remind you. If you found this video helpful, make sure you go and watch this video.
00:25:00
This is the video where we tell you how we got to $12,000 in one room in our own facility. $12,000 per month in one facility. Right here. We're going to watch that one, okay? And hey, if if you don't like that one, but you want to watch another one, watch the other one that YouTube's going to recommend for you out there as well, okay? Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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