Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: In Georgia, a Medicaid nursing-facility resident’s Personal Needs Allowance is $70.00/Month; the amount of their own income they keep for personal use each month, with the rest going to the facility as the patient-pay amount toward the cost of care. That is well above the $30/month federal floor set in 1988 and never raised since. Appendix A1: ABD Medicaid Financial Limits, Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (PAMMS Medicaid Policy Manual) states the figure directly.
Why Georgia’s figure isn’t the federal floor
Federal Medicaid law requires only a $30-a-month personal needs allowance as a floor; a state is free to set its own, higher figure by statute, regulation, or agency policy. Georgia has done exactly that, setting $70.00/Month, effective July 2019 (still the operative figure in the current live manual table).
What the allowance covers, and what it doesn’t
The personal needs allowance pays for the things a facility’s daily rate doesn’t cover: clothing, haircuts, snacks, a phone or television, small personal purchases. It is deducted before the rest of a resident’s income is applied to the facility bill as the patient-pay (or post-eligibility treatment of income, PETI) amount. It is not extra money on top of what Medicaid already pays the facility; it is the one slice of a resident’s own income that Medicaid rules guarantee the resident, not the facility, keeps.
One exception or caveat worth knowing
Unchanged since July 2019 even though it appears in the manual’s current “2026” limits table; an old-but-still-in-force amount per Georgia’s own live policy manual, not a stale archived document.
| Citation | Appendix A1: ABD Medicaid Financial Limits, Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (PAMMS Medicaid Policy Manual) |
| What it says | “an individual in a nursing home or Institutionalized Hospice | $70 | Effective 7-19” |
Figures verified against the Georgia DFCS PAMMS Appendix A1 ABD limits table and 42 U.S.C. 1396a(q); the 1988 date of the federal $30 floor was not re-checked on September 30, 2026.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a rule amendment, and a facility or state caseworker has the final say on any individual case.
Related: use the Medicaid spend-down calculator to estimate how much you would need to spend down to qualify for long-term-care Medicaid in your state.