A Conversation with Loryn Carter

If you’ve spent any time in the world of caregiving — really in it — you know the quiet financial devastation it leaves in its wake. The prescriptions that add up faster than the paychecks. The mileage logged on a car that’s becoming more doctor’s shuttle than family vehicle. The grab bars and ramps and rollators purchased in a crisis, receipt shoved in a drawer, never to be thought of again.

That’s why when I encountered Loryn Carter, founder of CountedCare, I felt something click into place. Here was someone who had lived it — who had watched her mother, her sister, and herself absorb the full weight of caring for her grandparents since COVID — and then watched her mother suffer a stroke in 2024, a health crisis she believes was fueled, in part, by the relentless physical and financial toll of caregiving. Loryn didn’t just survive that chapter. She built something from it.

Armed with an MBA from UCLA Anderson — where she specialized in Brand Management and Entrepreneurship — and an eye-opening stint in marketing strategy at CVS Health, Loryn noticed something finance-trained founders usually overlook entirely: the financial lives of family caregivers are almost completely invisible. No tools. No guidance. No one handing them a roadmap.

What she found in her research changed everything. IRS Publication 502 contains a quietly powerful list of deductible medical expenses — and most caregivers have never heard of it. Caregivers spend an average of 26% of their income on out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. Yet in Loryn’s early research with 100 caregivers, 87% had no idea the deduction existed at all.

What Caregivers Often Don’t Know They Can Track

CountedCare is a financial tracking app built specifically for family caregivers. It works the way a business expense tracker does — familiar, intuitive, low learning curve — because Loryn understood that caregivers are already exhausted. The app isn’t another obligation on an impossible to-do list. It’s a quiet act of self-advocacy: one hour to make sure what you’ve given is finally, officially, counted.

The moment that seems to stop caregivers cold? Mileage. Every pharmacy run. Every drive to the specialist across town. Every trip to pick up equipment. Months, sometimes years of trips they made without ever thinking to log. CountedCare makes the invisible visible — and helps caregivers walk into a CPA’s office armed with organized, categorized documentation instead of a shoebox of vague receipts.

With Tax Day right around the corner, the timing has never been more urgent. The 7.5% AGI threshold sounds daunting. But Loryn points out that many caregivers are far closer to that threshold than they realize. They just haven’t been tracking. CountedCare is built to change that — not by offering tax advice, but by offering something that matters just as much: financial literacy, organized documentation, and the confidence to have a real conversation with a tax professional.

Loryn Carter’s vision for CountedCare extends beyond an app. It reaches toward a different country than the one we live in now — one where a pharmacist hands you a receipt and says, “This may be deductible, track it.” Where employers treat caregiver financial wellness as infrastructure. Where every family caregiver has access to the tools and knowledge to make sure what they’ve sacrificed is finally, fully counted.

You are not alone. You CAN care, cope, survive, and thrive!