[Shirizz]

Is anyone a foster parent? I have always wanted to do this because there is a huge need for it in every community sadly.

I have no illusions about what it takes. A lot of foster kids are high needs, and it is a VERY big and difficult commitment.

My husband and I couldn’t foster anytime soon due to busy full-time jobs and our own kids (2 and 5), but I’ve been thinking this is a perfect way to serve my community after FIRE.

Has anyone done this?

[Sarah]

Hi! Third generation foster parent and permanent legal guardian. Happy to answer questions. We recently closed our home after receiving permanent legal guardianship of a teenager.

In our time, we cared for 23 children from foster care while raising our now 2 and 12 year old bio kids.

Here are some basic financial principles we follow and encourage for other foster parents:

1. Set up a separate foster care account in your and your husband’s name. Label this the foster care account.

Don’t commingle funds. Set up your direct deposit with your agency‘s monthly stipends into this account. Take the child’s expenses from this account.

If you need to transfer to your personal account (i.e. for their portion of groceries bought for the entire family), Zelle/transfer it to your personal account with a clear label “I.E.

March grocery bill”. Do you HAVE to do this? No. But its best practices. So many adoptees and former foster youth have come forward to discuss how they were financially taken advantage of and used as a cash cow.

Keeping a separate account and labeling transfers to your personal account increases transparency and accountability.

2. Before you foster, pre-seed your foster care account with either:

a) 1-2 months of reimbursement (Texas, this was around $812 for one month) or

b) 1-2 months of daycare expenses (if you plan on taking on littles). This is PER CHILD that you plan on taking placement.

Pick whichever number is greater. Or ideally, do both an and b.

The reason for this is to give you the financial cushion to buy everything a new placement needs, then pay yourself back with the reimbursement check that will come after they go home.

For example, you plan on only taking on one child that’s school age (so no daycare). You fill your foster care account Dec. 31 with $800 minimum. Jan 1, you take placement of a child.

In the state of Texas (and similar in many other states), you won’t get your first check until the 20th of the following month (so Feb 20. in this case paying for 31 days in January).

You use that $800 to buy clothes, school supplies, booster seat, food, whatever they need from Jan 1 until Feb 20 when you’re paid.

They return home Sept. 30. You empty whatever remains in the fund, buying what they need before they go home or spend it on a last hooray experience with them. (For my teens, I’ve often just given them giftcards for the amount in their fund.)

August 20, you’ll get paid the $800ish for September, replenishing your Dec. 31 seed funds.

That leaves your foster care fund ready to take care of the next placement that comes your way.

We stayed away from the age range that needs daycare. But if you plan on taking little, you‘ll need to save up 1-2 months of daycare.

Most states cover daycare for kids in foster care (when the parents work full time, they won’t typically cover for a stay at home parent) but it can take several weeks to a month before the payments kick in.

So, you’re on the hook for those payments until then, hence the need for savings ahead of time.

For older kids, this separate bank account and funds should include a monthly accounting where you sit and talk with the child about how their funds were spent and where the funds are going next month.

We have permanent legal guardianship at this point and still follow best practices with a separate account for her continuing support payments.

She knows her funds this month are going to an ABLE investment account, her weekly allowance, swim lessons, musical instrument repair, some homeschool resources, her highlights magazine, savings towards her RV (for when she’s 18), etc.

Having a separate account makes this kind of accountability easy. Eventually her SSI will also be deposited into this account when she’s 18 (right now, our income means she doesn’t qualify for those payments, but same principle).

3. We avoid investment accounts for the kids that aren‘t in permanent custody. While we’d like to stay in touch with our kids after they go home, not all families permit that. But for the kids who stay, we set them up with investment accounts.

Our current teen has an ABLE account because she qualifies with her disability.

She also has a general investment account where she can pick ETFs and individual stocks (this is more fun money rather than long term live-off-of money).

She does not need a college fund because the terms of her legal guardianship (like many adoption agreements from foster care) include free college tuition at any public institution. So, she doesn’t need a 529.

4. Kids in care receive Medicaid. If a child stays with your permanently, sometimes – but not always – they will also receive Medicaid until 18. She qualified for Medicaid until 21 (if we file an extension before she’s 18).

We also added her to our private insurance.

Some private insurance will allow you to add children while they are still in foster care while others require you to wait until you have permanent legal guardianship or adoption papers.

We essentially treat the foster care account as a separate household that we are managing and paying specific bills for the child out of.

We do not see it as a wealth building tool for ourselves, although unfortunately many foster parents will take the child’s funds and treat them as their own.

Some of these hard-to-place children come with $1000/day contracts (those are very rare). In our experience, many teens have come with $1400-1800/month in stipend.

We do not use any of the child’s funds for our investments — and that includes paying the mortgage on our home.

We would be paying for the mortgage regardless of whether or not a child was placed in one of the rooms, so that is our responsibility as the adults and not the responsibility of the child to pay for.

Plus, at the end of their stay in foster care, the child doesn’t get to keep any equity in the home. If they do not consume the good or take it with them, then we don’t pay for it out of their money.

$800/month may not sound like a lot, but there are plenty of awful foster parents out there who take advantage of the system and profit.

The child gets free breakfast/lunch at school, the parents use free foster resource closets for clothes and school supplies, then feeds the kid 25 cent ramen for dinner and pockets the rest (especially when daycare is free, insurance is free, meds are free, etc.) It’s rife for fraud.

Hence the need to develop better practices for financial accountability and to be good stewards of their funds.

Anyway happy to chat. I love discussing best practices within the foster care system, particularly when it comes to budgeting foster care funds and helping prepare children for their future paths, whatever they might be.

[Ruby]

I was a foster mom for 5 years. It is a very emotional road, both good and bad. The system is broken, It was super frustrating underpaid social workers, lack of communication etc.

The stipends are never enough for what most kids need, because most arrive with no clothes, need tons of therapy, health appointments and so much stuff.

Although the system is good about providing lots of resources. There is training but I can tell you nothing can prepare you for the things you will hear and have to deal with. Still 100% worth it.

The fact that there are kids that go to bed without dinner, a good night kiss, a safe home to sleep, it’s absolutely heart breaking.

For me the 2 most important lessons were: it doesn’t matter how bad you think a kid has it, being with their family will always be better for them, no matter how fantastic you think you are, the goal is always reunification.

And, abusive parents have also been abused, neglecting parents were also neglected, is very difficult to shift from judging to supporting, but the parents need as much love and support as the kids.

Good luck

[Tanesha]

Nothing to add, but I was placed in a foster home as a child & then adopted by the same family & my life trajectory is 1000% better because of that.

So, kudos to you for even considering making space in your heart & home for children in need.

[Deb]

I was a foster parent for 5 years. It was wonderful and rewarding but also hard and sad. If you decide to go this route, I encourage you very strongly to be empathetic to and supportive of the birth family and try not to judge.

As someone said upthread, abusive parents were abused. Neglectful parents were neglected.

It’s a tough cycle. Love on the birth families. Try to support them. Reunification is the goal in almost all cases (a surprising number), so build a bridge for the child you foster and his birth family.

Involve the birth family if you can in decisions about the child, e.g. haircuts and hairstyles. Engage the birth parents in conversations.

Maybe ask for a family recipe for one of the child’s favorite dishes. Send them photos and videos of their child. Imagine being in their shoes.

Yes, they made mistakes, maybe terrible ones, but they also lost a child.

[Chae]

I am a foster parent. I’ve been song it for 13 years. Adopted 3. Definitely join foster parent groups in your area to learn more, and know that even now if you don’t directly foster you can still be a part of the community.

I am blessed with meal trains, Amazon wish lists from when new placements come in, foster closets that need volunteers to sort clothes, babysitters that understand the unique needs of foster children.

Definitely wait till kids are older so b they can vocalize their feelings about fostering.

My kids love it, but I have some friends who had to stop because their kids were emotionally affected.

[Annie]

My mom did foster care when I was young. She has a strong temperament/constitution which is needed for this job.

The varying levels of neglect/abuse each foster kid has been through presents a unique challenge to determine how best to meet each kid’s needs.

Kudos to you for considering taking on this challenge.

[Lisa]

Been fostering for 11 years and currently have 5 foster children in my home ranging in age from 3 months – 17.

It’s the most challenging, frustrating, amazing and rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

[Amy]

We had 4 under 7 living with us for 3 yrs after our kids were grown and heading to college.

Now we are ready for everything being a grandparent has in store for us but it was such a blessed time in everyone’s lives while they were here.

[Tiffany]

I was a foster parent, and I am single. I spent some to get started because I do not have kids and I had no kid stuff for living space and entertainment.

I think the most expensive thing I bought was a bed, but I also had a lot of support from the foster closet.

It was really hard not to buy too much for them and take them to do fun things.

I ended up spending more on them than the stipend, but I felt that I was paid a good amount to cover their needs and do some fun things.

It is an emotional rollercoaster and so difficult to coordinate all of the visits and appointments.

Since I work full time, the caseworkers had to help a lot with driving. I had to, and chose to, take quite a few days off work for daycare issues.

I did not plan for that part of it, so figuring out how to get my work done was difficult.

I am lucky that I have a very supportive family, coworkers, and friends that helped.

It was difficult, but I am working on getting setup again for a third placement.

[Kari]

We fostered for 8 years and adopted 3. We closed our license when one was diagnosed as RAD so that we could really lean in and give him the support he needed.

Due to his needs and him not being successful in school as there are no schools that can accommodate his needs I left my job to homeschool all of our kids.

In a lot of ways it slowed us down in our fire goals but in other ways it forced us to get very intentional about how we live.

My guy is doing significantly better now but still requires multiple therapies to be successful which is a large portion of my time.

There is a major need for foster parents, it does however come at a great cost.

We’ve personally had more than 20,000 dollars worth of damaged and destroyed property over the course of fostering. We specifically took sibling groups that had drug exposure.

We knew they would be harder to place. Just something to consider.

Parenting in general is not all roses and EVERY kid in foster care has some form of special need.

[Tianna]

I am a current foster parent in Florida and we mostly take care of children under 7. As others have said, it is one of the hardest yet beautiful things we have ever done.

It also hasn’t impacted our fire journey much at all.

I agree that the best thing to do is find a support group in your area for foster parents.

It has been a game changer for us.

[Shelly]

Well, I have not fostered any children myself, I have been a support person for multiple friends who have.

Well, it might just be the state we live in, my experience with them made me realize I would never foster any child until my youngest turned 18.

With one of my friends, they ended up having their own bio children taken away because of accusations from the adopted child.

This led to their nursing infant and other elementary aged kids being placed in foster care while they fought to get their babies back.

In the end, I saw how damaging it was to their own children and thus my opinion.

When it works it is a beautiful thing, but I would not risk my own children so waiting until after 18 and FIRE would be perfect in my mind.

Again, perhaps it is just my state but this isn’t just one family having a harrowing experience.

I support CASA and think that could be an amazing route to take!

[Author]

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