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I am not really worried about clothes if I do foster care because I've always bought clothing in lots on ebay for far less than I'd pay at thrift stores, and most of the time the clothes look like they were never worn. Last year's shoes are cheap on ebay too. Food would be harder since my kids are on a special diet and I'd like to keep everyone on it so I don't cook separate meals, but I'm sure I'd find a way. Blogs like 5dollardinners.com can help. Grocerycoupons.com costs very little and will mail you coupons that they clip. The biggest issue there is that you can't get coupons for produce and my kids eat tons of it. We make our own earthboxes to grow tons of food, but they always eat far more than we can grow.
I do make more than my expenses but part of our income may not count for foster care. For example, I get IHSS (in-home supportive services) money for caring for my autistic son, and he gets SSI. Would those be factored into our income for foster care purposes or would they think we're on public assistance and throw out our application right off? I think that my experience raising kids with autism, epilepsy, asthma, etc, etc, could be valuable in the foster care world but don't want to take on another job to raise my income to get approved and then have no time to truly care for the kids. I've also thought of fostering pregnant/parenting teens in the future since my experience getting my Master's while a single parent of disabled kids could maybe serve as a good example. That sounds like a pretty rose-colored glasses view but I do think I could at least try to help. My mom was a teenager and did a terrible job, to the point I've rarely seen her since I was 12, but I think if she'd had mentoring and guidance she could have done much better. I just don't know if we'd be approved while on these programs, but then I don't want to get off of them because they're hard to get back on and my son will really need them when he's older.