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We are just finishing our initial application for foster home licensing and it doesn't ask anything about finances. I'm assuming that will come later on.
For anyone in IL (or even other states if you want to share) what sort of information did you have to provide? I saw one post where one person had to provide 10 years of tax returns! Sad to say, I am NOT that organized and that will take some time. :roadblock:
Also, did they ask you to break down your monthly budget? We can cover all of our bills with some left over for fun, but we opt for a minimalist life and don't really buy into the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality so it may seem that we're "too poor to afford......" when in reality we're choosing not to buy the latest gadgets, not buy new cars every 5 years, etc. How do we show that our lifestyle is a preference, not a necessity? I don't want to fail our homestudy because our LW misunderstands our no-frills lifestyle.
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Not in IL, but here they just asked for a basic what you have coming in versus going out. They really just want to make sure you won't be using the $ from your fk's to pay your bills. Also, most times there is a month waiting period before you get your first stipend check after your 1st placement. They want to make sure you have enough to provide without it. We have a special account just for purchases for kids and are able to go buy whatever we need. This is handy when kids come with nothing, as my 1st placement did. All he had was a sleeper and it was the middle of January. CPS worker had him bundled with blankets in the car seat.
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Thanks! One of the things we did as we were paying off our debt was set aside money and buy gift cards so we could buy at minimum 2 weeks of clothes, 2 pair of shoes, winter coat/boots/hat/gloves, a new car seat/booster if we needed one, and about $200 at Walmart for misc things like hygiene supplies, coloring books, and a few toys to call her own. So the "start up" costs are covered and we definitely won't need any checks from the state. (Our state is known to run behind anyway so we are prepared to foot the bill 100% on our own if we have to for as long as we have to, and it won't cause any hardship.)
I'm in WA, we had to give them our tax returns for the last two years, a couple current paystubs to show income and a really simple monthly budget listing our 'big ticket' bills like mortgage/rent, tuition, car payments, insurance. We didn't have to get detailed about the grocery bill or anything like that. Like other posters said, they mostly want to make sure you aren't trying to get into Foster care for the $$. (as if it's lucrative or something - ha!) Also, we were told in our training classes that the workers have gift cards they will give you to cover the immediate needs of kids who come with nothing. Also, some stores (like our local kids consignment store) have credit accounts so you can get things for free or big discount for foster kids from them. You might ask if anything like that's available in your area.
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We had to do the same. Mainly a basic budget. I stressed as our spending was no where near what we make (we live off about 1/3 of our earnings; never really increased our living after paying off college debts). I figured they would think we were lying. All we had to was briefly explain that we just put a lot into our savings/retirement, etc and choose not to have increased our standard of living, though we live well enough as we don't have debt. In the end it didn't even phase the CW.
I'm not in IL (though my screen name is indicative that we were once neighboring states ;) ). I'm in AZ and we only had to provide two most recent pay-stubs, a monthly-breakdown of our finances. In the online application portion, we also had to include a number of what we have in the bank/savings and what our major debts are. This part was all on us to provide and they never asked for documentation, but we were truthful.
We, like you, don't feel the need to have the latest & greatest gadgets. We're a young couple living in an apartment that is only a fraction of our income. I don't know what they think of us financially, but I hope that they appreciate how responsible we are with money now that they've dug at our paycheck & bank statements. :)