Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: if you are raising a grandchild, the money question that matters most is not how to budget harder. It is which benefits the child is already entitled to and nobody has told you about — because two of them are worth thousands of dollars a year and both are routinely missed, one because the rule sounds like it excludes you when it does not.
Find out what exists before you spend your own money
This is the order that matters. Grandparents commonly start by cutting their own spending, then dip into savings, then into retirement accounts — and only afterwards discover the child qualified for something all along. Money you have already spent cannot be recovered; a benefit claimed late usually cannot be backdated far either. Check first.
The two big ones
Social Security on your record. A grandchild can, in defined circumstances, draw benefits on a grandparent’s earnings record. It is a narrow door: the child’s own parents must have been deceased or disabled, and specifically must have been so at the time you became entitled to benefits or died — not merely at some later point. The child must also have begun living with you before turning 18. Those conditions decide most cases, so it is worth knowing precisely whether you are through the door before you file.
When a grandchild can draw on your record — and the condition that decides it
The Earned Income Tax Credit. Many grandparents believe they are too old to claim it. That belief is based on a real rule that does not apply to them, and for 2026 it is the difference between a maximum credit of $664 and one of $4,427 with one qualifying child.
The age rule that does not mean what people think
The rest
- Claiming a grandchild as a dependent, and the child tax credit
- Guardianship or adoption — and why the choice changes the money
- Why your own retirement is not the fund of last resort
One more thing to ask about by name
There is a category of cash assistance often called a child-only TANF grant, paid on behalf of a child living with a relative who is not their parent. We are not going to state the eligibility rules here, and the reason is more useful than an apology: TANF income and resource standards are set by each State, not federally. Federal regulation contemplates exactly this family shape — in the maintenance-of-effort rules an eligible family must “include a child living with a custodial parent or other adult caretaker relative” — while requiring the family to be “financially eligible according to the appropriate income and resource… standards established by the State and contained in its TANF plan” (45 CFR 263.2(b)). So whether your income is counted is necessarily a state question, and no national article can answer it for you. Ask your county or state human services office about a child-only grant specifically, not about “welfare” or “TANF” generally, because the child-only category is administered differently and the general answer may not surface it.
Ask also about the Guardianship Assistance Program by name. Whether it operates in your state, and on what terms, is a state-level question we have not verified.
If the child has investment income
What this guide will not tell you
It will not tell you whether to take the child in. That is not a financial question and it would be false to treat it as one. What it will do is make sure that if you have already made that decision, you are not paying for it out of your own retirement while a benefit the child is entitled to goes unclaimed.
General information drawn from the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury regulations and IRS publications, not legal or tax advice. Thresholds and dollar figures are adjusted regularly and several of the rules here turn on facts this page cannot see, so check the current year before you act on a number.