Adoption Financing

[sparkletruck]

If this has been covered in a sticky, Im sorry (I didnt see it).

Dh and I are excited to adopt (internationally). We have chosen an agency and a country, filled out the application, and have a social worker.

We have savings, but our savings would be used up by the adoption. And we happen to have another potential need for $$ coming. And then, if we were lucky enough to adopt, we would need another car to fit 3 kids.

So, as much as I am inclined to put the app. in the mail, and trust that we will find a way, Dh is more practical.

I am now looking at financial assistance. I have a few links to start, but am wondering if any of you experienced mammas have some insight for me. Is there a particularly good place to look? Is there an angle you found that would help? Anything on the financial front you think would be helpful?

Thank you!

Jessica

[BCFD]

Not that you can put a dollar amount on your child's head, but I totally understand your husband. To make a long story short, my partner and I embarked on IVF because I had insurance that paid for 70% of it. There was just no way we could afford a $30K+ adoption. We have $100K in student loans, just bought a new house, and had a little bit of debt, but not much. We didn't want to spend our child's college fund before he/she arrived. IVF didn't work. Then we discovered the fost/adopt system. While becoming foster parents, we found out about AAP payments (adoption assistance) that continue for 18 years AFTER the child has been adopted. This $ is based on age and special needs. We had NO clue about this, so imagine the expressions on our faces when we were in the midst of becoming foster parents and found out this info! We receive about 3/4 of my monthly salary when I was working, so this AAP $ has afforded us 3 beautiful children and allows me to be a SAHM to them. I'd be happy to talk to you more about fost/adopt if you have any questions. Good luck!!

[Diane B]

There have been periodic threads on this topic. First of all, I will say that there aren't just piles of grant money sitting around to be given away to those of us who want to adopt (unfortunately!) However, lots of people of less than wealthy means have done international adoption. We did! Some people hold fundraisers or benefits - this seems to work especially well if you have a natural community of support like a church. Some people choose to borrow money and, yes, go into some debt. We used a home equity loan to finance some of the cost, along with savings and some gifts from family. Things have been tight, but there's light ahead, and the adoption tax credit is also very helpful. Also, get a schedule from your agency of when each type of payment is due. It's usually spread out over the entire length of time the adoption takes - our largest cost didn't come until the very end, and the front-end application and home study costs were the smallest.

There's no way we can afford a second, but adopting our daughter was the best thing we ever did by far and worth the temporary financial challenge.

[Starr]

Looking back we picked the most inconvenient time to adopt, but I wouldn't change it for anything. We started when I was 21 and DH 22. We both had student loans, a mortgage, car payments, and all that wonderful debt from college. We had zip for savings but just knew the time was never going to be right and both wanted to go for it now. We took out a loan to cover the biggest expense and used some equity on mortgage for another part and of course at the end we used CC. Now we are selling our house so that will take up the equity and we should make a profit which will help us pay off the majority of the CC's. We still have the loan and will continue to chip away at that. We did decide that in the future for Christmas we will tell our parents instead of gifts for us we would rather they put $$ into the adoption loan. We've had a few people mention doing a benefit since we are pretty active in our small town but at the same DH didn't want other people to feel like we had an advantage (small town politics). I guess for me I see people getting into debt with cars, I would much rather be in debt for my DD.

[Buddhamom]

First let me say congrats on your decision to adopt!!!! You could hold a benefit dinner and get the stuff donated from a local store. Or you could host a casual Friday where if someone puts $5.00 in the jar they can wear jeans. Also, it sounds like you are open to other races, so with that said, are you open to a full AA or bi-racial adoption? As wrong as this seems, they are much less expensive, but families are very much needed. As you can see my daughter is full AA and she is the light of our family! Don't forget the $10,000+ credit on taxes that can be used over a few years. And that is money you get back, it's not a write off.

[JunipersMom]

We borrowed from DH 401K and some from family. Luckily alot of the adoption costs for the paperwork, homestudy, fingerprints etc... were fees that we could cover at the time and we just needed to borrow for the large portions of cash that were needed at the time of referral and at when the case was finished in Guatemala (in our case).
And the tax credit has been HUGE for us and we were able to get all caught up (and adopting again) within one year.
Best of luck to you!

[annethcz]

Most of it we just payed as went along. We found that it wasn't a large lump sum that was due at once, rather smaller amounts ($500 here, $1200 there, etc.) that was due at varied times. So it wasn't as daunting as it first appeared. The biggest expese for us was our travel costs, which we charged to a credit card and payed back over a couple of months.