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Hey,
Congrats on deciding to adopt!
My husband and I were both worried about the financial aspect of adoption as we were just starting out, recently married and just bought our first house, and living on one income. However, we managed to afford it just fine. Of course, we had some help. $5k came from an "anonymous family donation" (thanks mom!), $3K from that year's tax return, $3K from when my husband switched job and his old job paid him for his unused time off, and the rest we saved up from budgetting. We actually sat down and made a budget and committed to it for a limited time, 5 months. It was so hard to keep to the budget, but we raised $8K that way. The rest just came in naturally, probably the affect of us budgetting for so long (we became more aware of where our money was going).
Before starting the adoption we looked through various fundraisers we could do, grants we could apply for, and even spoke with our bank about taking out a loan (something you don't want to do, I know!). Actually with the loan we talked about finding a loan that would be completely offset by the adoption tax credit such that we wouldn't notice the difference in monthly fees. If you do end up needing to take a loan out you may want to talk to an accountant and/or talk to someone at your bank about doing this. As for fundraising, there are tons of ideas out there that seem to be working, from selling things online to yardsales to hosting a spaghetti dinner, etc. Though I will warn you that someone recently got in trouble with the ET gov't for fundraising on her website for her adoption.
Good luck!
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