[mjoseph]

Anderson,

That is definitely being stuck between a rock and a hard place! I can understand the money situation. I was having a similar situation with affording my 1 (current) adoption process. I have 20% equity in my home but in TX you can't exceed 80% debt so I could not use a home equity loan. I don't have credit cards with credit limits over $2,500 so that was not an option. My family supports me but don't have the financial means to be much assistance. I can completely relate to that helpless feeling. Your heart is pulling you in one direction and your mind is trying to think of feasable ways to keep up! I do have a few suggestions. If you accepted the 2nd baby you would have some time to pay the fees. She isn't due until June so you figure 6 - 8 months from that gives you about 11 - 13 months. During that time here are some things you may want to try:

1) Garage Sale
You can ask friends, family, co-workers, etc...to donate any items they no longer want/need to your garage sale efforts. You can also call people having garage sales on the weekends in your area and offer to *pick up* anything they don't sell. Many will be happt to have someone come get it rather than them have to haul it off. You can also put an ad in the paper stating you will pick up and haul away anything from garage sales or unwanted items. Once you have a good amount of things put an ad in the paper for your garage sale as a Benefit Garage Sale for your adoption fund. It won't bring in tons of money but every little bit helps!

2) Benefit Speghetti Dinner
You can ask your church or organization you may belong to to donate space to have a dinner. It is very cheap to serve speghetti and the dinner won't have a high overhead. You can have family and friends help you put it together. You can then sell tickets for it (and have friends, family, co-workers, etc...) selling tickets too at $15 a ticket or whatever you want. You can also add some spice to this by having either a silent auction or raffles at the dinner. You can write to local merchants and ask for a donation (gift certificate, etc..) that you could use for the raffle or silent auction to benefit your cause. Then you would raise money through the dinner and ticket sales for the raffles. I have heard a lot of success stories on doing this as a fundraiser event. You can raise quite a bit of money depending on how much time you have to really spend on it.

3) If your job (if you work) doesn't offer adoption assistance, maybe they will allow you to do something to the effect of jeans day. Where everyone can wear jeans on a certain day if they pay $5. My company does not offer adoption assistance in any way but I presented HR with this idea and they are considering it! It would be known that the money raised is going to my adoption fund. We do jean days for different groups and usually it has a good turnaround.

4) Loan
Perhaps you can get approved for a small loan. If you can get a loan for half of what you need, you can probably come up with the other half other ways! I know it may be difficult with the debt ratio of having the home equity, etc... but it is worth a shot as a last resort.

Hope this is helpful. Wish I could be of more help to you. Best of luck and I hope everything works out for you and the little kiddos.