[Roca]

Hello Ladies!
I'm am new to the site and new to the adoption process. I know it will take time so I'm not in a rush. I just wanted to know if any of you have good advice when it comes to the financial end of the adoption.
My husband and I have narrowed down an agency and are talking about options.
Like I said before, this is our first "official" adoption. I have 2 boys and despirately want a little girl. For the longest time I tried to convince myself I was happy with my boys but I find myself looking longingly at the little girl stuff in stores. Anyway, my husband was adopted as an infant, and we always knew we wanted to expand our home through adoption. So here I am. We have made our adoption 'official' and have told all of our family and friends.
Our concerns are not that great in terms of money but I'd love to find some grants if possible. I will not finance this. To be honest, I don't think we should have to. The fees aren't large for Ethiopia so I don't really see the need. Plus, we don't need another monthly bill.
I've looked online and found a few website, but I'm still overwhelmed.
I'm happy to know there is a group with so many of you that have adopted from Ethiopia. I have found many of the post helpful, you have already answered so many of my questions!
pm me if you know of any great sites.

[Ladyofmoonlight]

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!

[frankiegirl]

For our first adoption we took out a home equity loan. For this adoption I told my husband that I did not want to take out another loan. So we are doing a few things. We pay a lot in taxes out of my husband’s checks and so we can end up getting a huge return at tax time. We changed his W4 so that we get more money in our pockets on paid day but that we will not have to pay taxes at the end of the year. That way I can put more money in savings and pay the adoption fee’s as they occur.
My dad passed away 4 months ago and he was a huge collector of any type of trading cards, comic books, and all kinds off stuff. My mom wants to start selling of all that stuff, so she is having me sell it on e-bay or whatever way I can sell it and she is giving me the profits to go towards our adoption. So I guess you can say my dad is helping pay for our adoption of our son. I always told him that I was going to move when he passed away because I did not want to be the one having to go through all his collections (it's huge). Who knew he was collecting all this stuff to help his grandson come home.
I thought about doing fundraising, but than I saw some post somewhere about the AP who got in trouble and I did not want to take the chances.
Good luck and welcome.

[barefootbride]

Originally Posted by Ladyofmoonlight

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!

This is a great thread. Thanks for your insight. I think we are going to start saving up before we start the process.