[GuatMommy2Be]

Hi all,

I've read in past postings about paying for your adoption. I know that Ebay is a great way to earn some extra money, yard sales, etc.

I am curious though - Has anyone ever paid for their adoption on their credit card? If so, are there special plans for adoptions? Or adoption loans with low interest rates?

[cnshornsby]

There are adoption loans (I don't know what interest rates). Our homestudy agency or one of the agencies I got info from gave us info on a bank. Unfortunately, I did not keep the info as we did not go that route. Someone else asked the question before and said they had searched the net and could not find anything. Maybe someone else can chime in with info?

What about home equity loans? Or benefit dinners, bake sales. Ebay is a good place for extra money. My mother does it for a living, believe it or not. Find something that you are interested in or knowledgeable about and do some research, then go to auctions, yard sales, estate sales and try to pick up good deals.

Good luck!

[DPline]

We got a no interest for six months Amazon Visa and used it to tide us over when we would have run of expenses all at the same time. When the six months ran out on mine we paid it off using our home equity line of credit and got one in my husbands name. It isn't a total solution, but it buys you time.

Our agency would allow us to charge our attorney fees, but they would charge us the 3 percent (or maybe it was 5 percent) transaction fee, so just keep that in mind. We fully intended to charge the second installment but when we went to do it, we found out about the fee and used our line of credit instead.

[lisam951]

We have good credit so my husband requested a lower rate on one of our cards and got it. We only used this for the travel expense portion of our adoption and paid it off with our income tax refund. We took some equity out of a property we own for the rest.

[tippytalk]

You can probably get cash out on your credit card but MAKE SURE you check the fees and rates, they are usually high. We did a home equity line of credit. We can draw $ as we need it and only pay interest on what we draw. It is nice knowing it is available.
~MM

[amouton]

We were lucky enough to get a home equity loan to cover all of our adoption, after just building our house almost two years ago. I have heard that Capital One with issue a card, with a low intrest rate and a credit line of $20,000, for adotpion exspenses.

[WVUMom418]

First you need to check with you agency to see if they will allow you to use a credit card and if so, how much do they charge as a transaction fee. I get a yearly bonus from work but I wasn't going to get it until after I needed to pay the first installment to the agency. I got a very low interest credit card with mileage points so that I could earn mileage for our travels and then I paid it off when I got my bonus.

[PattyR]

I have paid some of the adoption fees using a credit card account. I have excellent credit and my credit card company will send me "low interest until the debt is paid off checks to use." This is what I have used to pay some fees with a very low interest rate.

It is best to write the check directly to the agency because then I was not charged cash advance fees which can be very high. If I had written the check to myself I would've been charged the cash advance fees. This may differ from company to company so I would check.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if you do this it is very important not to be late on any payment or you will most likely lose the low percentage rate being charged.

Good luck!

[fjdelvalle]

I have to agree with PattyR. My husband and I used checks that our credit card sends us. It was a low 3.99 and will stay that way just make sure not to miss a payment. We also got a personal line of credit because we didn't have enough equity in our home. We went through Bank One (Now Chase) and received an ok rate, actually it was better than what most banks would do and even better than most equity loans. The thing that was good about the personal lone of credit it that even though it is paid off we still have access to the funds and will be using it to pay for half of or next adoption.

[GuatMommy2Be]

How quickly did you have to pay these costs back?