[KellyKA]

Hello, everyone! Sorry if this is a basic question, I want to be very prepared and able to inform my husband before we speak with an agency ( he tends to get overwhelmed when we talk about large amounts of money) Are you able to book your own travel or does the agency require you to take specific flights etc? We have a ton, and I mean a TON! of airline miles and we would like to be able to use them to help cut down on the traveling costs

The act of coming up with so much money is very overwhelming. How do most people handle this? ( If you all dont mind me asking) Do most people just save up the costs, or take out loans and pay them off later? Sorry if this is too personal but I dont want $$$ to stand in the way of us being able to provide a forever family to our forever baby!

[beckyww]

We used hotel points and c/h used airline miles, if we'd had them.

As for the overall financing - that's all over the board. I've read about lots of home equity loans, 401 disbursements, etc. Our agency let us pay in chunks so we hustled the cash as we went along.

Becky
The Woodworth Family in Beautiful San Antonio TX

[Kasey]

Our agency has a travel agency they work with, but we booked on our own due to relative that works for the airlines and we booked our own hotels as we had Marriott points.
many people use their miles, just always make sure whatever ticket you book you can make changes to without fees or they are exchangable/refundable.

The agency will just tell you when you have to be there and when you can leave. Generally they will make your arrangements for in country travel and hotels in regions.

For the over all costs:
In 2004 we refinaced and took equity out then, so no loan, just built more onto our mortgage.
In 2006 we did home equity line of credit.

For both adoptions, the adoption tax credit worked out wonderfully for us as we did receive a big refund. So that helped pay off alot. Alot of that depends on your AGI and your tax burden though.

What we did for travel, was open a 0% interest credit card, so airfare, hotels all went on that.

[MamaChinch]

Our agency told us which dates we to be there and we booked our own flights to and from Moscow, but my agency handled all the in-country flights.
Don't think of the costs all in one lump sum, *but you will*, you don't have to pay it all at once anyway.
I refinanced my house and got cash out with a HELC to pay for most of the cost and my parents gave me $10,000 to start off. I didn't ask, but they insisted.
Most of trip 2 went on a credit card, which I am still paying off! ugh! It's managable and I know lots of people have done fund-raisers to get some $$. I started, but there just wasn't time. There are a few websites with fundraising ideas you can look at.
Have faith, follow your heart and it will be fine. I committed to doing this and had no idea how I would pay for it. Now I get it all back everyday with a beautiful little girl who calls me Mommy!!!

[GCS]

We had planned to use hotel and air miles for both trips but ended up not being able to use many.
For us we ended up in region where there was no Hyatt, Hilton or Marriott. So our points there were useless. You can use them in Moscow but you may really only be there a short time.

Our notice trip one was so short we could not use miles at all. We had 9 days notice to travel trip one.
We were able to use our miles for a good portion of trip two so that was a help.

I think you should plan to use them but dont be surprised if it doesnt work out that way.

[randloar]

We planned on using air miles and had accrued plenty to do so, but were unable to get flights using those miles (so, needless to say, now we can use them on our 'family' trips where we are buying 4 seats instead of 2!). But we arranged our own flights, and ended up using one of the travel agencies you will see posted other places. We loved them, and they got us a way better deal than I found online (better times, cheaper overall, and refundable/changable as well!).

We got a Marriott card as well and used what we could of the points there to save on hotel during trip 1. And as GCS pointed out, there may not be one in your region, the several days you spend in Moscow are pretty darn expensive, so those points are invaluable at that point (talking 300$ average per night for a room there).

As far as coming up with the money, hate to sound horrible (please everyone, bear with the comparison here, I don't mean this literally), but, if you were to head out to get a new car, you would not likely have the funding on you, but would be able to finance, borrow, get a loan and wouldn't think that was a crazy or unobtainable thing to do........

well, to us there were some parallels here.....so once we resolved in our minds the average cost it was going to be to adopt internationally, we stopped stressing about it and it just was what it was and made it work.......... we borrowed against our equity in our home, started saving where we could, borrowed from a few 0% offers on our visas and tried to keep up with it all as we went along. Oh, and we ate a lot of quesadillas and sandwiches (ie, cut back on day to day expenses) quite a bit to save here and there!

We are fortunate enough (and unfortunate!) that we typically have had a tax liability each year, therefore we were able to plan in that we will eventually be able to recoup the tax credit (11,600 or so) that you can claim after the adoption is complete. Beware, this isn't a 11k check the govt hands you the year after you get home........its a total amount available to you , that you can get paid back over a 5 year window BUT is based on your ending 'tax liability' (the amount that uncle sam would normally keep out of your wages each year at the end of your tax calculations/deductions). So, if you always already get all your fed money back, this won't help you out! Hope that makes a little bit of sense!!!! Its a confusing topic, but that money can help in the long run, don't count on it for an immediate payback...

Hang in there, make a spreadsheet to break it all down, that makes it a bit less intimidating to see how the fees are usually spread out over the duration of your process.......if that helps! Hang in there!!!

[NCFamily]

We are among the group whose agency provided the dates we needed to travel (arrival and departure dates). We were responsible for arranging travel to and from Moscow. Our son came from the Rostov on Don region. Once we made it to Moscow the agencies people in Russia made flight arrangements.

[TweetyMom04]

Our agency had their internal Travel Dept and made our arrangements. The carrier refused to allow us to use our FFM's.

We already had a HELOC loan for refurb to the house (before deciding to Adopt). Thus we extended our loan amount.

[ddahl]

We got extra time to save when our BCIS documents were lost but we did a HELOC as well. We ended up not needing it all so that was good. My parents gave us FF miles and paid for th hotels and food and all in country expenses as a gift for their new Grandson. A total surprise to us.

The costs can be staggering so cut back and cut down right away. You can do it!

We booked our own travel through our family travel agent too. The agency was more than competant but we love our agent who is a family friend.

Do you want to call one of us to ask specific questions? You can always call me :-)

[Ebadge90]

We took care of the travel to Moscow, but the agency took care of the travel between regions, at our expense, of course.
As far as paying for the adoption, we took out a home equity loan to cover expenses.

[russia06]

We posted this several months ago, but this seems to be a good place to repost it for anyone new. . .

One thing you should know is that you can have friends and family members transfer Marriott Points to you, and you can also buy points (both you and your spouse). They have recently changed the rules regarding how many points you can buy and the cost of the points (I believe it is $12.50 / 1000 points now, with a Max per person of 50,000 per year). Buying points can be cheaper then paying for the room costs. I would also recommend getting a Marriott credit card and they then give you some points (I think it was 25,000) for signing up (and using it once) and then you get points for each dollar spent.

We were able to raise enough points by begging friends / co-workers / family and buying around 200,000 points to "pay" for our entire trip #2 (we stayed in the Courtyard for 22 days). This is much cheaper then the $500 / night (approx) they would have charged. The reward we used even threw in Breakfast everyday so that was a savings too.

As for frequent flyer miles, we had donated miles (from a family friend) on US Air. They work with Lufthansa. The problem was that when we use frequent flier miles, there are a limited number of free seats per flight, so getting the flights you want is very difficult. Unless you have a TON of miles, this could be an issue. We wound up having to connect via Chicago (to come back to Philadelphia) since we couldn't get direct. We also had issues trying to return earlier then originally scheduled, and had to stay in Russia and extra couple of days (we finished all the paperwork faster then our agency had predicted).

[amyfk]

WE took out a home equity line of credit. Also note that my husband was 45 at the time of my child's adoption. While there are some disadvantages to adopting as older parents, there are advantages that we were able to save up that much more money than folks who are just entering the work force.
I wish you luck.
Amy K, NJ