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Foreign Adoption: How did YOU pay for it?
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Adoption has long been something I have been interested in. It is something I would love to see our family do in the future, God willing. I have heard that foreign adoption can run from $10-30, 000 and can take from a few months to several years. That baffles me. I have a friend whoes family desperately wants to adopt a little boy they met on a missions trip to Haiti. They are constantly in contact with the orphanage. They do not have the money at this time, and are exploring options in regards to how to come up with the money. We are in Canada, so they do not have the option of appealing to one of the American organizations that offer grants. This six year old boy has severe anemia as well as the malnourishment issues of the other children. (The children recieve only one meal a day — usually only rice and maybe some beans. There is just nothing else to give them.)
Situations like this break my heart. Prayers are coveted, but we know there is more that could be done -especially for this little boy. I know many of you have adopted from foreign countries. How did you go about financing the adoption? Has anyone specifically adopted from Haiti?
Hi! My husband and I just traveled to China about 8 weeks ago and brought our little girl home. We are so overjoyed!
First of all, listen to God, he will direct and guide you and your friends. Our adoption was perfectly led by God. Believe me, the stories I have to tell would make me seem like a crazy person, lol.
Our adoption cost close to 40k. There are so many hidden fees that the adoption agencies do not put in their cost sheets. We needed immunizations, doctors visits, passports, items to take with you on your trip, etc. It was very overwhelming but so worth it.
How did we pay for it? LOL, I am such a controlling person that it took an employee at Chick fil A coming up to me telling me that God wanted him to give me a message and it was “to trust in him”. YIKES! That day I stopped wavering and sent in the adoption application. We only had 10k in our savings/emergency fund and that was frightening because it was all the money we had on a one income family when my husbands employer was laying people off left and right. I still can’t believe we took the leap. That is what we started with, the 10k. I also sold some old gold jewelry and that was enough for the homestudy. We paid for what we could every month as far as getting things notarized, doctors visits/etc. We also got two wonderful grants and a lot of our church family helped. The grants and church members help was equal to about 16k.
We went into the adoption not wanting to go into debt at all. We are huge believers of no debt. I hate to say it, but we did have to charge our plane tickets to China for a total of about 3k. We are rapidly trying to pay that off but it is hard because now we are dealing with our little one’s medical issues.
I would recommend not going into debt. We have such a small amount of debt compared to the total cost, but it is hanging over my head and I hate it.
If I could, I would have worked a second or third job to pay for it.
Good luck, adoption is definately a calling!
We were able to save for quite a bit of it, but we were also fortunate that at the time we needed a big chunk of money interest rates on mortgages came way down, so we were able to refinance our home for a lower interest rate and take some cash out. Fortunately, we recouped most of that when our tax return came back (with the $13K tax credit that we got over two years).
If it wasn’t for the cost we would definitely adopt again.
We have been home for 9 months with a 4yo boy from Ethiopia. We started in February 2010 with nothing more than our $250 application fee. I am not exaggerating when I say that God provided every single penny … once we needed 20 sets of passport photos, each. We sat in the Walgreens parking lot trying to decide whether to just bite the bullet and pay for it and let it all work itself out when we got home to our other home/life expenses, or go home and save up a bit then go back. We went in, bought the other sets, and got home to open the mail with a check for THE EXACT amount we just spent that was a payroll error in my husband’s check from many months prior. We were $5000 short at one point and had four days to come up with it. We thought we may need to put it all on hold and let go of our referral of a waiting child. I called my mom and said “unless someone drops a check for $5000 in our laps we’re done for now.” Minutes later my husband called saying his partner literally handed him a check for $5000 … he overheard him talking to me earlier that day, lamenting our needs, and he said he never had kids and regrets it every day. God just took care of everything, every time. Pray and pray and pray, then trust and don’t be shy to ask for people to donate. We called 147 Million when they were discontinuing their black silicone bracelets … we bought 500 of them for maybe $100. We carried them everywhere … my husband took them to work and to the hospitals he works with, bugged his colleagues, etc, I took them to church, groups, the market … no joke. We shared our story and asked for a $10 donation toward our adoption and gave them a bracelet. We made almost $5000 in two weeks with something as silly as silicone bracelets. We were never afraid to get out there and spread the word … FB, email, talk at church, you name it. I put a PayPal donate button on our blog and unashamedly asked for donations from everyone. People often want to help, want to be a part of your story. We had a pay-it-forward party at Christmas where we solicited homespun goods from our community and held a party for women … it was SO fun … great fellowship and an even better reason. We split the profits between ourselves and a local shelter for women and children. Truly, adoption is ordained most beautifully by God. He orchestrates every penny, every step, every victory, and every crushing defeat. We prayed boldly and stepped out in faith. We came home on August 27 last year without a cent of debt and we never were awarded a single grant. I know we were deflated several times, but we never stopped believing that God does indeed set the lonely in families. I hope that helps and encourages you some!
We’ve had our 8yo son for a little over 2 years. We paid it all by the grace of God. Ours, too, was nearly 40K. We’d love to adopt again. We’ll see…
We used our HELOC for this last adoption (brought her home in Feb.) and in 2010 when we adopted our sons. We have never received any grants unfortunately for us.
We have paid out close to $100,000 in adoption-related fees in the last 3 1/2 years, and we are NOT wealthy by any stretch.
How do we do it?
Well, the above-mentioned HELOC, which God willing will be paid back down again by the end of the year.
We have never gotten any help from our church. The one we attend doesn’t believe in helping people with adoption costs. I’m OK with that, but I think it is wonderful when churches do step up and help.
We don’t eat out (that is a huge expense that if you let it go will make your bank account skyrocket!).
We sold a bunch of gold jewelry including our high school class rings, and we profited more than $800, which we used to pay for our US immigration fees.
We had a garage sale this past Fall and made about $1200 (after selling some furniture that didn’t sell on Craigslist).
We ebayed, used Craigslist, and penched pennies literally.
We have been amazed to see how God has literally multiplied the money we do have (and DH makes) as we have stepped out each time to adopt.
I know some don’t believe in debt and we don’t have any other debt excepting our home loan, that we would love to be rid of, but when we see our 4 beautiful children we adopted, we know we did the right thing in bringhing them home.
***
As to Haiti, my only caution is that it is incredibly hard to adopt a child who is not paper-ready from ANY country including Haiti.
If the family is open to other countries, I highly recommend China’s Waiting Child Program. It is very up-front, thousands of children both BOYS and girls are waiting, and you can find a child who is in need of a home and whose paperwork is already in the system.
The longest process for us was 15 months to bring home our sons, and that was b/c we brought them home on the same trip, before China officially allowed the adoption of 2 unrelated children.
Here is a post I wrote on an advocacy site about our 4 children from China (before we brought home our baby girl):
http://www.nohandsbutours.com/2011/12/06/who-are-you-waiting-for/
It sums up how I feel, and I hope answers some basic questions about the China WC program.
Leslie
I wrote this one too in the hopes of helping people understand that children with medical needs are TRULY just childen too!
We are in the midst of adopting a little girl. Our agency told us that the cost is going to be around $45,000. My hubby is the provider as a police officer, which are highly underpaid, so, we don’t have a savings needed to do this on our own. We have filled out 5 grants and so far we recieved $700 from one and $6000 from the other. There is also a no interest loan that you can apply for from Lifesong (which we have not heard back from yet). We also are selling t-shirts from Show Hope http://www.adoptionbug.com/PackardAdoption/ and some of our family and friends have given us checks. A friend of mine who sells Thirty-One products had an open house and she gave me all of her commission from that. Another friend, who is a photographer, is planning on an afternoon where she takes family pictures and she is giving us her proceeds. I am in the middle of preparing for a garage sale also. We didn’t really want to, but we got a home equity loan to pay for some of it. For the remaining amount we are trusting that God will provide and show us what He wants us to do. I heard a parent who adopted that He has a thousand cattle on the field, all He has to do is sell a couple of them. So, we are trusting that He will.
Well…we aren’t rich, but God worked it out… 3 times. The first time I was working as well my husband and we saved for awhile – quite awhile. Family helped some with travel expenses. The second time it was here and there – I cashed in a retirement account, sold things, nickled and dimed it, got a small grant from the agency, family donated – to this day I can’t reconstruct where it all came from. A God thing, that was. The third time we refinanced our house. I can’t belive we ever afforded it 3 times. It was about $15,000 – $18,000 then. It is much more now. All I can advise is to pray – God is loaded. He can work it out. Look in unusual spots, you may have to do “unwise” things to get it.
All 3 or ours are adopted from Korea as babies. They are 11, 12 and 13 now.
I can second the recommendation to pray and know that you may have to do “unwise” things (in an earthly sense). We knew we had a child and had to go get him, and reasoned that we didn’t have loans for cars, boats or camps, and didn’t take Disney vacations or other things people borrow money for, so we used what we had, prayed lots, and used a 0 % interest line of credit for what was left. God really gave us a sense of urgency, and we knew we were not to wait until we’d saved it all. We kept rolling that loan over to other 0% lines until we got our adoption tax credit and were able to pay it off. It was a good thing we didn’t wait – during our first Korean son’s first year home, we saw a picture of a second little waiting child, the same age, who captured our hearts immediately. We went into his adoption knowing we could certainly raise the little one, but had no earthly way to pay for the adoption, but God provided every cent, even making $14,000 disappear in one phone call and providing checks for exact amounts as we neared travel. We serve a big God who wants the little ones to come home to families, and He can make it happen!
Blessings,
Aimee
Perhaps I can be classified as one of the “unwise”! We adopted almost 10 years ago and the total cost was $35,000, give or take some. We made about $19,000 a year and had no savings at all. We were able to get money to start it from tax returns and military enlistment bonuses. The base notary was free and so were all the doctor’s visits. We also lived within our means and found a bit of money here and there. Mostly we used credit cards and ended up switching them from card to card, taking advantage of 0% interest for a period then moving it to another card offering 0% for another time period. We got a grant from somewhere and family helped a little. They discounted his fee because of his special needs and because he was almost turning 3 which meant his chances of getting adopted were slimmer. Our car broke 6 months before it was finalized so we walked everywhere until 3 weeks before we brought him home in order to not have to spend the money on a new car or gas. We were careful (and very blessed) after we got him home and had it paid off within a few years.
It’s not the pathway I’d advise anyone to take but we did it knowing that the Lord was guiding us and that all would be well. And it was.
I mean this in a respectful way, since I admire all of you for your willingness and dedication in adopting children – what made you choose to go foreign and not in your own country? Is it harder, more work, just a call from God, etc…
I have wanted to adopt a child since I was eight and my teacher read us a book about a child finding his home. It was so cool. My dh and I sort of talk about it, but haven’t come to any conclusions. 😉
I’ve been asked that many times (and usually not very respectfully.)
Honestly, I don’t know. We just “knew” that we had a child in China. There was never a consideration of anywhere else. But when we started, we assumed we’d get a 1 year old girl. But God knew best and we came home with a 6 year old boy, seven months younger than our youngest son. I can’t imagine not having this child. We’d like to adopt again and find ourselves drawn to Bulgaria. I don’t know if/when that will happen.
I mean this in a respectful way, since I admire all of you for your willingness and dedication in adopting children – what made you choose to go foreign and not in your own country? Is it harder, more work, just a call from God, etc…
We initially considered adopting from Korea since DH is half Korean, and thus all of our bio kids are 1/4 Korean. We were open to domestic adoption, too. After discussing it with our social worker, he strongly encouraged us to stick with Korea. He said that in his experience domestic adoption costs more, takes longer, and results in failed adoptions more often that international adoptions do. Our social worker said that considering our history of miscarriages, he didn’t think domestic adoption would be a wise choice for us.
Honestly, I don’t know. We just “knew” that we had a child in China. There was never a consideration of anywhere else. But when we started, we assumed we’d get a 1 year old girl. But God knew best and we came home with a 6 year old boy, seven months younger than our youngest son. I can’t imagine not having this child. - The topic ‘Foreign Adoption: How did YOU pay for it?’ is closed to new replies.