I am participating in the Red Letters Campaign, a cause dedicated to educating and inspiring others to take action in the fight against poverty. A part of that is raising awareness about adoption issues, by answering a weekly “blogger buzz” question. This week’s question is:
“How do I do this, moneywise? I want to adopt, but it seems so overwhelming. We don’t really have $20,000 in the bank, ya know!”
There are many ways to make adoption more affordable. There are many roads to adoption, and not all ways are costly. Our first adoption was through the state of California, and all adoption expenses were covered by the state. Essentially, it was a no-cost adoption. We did end up needing to hire an attorney during the process, but this was not typical. That cost about $3500. We applied for a grant from Steven Curtis Chapman’s foundation to pay for part of those costs.
Our second adoption, from Haiti, we are doing independently. We had to pay for a homestudy, wich was $2000. Then, we will pay the orphanage $8000 as they care for the child and facilitate the adoption. We also spent about $2000 compiling our dossier. Our biggest expense is travel, because we visit there often. But that is a optional expense that we choose to take on.
We will be doing some fundraising for our adoption as the time grows near. I’m not sure yet – watch for details! 🙂
Thanks for compiling all this information in one place! We’ve had lots of friends ask about adoptions and all the sundry of options therein. I would love to refer them to your blog to give them a sort of a personal, rather than corporate, exposure to financing and adoptive family life. Hope that would be alright with you?
Of course! I think most of this is plagarized, so I can’t take too much credit. It was a list I compliled for our church’s adoption seminar.
I love this too. So organized and simply put, helping a novice like me feel some hope about the possibilities for our family.
I too will pass this on to others who want to adopt but worry about expense.
Thank you!
Great job on the blog! So well organized! I’m going to feature you as part of the RLC blog tonight!
Brandi