All About the Benjamins!

Step One: Find an Agency! Check. Step two through bring baby home, are up next! The next major obstacle is to save enough money to fund this adoption, and still keep a roof over our heads. This is a double-edged sword. First, when we have the home study, we have to be able to pay for it, but as part of the home study, they do a financial check. So we can't drain all of our bank accounts, paying for the study to look at our bank accounts (it's like adoption inception). Then after we pay for the home study, we have to pay the program fee. Then we will enter the pool of adoptive parents. This is where it gets tricky; we could take a risk and start the process now, and bank on waiting the full amount of time. However, once you get a baby you have ten days to pay the placement fee, which is the most expensive part of adoption. In other words, if we start the process now, even though you pay in installments, we would still need the full amount by the time our names went in the pool, just to be safe. With our luck, we would get a baby really quickly, and then not have money to allow the adoption to go through. What exactly are we looking at here?

27,000ish dollars to bring Baby S home.

Here is a brief breakdown:

250- application fee

2,250- home study fee

7,500- program fee

17,250- placement fee

2,000ish- legal fees

From a money standpoint, that's about what we would pay to get as far as we were with the surrogate (IE before transfer, and IVF cycle) so it's better in the sense that we know that we will get a baby at the end of it. It's not so good because we have loans and debt (just like everyone else).

Until we can make these more manageable (aka pay some off) we have to hold off on starting the process. If we were denied application or "failed" the home study due to debt or finances we would have a very hard time ever adopting. It's OK though, we have Planner Patty on our team (me)! I've drawn up a budget, and with the help of some raises, and good savings, we should be able to start the process in January of 2016. Way far away I know, but we are doing everything we can to get there sooner, and bring our baby home!

In order to put some extra money in the bank, as well as pay down some of our loans, we are trying everything we can. B suggested doing an adoption ice bucket challenge, but we are putting that on the back burner for now. We still have a fundraising page (linked on the blog), but are not really doing anything with it, although we switched sites. The more proactive things we have done are picking up second and third jobs (mainly me). I'm now a consultant for a direct sales company (Jamberry Nails- lvalentine.jamberrynails.net), and every penny I make is going towards adoption, with the added bonus of awesome looking nails! I'm coaching, now both in the fall and spring, and finally I'm co-chairing student government at my school. B is trying to sell some items to get more cash, and is hoping to strike it big bowling (see what I did there?). We know that our hard work will be rewarded, and it will be the best reward of all when we take that squishy little nugget of cuteness home.

Neither of us would be doing these things if we didn't think it would work. Our motto for now is "Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe." We are believing, and determined to bring home a baby! Keep on Keepin' On!