I often wondered when I first began this adoption journey and would sometimes visit other blogs, how others were funding their adoption. A few people would post in their blogs that they were having yard sales/garage sales and other things like that and then I heard of people getting anonymous donations to their agency in large amounts towards their adoptions. We have things in our basement that I could sell that still have tags on it, but I prefer giving it to friends who may need it. Those purchases came from my days of just buying and putting it away for later. I have now stopped doing that unless I know that we will be using it soon.
When we initially started the adoption journey back in the spring, I did ask the agency person and she shared that people fund their adoptions different ways. She stated that some people take out loans, some people refinance their homes, some people put it on credit cards, some get adoption grants, and some do a variety of the aforementioned in addition to paying for it out of pocket. You can't put a price on a child and I believe that people will do what fits their household best. So, what fits my household best is not adding a large bill when we have the capability to work towards paying for it out of pocket.
Keeping it real:
Well, it was a bit overwhelming for us when we first started researching thinking, humm.....how can we do this without it breaking the bank and disrupting our household finances? Prior to us beginning the adoption process we knew that we wanted to go ahead and start family planning so we wanted to take care of some existing expenses.
We took the Crown Financial Ministries Class at our church summer of 2007 and after taking that class we made an even quicker plan to get rid of little bills and to pay off things so that we could be where we needed to be financially, especially preparing for a child. We wanted to be even better stewards with our money and taking that class even opened up our eyes even more. My parents are Crown Facilitators at their church and they also state that it keeps you focused on being a better steward, no matter how much income you make. We all have to be accountable for our spending whether we make $30,000 or $300,000 a year.
My mother and father constantly remind me that our generation makes way more than our ancestors could have ever dreamed of, yet we are not as financially responsible with the money that we make and our ancestors seemed to live off much less money. Many of us are making significant amounts of money and we can't live off of six figures, which is true, but sad, when our grand parents and great grand parents did not see that kind of money made in a year and yet they were still blessing people and taking care of their household.
How we are funding ours:
We had only been married 3 years in 2007 and we had been in our home 3 years. We all know that it takes time to adjust and get your household situated after getting married and building a new home. Paying for all of the large household projects and furniture can break your bank really quick.
My husband and I loved to travel a lot as well as we enjoy having annual functions at our home like Christmas parties and things. We cut back on the large Christmas parties (last one was Christmas 2006) and BBQ's as of last year and said that we would not have another large event since we were planning for a child and wanted to cut back. These things add up when you look at the whole picture.
We love entertaining and having events, but this is worth the sacrifice. We are excited about cranking them back up after this is adoption is finalized because we love hosting events with our friends over.
Instead, we started knocking out some of the last remaining decorating projects and taking care of little unnecessary bills that we had acquired. We came into our home pretty much debt free, with the exception of one vehicle note and a graduate school student loan that was minimal.
We ended up getting an additional car at the end of year 1 of being marriage and selling my husbands 2 seater, because my husbands sports car was costing us more money to take care of than having a car note. Besides that, we knew that we needed another practical vehicle besides having 2 sports cars that were paid for and a new SUV, especially when visitors would come and preparing for a family in the future. Things were balanced then, 2 functional vehicles and my 2 seater/coupe. We didn't need four cars and his was causing more money than anything else, although it was paid for. We actually sold it to Carmax in the Spring of 2005 and did pretty good.
We knew that we would have some bills with a new home and necessities, but we wanted to keep them at a minimum. So, we started knocking them out by taking an aggressive approach. I created an Excel spreadsheet that listed my bills and the dates that I would like to have them paid off and this kept me on track with meeting our goals. I would get so excited seeing Paid off or Zero, no matter how small the bill was. Crown also has a lot of helpful budget and spending tools available on line.
My profession allows me to PRN/Contract my services at different places. So, on the weekends I began working a few hours on the weekends seeing patients at a facility or that I agreed to do PRN work for. My husband can work from his computer at home on the weekends on freelance projects, so both of us are not out of the house.
The great thing about doing PRN work is, I can fill out on the calendar when I want to work and for how many hours. I typically go in for 4-5 hours at most. I am usually finished on most Saturdays before people are up and moving around in my neighborhood. I still have the rest of the day to myself, which I usually end up working on homework from my doctoral classes if I fell behind during the week with my reading.
Within the first 6 months with using the PRN work and working towards our financial goals, I had most of my personal little bills paid off, helped save for large and rather expensive vacation that we took this past summer so that we could pay for everything with cash, took care of some larger projects in the house that we wanted to pay for in cash, and we began making small purchases for the baby.
While it is a sacrifice giving a few hours on the weekends, it really doesn't bother me and everything is for a season. I feel comfortable knowing that we can nest as we also make payments towards our adoption costs out of our pocket.
The funny thing is that our local agency that we are using now does not accept credit card payments anyway. Everything is accepted by checks. They are well known and have locations through out the U.S.
I thought this was interesting. I guess it doesn't even give us the option of attempting to use our credit card towards the adoption.
I remember talking with my mother when we first started the process and saying how expensive adoption was. She advised me that the money will come when you are following the right steps. It may not necessarily be in the form of cash given to you, but it will come. She was right. It did come in several different ways. That conversation is for another day and another post in the future.
I enjoy doing what I do and to me it is quick money and pain free because I enjoy working with patients! It is extra money that can really help fund the adoption and you don't have to go into debt doing an adoption, especially with our country's economic condition. Working extra on the weekend is a choice because my main contract job is more than sufficient, but we are doing several things and we would rather be debt free with beginning our family.
So, with saying all of this we have worked through this adoption by learning to layaway things for the baby, small amounts at a time. Boy, do they add up. I had not put anything on lay away since college and I didn't know that it still existed! We have cut back on purchasing gender specific clothing since we are not for sure of the gender of the baby since we moved from the Ethiopia program where we were requesting a girl. We would like a girl this time, but we are remaining open. I have a ton of girl stuff. It will get used.
We have tried to keep our eyes open for bargains on higher end pieces if possible. Most of all, we have tried to do a little bit at a time. I think the biggest thing for us was realizing that we could do it out of our pockets once we sat down and realized that we can break this down and it can actually work. The goal seems a lot closer when you can break it down to achievable steps.
For those who are trying to figure out a way to fund your adoption without going in the hole. Look at some expenses that you can cut back on i.e. (eating out too much, unnecessary travel, unnecessary purchases, cutting back on entertainment, and paying off monthly bills that add up to a significant amount.)
I know that this sounds crazy, but for those of you who have credit cards that are tempting to use, keep your limits at a reasonable amount, so that if you need to pay it off quickly, it will not be an impossible effort with extremely large limits. This has been what has saved me. It is too tempting to have wide open limits out there every where. I am glad that we were shown a over year ago to get what little bills we had --paid off.
The banks/credit card companies are really tripping now with the current situation that we are facing. So, it would benefit all of us to get our finances in order and try our best not to "owe anyone" except for the necessities that we must have. While I am not perfect, I am striving to be a better steward with the money that God has blessed me with. It is funny how money is mentioned so much in the bible. This should be an eye opener for a lot of people.
We have tried to come up with a time that we will start putting away money for the first few months of daycare when our child goes so that we are a few months ahead of the game with daycare expenses when that happens. We have a meeting with my financial planner this week so, I will have a clearer game plan for that after we get through this nursery furniture business.
When your money is not right it is an indication that something is not right in your life. It is also limits your ability to bless others and those in need, and that is something that I have always enjoyed doing not matter the size of the gift. Having too much debt in our lives should be a temporary situation and not a lifestyle or way of life. We all have the ability to have prosperity to a certain degree. Many of us want to be blessed with more, but in actuality we are not ready for more.
Well, it was a bit overwhelming for us when we first started researching thinking, humm.....how can we do this without it breaking the bank and disrupting our household finances? Prior to us beginning the adoption process we knew that we wanted to go ahead and start family planning so we wanted to take care of some existing expenses.
We took the Crown Financial Ministries Class at our church summer of 2007 and after taking that class we made an even quicker plan to get rid of little bills and to pay off things so that we could be where we needed to be financially, especially preparing for a child. We wanted to be even better stewards with our money and taking that class even opened up our eyes even more. My parents are Crown Facilitators at their church and they also state that it keeps you focused on being a better steward, no matter how much income you make. We all have to be accountable for our spending whether we make $30,000 or $300,000 a year.
My mother and father constantly remind me that our generation makes way more than our ancestors could have ever dreamed of, yet we are not as financially responsible with the money that we make and our ancestors seemed to live off much less money. Many of us are making significant amounts of money and we can't live off of six figures, which is true, but sad, when our grand parents and great grand parents did not see that kind of money made in a year and yet they were still blessing people and taking care of their household.
How we are funding ours:
We had only been married 3 years in 2007 and we had been in our home 3 years. We all know that it takes time to adjust and get your household situated after getting married and building a new home. Paying for all of the large household projects and furniture can break your bank really quick.
My husband and I loved to travel a lot as well as we enjoy having annual functions at our home like Christmas parties and things. We cut back on the large Christmas parties (last one was Christmas 2006) and BBQ's as of last year and said that we would not have another large event since we were planning for a child and wanted to cut back. These things add up when you look at the whole picture.
We love entertaining and having events, but this is worth the sacrifice. We are excited about cranking them back up after this is adoption is finalized because we love hosting events with our friends over.
Instead, we started knocking out some of the last remaining decorating projects and taking care of little unnecessary bills that we had acquired. We came into our home pretty much debt free, with the exception of one vehicle note and a graduate school student loan that was minimal.
We ended up getting an additional car at the end of year 1 of being marriage and selling my husbands 2 seater, because my husbands sports car was costing us more money to take care of than having a car note. Besides that, we knew that we needed another practical vehicle besides having 2 sports cars that were paid for and a new SUV, especially when visitors would come and preparing for a family in the future. Things were balanced then, 2 functional vehicles and my 2 seater/coupe. We didn't need four cars and his was causing more money than anything else, although it was paid for. We actually sold it to Carmax in the Spring of 2005 and did pretty good.
We knew that we would have some bills with a new home and necessities, but we wanted to keep them at a minimum. So, we started knocking them out by taking an aggressive approach. I created an Excel spreadsheet that listed my bills and the dates that I would like to have them paid off and this kept me on track with meeting our goals. I would get so excited seeing Paid off or Zero, no matter how small the bill was. Crown also has a lot of helpful budget and spending tools available on line.
My profession allows me to PRN/Contract my services at different places. So, on the weekends I began working a few hours on the weekends seeing patients at a facility or that I agreed to do PRN work for. My husband can work from his computer at home on the weekends on freelance projects, so both of us are not out of the house.
The great thing about doing PRN work is, I can fill out on the calendar when I want to work and for how many hours. I typically go in for 4-5 hours at most. I am usually finished on most Saturdays before people are up and moving around in my neighborhood. I still have the rest of the day to myself, which I usually end up working on homework from my doctoral classes if I fell behind during the week with my reading.
Within the first 6 months with using the PRN work and working towards our financial goals, I had most of my personal little bills paid off, helped save for large and rather expensive vacation that we took this past summer so that we could pay for everything with cash, took care of some larger projects in the house that we wanted to pay for in cash, and we began making small purchases for the baby.
While it is a sacrifice giving a few hours on the weekends, it really doesn't bother me and everything is for a season. I feel comfortable knowing that we can nest as we also make payments towards our adoption costs out of our pocket.
The funny thing is that our local agency that we are using now does not accept credit card payments anyway. Everything is accepted by checks. They are well known and have locations through out the U.S.
I thought this was interesting. I guess it doesn't even give us the option of attempting to use our credit card towards the adoption.
I remember talking with my mother when we first started the process and saying how expensive adoption was. She advised me that the money will come when you are following the right steps. It may not necessarily be in the form of cash given to you, but it will come. She was right. It did come in several different ways. That conversation is for another day and another post in the future.
I enjoy doing what I do and to me it is quick money and pain free because I enjoy working with patients! It is extra money that can really help fund the adoption and you don't have to go into debt doing an adoption, especially with our country's economic condition. Working extra on the weekend is a choice because my main contract job is more than sufficient, but we are doing several things and we would rather be debt free with beginning our family.
So, with saying all of this we have worked through this adoption by learning to layaway things for the baby, small amounts at a time. Boy, do they add up. I had not put anything on lay away since college and I didn't know that it still existed! We have cut back on purchasing gender specific clothing since we are not for sure of the gender of the baby since we moved from the Ethiopia program where we were requesting a girl. We would like a girl this time, but we are remaining open. I have a ton of girl stuff. It will get used.
We have tried to keep our eyes open for bargains on higher end pieces if possible. Most of all, we have tried to do a little bit at a time. I think the biggest thing for us was realizing that we could do it out of our pockets once we sat down and realized that we can break this down and it can actually work. The goal seems a lot closer when you can break it down to achievable steps.
For those who are trying to figure out a way to fund your adoption without going in the hole. Look at some expenses that you can cut back on i.e. (eating out too much, unnecessary travel, unnecessary purchases, cutting back on entertainment, and paying off monthly bills that add up to a significant amount.)
I know that this sounds crazy, but for those of you who have credit cards that are tempting to use, keep your limits at a reasonable amount, so that if you need to pay it off quickly, it will not be an impossible effort with extremely large limits. This has been what has saved me. It is too tempting to have wide open limits out there every where. I am glad that we were shown a over year ago to get what little bills we had --paid off.
The banks/credit card companies are really tripping now with the current situation that we are facing. So, it would benefit all of us to get our finances in order and try our best not to "owe anyone" except for the necessities that we must have. While I am not perfect, I am striving to be a better steward with the money that God has blessed me with. It is funny how money is mentioned so much in the bible. This should be an eye opener for a lot of people.
We have tried to come up with a time that we will start putting away money for the first few months of daycare when our child goes so that we are a few months ahead of the game with daycare expenses when that happens. We have a meeting with my financial planner this week so, I will have a clearer game plan for that after we get through this nursery furniture business.
When your money is not right it is an indication that something is not right in your life. It is also limits your ability to bless others and those in need, and that is something that I have always enjoyed doing not matter the size of the gift. Having too much debt in our lives should be a temporary situation and not a lifestyle or way of life. We all have the ability to have prosperity to a certain degree. Many of us want to be blessed with more, but in actuality we are not ready for more.
I know that we have all heard this--"Why should God bless you with more if you can not handle what he has already given you?" We all need to think about that when we can not figure out why we keep hitting road blocks in our lives. We have to take a closer look at ourselves.
"Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of wordly wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?" Luke 16:11
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