Archive for the 'Adoption' Category
June 2nd, 2008 - Not adopting
Want to let you all know that this weekend we decided to not adopt. It is a hard/sad decision but we know it’s the right one for right now.
February 29th, 2008 - HEL/OC for adoption
I looked at the credit union website again about loans, to check rates versus ING (where we have savings and CD accounts). On their online application form, it asks if you want a HEL or a line of credit. Hmmm…nowhere else are HELOCs mentioned. So I called. Talked to a nice lady named Sue. They don’t have HELOCs. Well, actually, they sort of do. They don’t offer one with check writing abilities, but you could get the loan and not take the money until you need it bit by bit. (IE, you walk into the office and say “I need $10,000″ and you get a MO or it moved to checking or whatever.) Oh, well, that would work for us.
Then I explained why we needed the loan and that it could be in two weeks or two years that we suddenly needed most of the money immediately. (Actually, you put down a deposit of $5000, I think, then most of the rest is due at placement. Unless you are matched with a baby who has already been born. Then almost all of the money is due right away since you are paying the matching and placement fees at once.) And her advice was to wait until we need the money and get the loan then. 2nd mortgages are kept in-house and their rates haven’t changed in ages (true–it’s about the same as when we got the one 16 months ago, actually a wee bit lower I think). They usually take less than a week to approve. And in an emergency, they could probably get us the money in a day. If I recall correctly, our last one was done in 3 days. Including my coming in on day 2 and saying, “Oh, wait, can we increase it that $3000?”
And they’ll go up to 95% of our home equity, unlike ING which only does 80%. If the adoption happens right away, that extra 10% could be very useful, since we’ll also need to replace my income as I have only about 22 days of paid leave.
I wonder why we never looked at a 1st mortgage with them?
February 26th, 2008 - The HEL is paid OFF!
Just 15 months ago, I told you we planned to pay off our home equity loan in just 3 years. I paid it off today! I’m not sure when we actually got it, but I think it was about November 06, which means we paid it off in 15 months. WOW.
As you know, I intended to pay it off this summer, then in April or May. So why here in February? We had our first homestudy visit yesterday. Found out things can go a bit faster. A) We only have to have 2 visits, not the 4 I expected. and B) it doesn’t matter because our resume can go in their file before the homestudy is finished. It’s to our advantage to get it in ASAP because they currently have only 10 families waiting. If we’d known before and had gotten the resume papers to fill out, we could have given it to her yesterday and been on file today, I bet.
We intend to have the resume ready to go in 2 weeks when we see Elayne for our last visit. That means we have to get going on the HELOC. Thank goodness for the slush money I keep around, plus our emergency fund. We have some large bills coming up (like the trip out East and taxes) but we have enough money to pay for them even if they were due today as well.
Unfortunately, the credit union doesn’t offer HELOCs, so I have to figure out where to go for that. Do I go with ING, where we have savings/checkings/mortgage? Or a local bank I have no relationship with? And when with the HEL come off the credit report so that it’s clear I’m not getting a third mortgage? I thought I have 6 weeks or more to figure these things out….
January 25th, 2008 - How will you spend your tax rebate?
Economic Sustainablog recommends something other than typical spending (invest in local and sustainable products so that you actually are stimulating the US economy instead of other countries). Us? We’ll probably give a little bit to ourselves for personal spending (as we typically do with extra money) and the majority will go towards paying off the HEL early or straight to the adoption fund (depending on when it arrives).
Sorry for being so quiet. While I’m nearly all better, I’m still struggling to catch up at work after being sick. I have a lot to prepare for the new semester (starts Feb 4) including the podcast initiative, my hybrid seminar about teaching hybrid and online courses, and my fully online course. Not to mention my regular ongoing work duties!
January 16th, 2008 - Changing those financial goals, or We’re having a baby!
Contrary to all expectations otherwise*, we have decided to have another baby! (*I detested maternity leave. Despite decades of desire to have 5+ children and settling for 2, I switched to being happy with just one because I absolutely did not want another infant. I have continued to feel the same except for short periods of time when I thought it might not be so bad. I was so convinced that we gave away our infant car seat and most infant clothing. Subsequently, we’ve saved clothes for foster care, but I have less than one box of baby clothes. Guess I have an excuse for garage-saling this summer now!) We started talking about it and decided we both actually want to have more kids, now!
The plan is to start the homestudy in April-ish. Oh, yeah, for those who don’t know which is most of you except family, we adopt. We plan to use the same agency, Community Adoption Center out of Manitowoc. Our social worker still works there (according to the website) and we can’t imagine working with anyone else. We really loved her. Just hoping their fees haven’t risen dramatically in the last 3 years. If it goes like last time, it will take about 2 months to complete the homestudy then we enter the pool of waiting families. Then, it can any amount of time at all to be chosen and anywhere from no time at all (baby already born) to 4 months or so (if the birthmother is only 5 months pregnant, the earliest they tend to match families). Generally speaking, most people have a baby within a year but it can take 2 years or more.
Changing financial plans:
Domestic infant adoption costs around $15,000-$25,000. That includes things like agency fees, homestudy fee, paperwork (things like copies of birth and marriage certificates), travel (Manitowoc is 90 miles away and we have to go there at least 3 times, plus the birth family is unlikely to be from Oshkosh), resume fee (our agency calls your materials a resume, others call it the birthparent letter or have a book or portfolio or such. Our agency charges a yearly fee to be in their files to discourage people from putting there materials in at dozens of different agencies I suppose.), birthfamily expenses (you can choose to pay some or all expenses such as rent, medical, transportation, etc. In WI, there are limits on one of them–I think it’s $1500 for living expenses or is it medical?), counseling, and all sorts of other stuff.
We still intend to pay off the HEL this year, but the timeline will be accelerated, with payoff in July or sooner. We’ve already decided that we just aren’t ever going to get to doing the electrical work so are putting that $3000 towards the loan, which pushes us 3 months closer to paying it off.
We will NOT (unless something dire happens) decrease our retirement or charitable giving, as we are very proud of the amounts we are able to put towards those this year. We are not, however, going to go above 16% to retirement, although I had initially been hoping for that. We are going to decrease travel savings (essentially, we’re going on the 2-week vacation for the wedding in April then nothing else. We’d thought we might do another 4-day trip to NJ in the fall.) and Fund for the House (the same place the electric money comes out of). We will still pay off the car loan on time but do not intend to use that money towards the adoption as our car could still have a major necessarily repair and we need to save for it.
Instead of putting the money that’s been going to the HEL in other areas (primarily, paying off the 1st mortgage) we will instead pay for/save for the adoption. Depending on how things go, we may end up with a third second mortgage. (We keep paying it off and getting a new one within a year.) BUT, we know that we can pay it off within 2 years giving the current amount we pay on the HEL. In addition, we expect that I will continue to teach at least one course a year plus there may be other income additions (and hopefully a couple raises during that time). And hey, the IRS gives us a $1000 tax credit for each kid each year!
The federal government also has an adoption tax credit that we will be able to take advantage of. It goes up each year and is currently just over $11000. That means that over a number of years, we will get a tax credit–not a deduction but an actual credit–of about half of the money we will spend on the adoption. However, you can’t count on it paying the money because you can only take it after you’ve spent the money. You do not get paid any more money than the amount of the tax you had due, so it can take many years to get the full credit. With Maggie, we took the credit over 3-4 years.
You often hear that adoption is no more expensive than giving birth. That’s only true if you have no health insurance and pay completely out of pocket. And have complications. If I gave birth, almost 100% of my medical costs would be covered. Adoption is a huge financial commitment. There are ways to reduce the costs. For instance, adopting from foster care costs nearly nothing, But in our case, we do with to adopt an infant and they are generally not available via foster care (in our neck of the woods) and there are a host of other issues I won’t go into. We have also ended up with a for-profit agency. We didn’t realize this when we chose them, but there aren’t many in our area. We had tried two others first and left them for various reasons. One other turned us down (one did only a few adoptions a year and we didn’t fit their primary profile and another was Evangelical Christian and would have if we had contacted them). But we are happy with the way our agency worked and don’t care to find something cheaper. Our costs would also be less if we had chosen to adopt again immediately, as just updates would have been done to many of our original materials.
I do not plan to make this into an adoption blog, but certainly aspects will be relevant and for heaven’s sake, this is about my life and that will be a big part of it. As with our prior adoption, I am happy to talk about the stuff we do but I will not tell my child’s story. Once we go into the pool, I won’t give any updates. Everyone will find out we have a new kid when we have a new kid. (This is also because having to tell people you don’t have a child after telling everyone you were having a child is heartbreaking. We did that once. It sucked 6 months later when people asked about our daughter. And we didn’t have one.) If any of you readers wonder about domestic infant adoption and open adoption, I’m happy to answer questions and tell you what the various options and types of openness are and how the process works. But I do not reveal details of our specific situation(s). When she’s older, you can ask Maggie and she’ll tell you if she wants to! :) (Even our parents and siblings don’t know, so don’t feel bad.)
Some people think of this as announcing they are pregnant. I feel that will be more like when we enter the pool of waiting families. Either way, we are excited and delighted to expand our family and hope you are, too!