Let's Talk Finances

Here is a link to our agency's list of adoption expenses. Take a look, and then come back to me. I'll wait.

Adoption Expenses

From what I hear, our agency is one of the least expensive and most upfront of all the Chinese agencies. As you can see, there is money going all over the place. The US agency, the Chinese Government, the US government, Airlines, hotels, etc. I can't even tell you how much money I've already given the Post Office and Kinko's.

 For the adoption, I had to create a dossier. A dossier is basically a packet of all the information about your family that will be sent to China so they can approve you to adopt one of their children. It contains birth certificates, marriage certificate, a financial statement, employment verifications, physical exams, police clearances, pictures, passport copies, a complete copy of the home study written up by a social worker. For each written document to be found acceptable in China, it must be sealed. This means that every document must first be notarized by a public notary in your state. Our local notary charges $10 per document. Then, it must be stamped by the Secretary of State's office after they've checked that your notary is really a notary. This costs another $20 per document. Finally, it must be stamped by the Chinese consulate. This costs another $20 per document.

A lot of these documents must be mailed. I learned quickly to always have it delivered in a way that you can track it. Luckily, nothing has been lost yet, but Rob's birth certificate kept me up for many nights after I mailed it the cheap way and had no way of knowing if it ever made it to its destination. Thankfully, an understanding lady who works at the post office took the time to show me how to use the automated machine to send packages and pay for return envelopes. I consider myself a conqueror of that machine now and will sing its praises in the streets.

So far, the payments have not been too hard on our family. Rob has a good job, and I work part-time. There were certain financial requirements a family must meet in order to adopt from China. Thankfully, we bought a house last year, which I think helped balance out the large amount of student loans we both have. If we could continue paying a little bit every few months, we would be fine, but this process does not continue working that way. The largest bulk of the money that we need will be due when it is time to travel to China. That's when things get scary. There's the travel fees (two tickets there, three tickets home!), the orphanage fee (over $5000 just handed to the orphanage), certain government fees, food and stay for two weeks in China, time off work. It's crazy to think of how much money we will spend on that trip. This is why we have started fundraising. We are good right now, but we won't be then.

Through my friend Alexis, who adopted from the Ukraine and has made adoption one of her missions in life, I learned of the website http://www.adopttogether.com. It is a platform for adopting families to raise funds by simply crowd-sourcing. When people get together to combine their gifts into one big pot amazing things can happen. I've been overwhelmed by all the donations we have received. It's amazing to see how many people are invested in us bringing our little girl home. I also received some donations of items to raffle, which I haven't even had time to get to.

Because of these raffles (hello, iPad!!) and the promise of a future big donation by Rob's former employer, we raised our original goal. We're not being greedy, just being hopeful. Every little bit helps make our new life with Fiona easier. When she gets home, we won't be done with the heavy finances. Due to her missing foot and fingers, we'll need to get her to a lot of appointments at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (my home away from home) right away. Hopefully, we can get her fitted with a prosthetic foot, possibly lower leg, right away, and get her right in physical therapy so she can learn how to use it and I can learn how to work with her.

Rob says after this adoption we can't spend any money for the next five years. I'm fine with that. I've already started daydreaming of the awesome Disney Cruise we're going to take our TWO girls on in five years.