Funding Your Adoption

Adoption can be costly and funding can greatly decrease your out-of-pocket cost. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss the five ways to fund your adoption.

Before we dive deep into the ways to fund your adoption, let’s talk about your adoption financial plan. I know that might sound a little scary and you might be thinking why we’re talking about this. I'm gonna get really frank with you for just a second, it is really scary, but figure out how to fund your adoption. The only way to take away the power (or the scariness) from the situation is to have a clear understanding of how much money you're going to need in order to fulfill your dreams of adoption.

Here are the steps I walk with my clients through step-by-step on how to create a financial plan.

Steps To Building Your Adoption Financial Plan

Get clear on what type of adoption you’re pursuing. You need to get clear on what type of adoption you're pursuing and understand the numbers.
Figure out what other expenses are in adoption and add a cushion for expected expenses.
Look at the number in front of you. This is the goal. This is the amount of money you need for the adoption.

You need to know your number so you can create a financial plan so you can reach your goal of becoming an adoptive family without the finances dragging you down. This will help you reach your goal of becoming an adopting family.

If you have any questions about how to write an adoption financial plan, you can check out my step-by-step course on how to adopt a baby. One of the steps we do inside this course is setting your adoption budget and writing your financial plan with me step-by-step.

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5 Ways to Fund Your Adoption

Savings
Fundraisers
Grants
Loans
Tax Credits

Funding Your Adoption From Savings

I encourage you not to drain your savings because you’re gonna have a child to parent at the other end of this journey. Children do require money and quite a lot of it sometimes. You want to make sure you have enough savings to cover unexpected expenses.

There are also creative ways that you can save money every day within your budget to grow your savings.

Here are some ways to save or make more money for your adoption:

Make more money at work. Ask for a raise or work overtime at your current job to make more money. If these aren’t options, you can look for a higher-paying job at another company.
Do a No-Spend Challenge: My friend, Jen Smith, has a great podcast and plenty of resources on this topic. She hosts the Frugal Friends Podcast each week and has a best-selling Amazon book on No Spend Challenges. In her book, she walks you through how to complete a no-spend challenge.
Reduce Your Current Monthly Bills: Reduce your phone bill, cable bill, gas bill, power bill, etc.
Host a Garage Sale: Declutter and sell your unwanted things at a garage sale.
Start a Side Hustle: You can start a side hustle to make more money. Delivery services are in high demand due to the nature of our economy right now. You can deliver groceries, drive for rideshare companies like Uber or Lyft.

Here are some additional resources to help you save money for your adoption:

Adopting Without Debt: Savings Tips

How to Pay for Your Adoption

I Want To Learn How To Adopt

Adoption Fundraisers

There are two main types of fundraisers.

Give Get Fundraiser
Direct Appeal Fundraiser

Give-Get Adoption Fundraiser

A give-get fundraiser is a basic fundraiser that you see. Ex: I’m going to give you something (like a baked good) and you’re gonna give me $5.

Find something that your people in your real life and on social media would support and would be interested in and go into that. That's how you're going to make the most money. Here are 25 fundraising ideas to get you started.

You can also join the free My Adoption Coach Facebook Group to get ideas there as well.

Direct Appeal Adoption Fundraiser

The Direct Appeal Fundraiser is simply you asking for donations for your fundraiser. There are different ways you can do this. In the My Adoption Coach Facebook Group, there are tons of graphics for fundraisers and throughout the adoption process.

You can download directly from the Facebook group and then post them to a group or use them on your individual social channels to encourage people to donate directly to you.

There are some creative resources out there like GoFundMe, and even some grants that will match the donations that you get.

Make sure you do again your research there to understand what are the different options on how you can maximize those donations as they come in.

If you have any questions about this process, I would love to help you. I am inside the Facebook Group every day answering questions and helping people. I would love to have you join us too.

Adoption Grants

I had a wonderful interview with Becky Fawcett from HelpUsAdopt.org on the My Adoption Coach Podcast. HelpUsAdopt.org is an organization that gives adoption grants.

When looking at grants, it’s important you ensure that you align with the values and criteria for the grant organization. You need to have a clear understanding of their requirements to make sure you meet them. You don't want to be off-cycle from a timing perspective and waste all of your time in preparing an application for them.

If they request someone to be at a certain stage in their adoption by a certain timeframe and you're not going to be there, then you've just really wasted your time preparing.

Even worse, some organizations require you to pay to potentially be a great recipient and you don't want to waste your money.

If you have more questions as it relates to grants, or you're looking for a particular grant list, I do have an incredible list. If you’re wanting an extensive grant list, I’ve got you covered. I have a fundraiser list that has a little over 50 organizations that issue adoption grants. These grants total over $350,000. I am giving it away for free to help you on your adoption journey. If you would like to grab that list make sure you head over to the Facebook group.

Adoption Loans

I'm going to try so hard not to get my soapbox right now. You have a child to care for at the end of this. So please be careful about loans. I will tell you that this was something that we did in our first adoption journey and I wish we hadn't. We ended up taking out a personal loan and having to pay it back. We were fortunate enough that we were able to do that because we had budgeted and planned as such.

Many of us find ourselves at the end of an expensive fertility journey and then we're facing an expensive adoption journey as well. So you have to find a way to get creative.

Loans were the way that we chose to round out the last little bit of what we needed for our adoption.

Adoption loans can be rather tricky. You can sometimes take a loan from your 401k, get a home equity loan, or a personal loan. Each of the different types of loans will have different requirements, interest rates, and terms. That does change highly based on individual circumstances.

My counsel to you is to be really cautious of what you're doing on the back end of this journey. Make sure that the loan payment you're going to be paying will actually be something that your monthly budget can afford. You also have to consider the added cost of diapers, daycare, formula, food, clothes, and all of the things that a kid needs.

You need to make sure you have all of that factored in when making your decision.

Adoption Tax Credits

This does vary from year to year and I'm not an accountant. Do your own research. I always suggest that the place that you research is IRS.gov. Look for the adoption tax credits. There are certain income requirements as well as requirements about how far you have to be into the adoption journey before you can submit for the tax credit.

Obviously, you're not going to get a tax credit until the end of the tax year. I've had a client or two that have banked on a tax credit to pay off a loan at the end of their adoption. Don't do it, friend. She put herself under so much stress and worry over this. It was so hard. So please be super careful here and do your due diligence. Talk to an accountant and make sure that you feel really confident in the plan that you're choosing.

Most importantly, write a financial plan. Take the power away from that big scary number that's in front of you by having a clear financial plan. If you need help on how to create your exact adoption funding plan, I'm here for you. You can use the free resources that I've shared with you in this blog post or inside the Facebook Group.

If you want a really affordable way to have someone walk you through the process, step by step, and then answer any questions, make sure that you check out the How to Adopt Course.

This will really help you depending upon where you are on your journey.

Remember, you can do anything and always have your back.

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