How much did your adoption Cost?

Our domestic adoption of our son was $18000 in 2006. Which $2000 of it were lawyer fees to legalize the adoption. Hope that helps.

I won't tell you. It would just make you cry. I will say we've never paid a dime in lawyer's fees for finalization. We finalized all of ours ourselves.

This was incorrect. It's $1000 to $7000. Families with income of $50 thousand or less pay the least. Families earning more than $200 thousand pay the highest.

Thanks for all the feedback! I guess I still need to continue my research. I am okay with 20 to 25K, but really don't think we can afford more than that. We are hoping to adopt a caucasian infant, if anyone has a good agency could you PM me, I am going CRAZY over here weeding through all the different ones. But god it feels so much better than crying over IF!!!

*how do we afford it?* the tax credit of $10,000 helped - i understand it just we up this year. our health insurance reimbursed us $4,000. so that only leaves us with a few thousand $ we paid in the end. how did everyone else pay? loans, fundraisers, etc.?

We saved almost all of my :marine: pay while he was deployed. I worked too. We have a line of credit through our bank and a small loan from a family member. We also don't qualify for the tax credit, so it won't help everyone unfortunately. :(

We started saving like crazy when we first decided that we wanted a family. We saved even harder when we first got our IF diagnosis ($19K in medical expenses last year for IF treatment!). We got money from when my grandfather passed away, via my father (we actually haven't touched this money yet). We are deliberately NOT taking out any loans, as we know that we're already going to need extra money to care for the child, much less pay for the expense of becoming a family.

we paid for our adoption through a home equity loan... can i ask if anyone has taken a "loan" from a 401K or retirement plan...i'm wondering about that for next time and whether you can do so without getting penalized....thanks!

Health Insurance pays for Adoption???

*How do you afford it?* Some employers offer reimbursement of some adoption fees. My company offers $4000 towards adoption costs which made Hanna's adoption "free". Of course, I had to pay up front. They don't advertise this reimbursement, though. I would definately check with your HR department and ask them if they would offer you an adoption benefit. Even if it's a small amount, every little bit helps. Home equity loans used to be popular but with the housing market the way it is and the economy the way it is, it's not as easy as it used to be. Credit cards with low introductory rates can be helpful. My cousin needed $25 thousand to adopt siblings from Kazahkstan. She borrowed $10k from a relative. Took out $10K on a home equity loan. And used credit cards for the balance (mostly for the travel & expenses while overseas). *Remember, with the tax credit, you won't necessarily get the whole credit when you file. Adoption agencies make it sound like an automatic $10k refund but it's not. The credit will reduce or eliminate your tax for the year you adopt but your refund will only be the amount you PAID IN. So if you owe no tax (which you wouldn't if you had the tax credit) and you paid in $10,000, you will get a $10,000 refund. But most people don't pay in that much money. If you only paid in $3000 in tax, then your refund will be $3000. But you can carry the credit forward and apply it towards the next year. Adopted babies are covered under your health insurance from the date of placement. If you pay the baby's medical bills for check ups upfront, your health insurance will reimburse you. If the date of placement is the day the child was born, the health insurance will also cover the baby's care in the hospital. If you pay up front, your insurance will reimburse you .

You can take advantage of the tax credit for 5 years, which is good to know. But yes, if you don't pay a lot in taxes, you won't get much out of it. For us, it will definitely help a lot, considering it's two children, but I'm not sure we will get everything back - we only have dh's pay, and we'll be 4 in the house. We'll see... anything will help. As to how we afforded it, we used savings and our parents were nice enough to give us some money to help - otherwise, we would have taken a home equity loan. Needless to say though, we're not going to go in vacations for a long time now, and we're going to have to watch our budget closely.

I did a 401K loan and it had zero penalties. You are only penalized if you do a withdrawal.

We listed with many agencies. If you are open racial, you should be able to find agencies that require nothing up front with out any problems. I think we were listed with 5 agencies...maybe more honestly. The most expensive part of all that is printing and assembling the books to send to them. In any given week between when we were homestudy approved (and some weeks before we were even approved) and when we were matched with Ty, we were submitted on anywhere from 3-10 situations. It kept me busy, and mostly sane. Massachusetts is also a state that requires agencies. Good Luck!

thank you, sleep! that's really helpful and good to know.

I held off getting the loan until after the TPR was signed. Loan checks are cut pretty much the same day or next day the loan is initiated. I had the check within a week. Check to see if you have the option of paying the loan back early. Some plans do not have that provision and you will have to make all the payments. My current employer allows a lump repayment but a previous employer did not allow early pay offs.