Do you realize that it is SO much cheaper to give birth to a child than to adopt one? (well, for those with insurance anyway). I've decided that I am going to lobby my employer to increase adoption benefits and I think Tony should do the same. Both of our insurances now cover infertility treatments (10k for my company and 15k for Tony's) but only reimburse 3k and 4k respectively for adoption---and adoption is typically a sure thing--especially for the company because they only reimburse adoption after the adoption is final. Don't get me wrong, I think infertility benefits should be covered and at a higher rate than what they are, but I also think that adoption can be just as or sometimes more expensive than infertility treatments so I really feel like that should be reimbursed at least equally--maybe a lifetime maximum of 10K for adoption like you have the lifetime maximum of 10k for infertility treatment. I need to figure out who I can write a letter to at my employer.....
So, on with the saga of trying to figure out how to pay for this. Ultimately, even with reimbursement as it is now (3k for me, 4k for Tony and 12k tax break), we should only have to come up with about 6k out of pocket. Not too bad. The girls are all on board with saving money, especially Sarah who declines stops at McDonalds for breakfast and Sonic for drinks so that 'we can save more money.' Our plan is to tremendously cut back on dining out (our biggest vice) so that we can save a few hundred a month to put towards our expenses. Yes, you read right, a few hundred, I am very ashamed to admit that we had gotten so busy and lazy that we were often eating out a couple of times a week plus a few fast food stops. We went all of Nov with only one dining out adventure (after the girls swim meet). We also only went out maybe 2x in Dec. So we know it can be done, and we ended up being pretty happy with eating home everynight. You know you've been dining out too much when you offer the kids McDonalds and all they want to do is go home and have soup and a sandwich. Right now cooking at home is easy but when Sarah starts swimming again in a few weeks (insert 3-4 days/week of afternoon practice) the whole cooking at home thing will certainly get tougher...of course I am now armed with a new appliance, a beautiful 5.5qt Crock-Pot complete with built in timer and a new cookbook!! (This is in addition to a small 1.5qt and 4qt cooker that has been serving us well the past few months.) Thanks Mom and Dad! So right now we are fine tuning recipees to figure out how long they need to cook so I can figure out what I can put in there in the morning, cook while working, and eat in the evening -- without setting off the smoke alarm or catching my kitchen on fire!
As far as where the cash will come from to finance the adoption -- I've been looking into different options. We can always take a loan out from Tony's 401k, at least there we are paying ourselves interest for using our own money, but it also stops growing too so if the market suddenly skyrockets (yea, stop laughing) we would miss growth. Also, if something happened to Tony's job (unlikely-yes) but we'd be hit with really outrageous taxes. Too, when we need access to the bulk of the money is somewhat up in the air, but when we need it we will need it quickly, so I also hate to draw the cash out and just have it sitting there while we pay interest on it.
I've also been looking into a line of credit with Navy Federal Credit Union (any armed services member is eligible to open an account there). In that case we can apply for a 15k line of credit that we can access with checks and/or a debit card and just remove money (and pay interest on) what we are using. It also solves the problem of keeping everything we spend on the adoption separate since that will be from its own account. It is a little less than we were anticipating needing, but it will cover pretty much everything up to the travel point and that probablly won't come for at least 9-12 months (early time frame) so we would be saving up cash during this time. We're still thinking and looking at all our options.
We could save travel money by just the two of us going, but we feel that it is extremely important that we take both Sarah and Hailey with us since they are old enough to understand. We also feel that since the trip will probablly cost us around 10k for four of us traveling there and 5 back, we should spend a few extra days (in light of the fact that airfare is going to be the most expensive expense). We're hoping to spend 10-14 days in country instead of just the required 4 days for the adoption.
So, as that old ABBA song goes....Money, Money, Money.
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