It was indeed a sleepless night. First thing in the morning, we were scrambling to see if we could work out the financials to bring home Jack Jack’s sibling. We wanted to talk to all the right people to see if we were thinking logically and putting together a plan that made sense going into the future. The idea of using high interest credit cards or high percentage rate loans to get this done just didn’t make sense to us. Of course logic is hard to come by when there’s a baby on the line!

First we spoke with Mr. Jacks’ mom. She was so thrilled about the idea of us adopting a bio-sibling and immediately offered some assistance. What an amazing gift! It wouldn’t bridge the shortfall, but it would help us while we were sorting the rest of the pieces of the puzzle.

We looked at some of the other mechanisms for adoption financial help. The list of financial assistance programs provided by our agency focused mainly on helping families from Evangelical Christian backgrounds. With one partner an avowed agnostic and the other Catholic, we knew these wouldn’t work for us. Adoptive Families magazine has a nice list of options, including grants and loans. We wouldn’t qualify for most of them for various reasons. The options that remained in the article included borrowing from 401ks, second mortgages/home equity lines of credit, or cash advances from credit cards. Bummer. This wasn’t looking good. It seemed like it was going to be impossible to make the numbers work without one of these.  Maybe we should just say no now before we got too deep into it?

However, we were also reminded of the Adoption Tax Credit, which has been made permanent and provides $13,190 in tax credit for adoptive families.  It could provide us with some tax relief in the year after the adoption, which would be helpful in recovering from the expenses incurred. Also, my insurance policy provides a small adoption benefit which we could take advantage of. If you are looking  to make an adoption financially feasible, make sure and check that your income allows you to qualify for the Adoption Tax Credit and see what adoption benefits your employer provides. You may find some help there. It looked like both of those things could be of some assistance in our situation. It still wasn’t enough to close the gap, though.

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Our financial adviser also helped us to recognize some basic re-organization we could do with our current finances to make more money available for adoption fees in the short term. We could:

– Decrease our contribution to the childrens’ educational savings plans until the adoption is complete.

– Change the girls’ tuition payments to monthly instead of bi-annually. While it would mean we would lose a small incentive price reduction, it would give us more cash on hand for final adoption expenses in February.

– Re-instate our lay-off budget with additional cuts. We would have to be on a mission to spend $0 that is not included in our weekly budget. This means never eating out, getting a coffee or forgetting a lunch. If we have spent our food budget for the week, that’s it. No cheating. This would involve intensive meal planning and more prep work. It would be an extreme financial challenge, and not necessarily fun this time around– especially with Christmas just a few weeks away. However, if we could squeeze out just a little more from our budget each paycheck than we did during the layoff, it would definitely help fill the gap.

– I could volunteer to take a few extra shifts at work that would cover the final few incidental expenses. It is not exactly a cushion, but it looks like with this extra push, all fees would be covered. This is also a big trade-off, as it means even more time spent away from the family. I didn’t want to over-use it at the expense of the family’s well-being.

– Negotiate with the agency on the very few things we could negotiate on. There were a couple of costs that we felt we could get some wiggle room from the agency on, and we were willing to put ourselves out there and ask for some compromise on them. The worst they could say was “no,” and we were prepared for that.

Now, we would also have to account for the additional expense of buying a car that can fit 3 convertible car seats. We would be seeking a vehicle that added minimal expense to our monthly bills and minimal percentage financing… but we knew we wouldn’t have time to complete that research before giving our final answer to the agency. For now, this remains an outstanding question. Luckily, the timing is good to to allow us to take advantage of end of the year incentives from car dealers trying to move 2014 stock before the New Year.

There was going to be a small leap of faith in saying yes to this adoption, but by adjusting our budget/savings plans we are fairly sure that we will be able to cover the amount of the adoption without creating a bad situation for ourselves later. After 24 hours of true agony, we let down our guard and acknowledged that we both really, really wanted to bring this baby home. We worked the numbers enough to know that we could (just barely) do this. We decided to call the agency and put the plan into motion. We wanted to let birth mom know that her babies were going to get to grow up together as part of our family.

Finally, I could let out a sigh of relief and start to get excited about our soon to be new baby! In February! And (maybe) a boy!

We were going to have just a few weeks to do all the paperwork that had taken us months last time, let alone prepare our home and daughters for the arrival of a newborn!  Needless to say, there’s going to be a lot to talk about in the coming weeks, and I’m so glad that I have this community to share with and to help with some of the decision making.  We’re having a baby!

Mrs. Jacks’ Adoption Journey part 3 of 16

1. You finally find peace, and... by Mrs. Jacks
2. You finally find peace, and... Part II by Mrs. Jacks
3. You finally find peace, and... Part III by Mrs. Jacks
4. The Amazing Race by Mrs. Jacks
5. Telling the girls by Mrs. Jacks
6. Roller Coaster by Mrs. Jacks
7. The Name Game (Take 2) by Mrs. Jacks
8. Roller coaster update by Mrs. Jacks
9. Less than a week to go: checklist manifesto by Mrs. Jacks
10. Birth of a story by Mrs. Jacks
11. Birth of a story: birth parent dinner by Mrs. Jacks
12. The birth of a story: Friday the 13th by Mrs. Jacks
13. The birth of a story: Deep into darkness by Mrs. Jacks
14. The birth of a story: embracing uncertainty by Mrs. Jacks
15. The birth of a story: a new day by Mrs. Jacks
16. The birth of a story: settling in by Mrs. Jacks