"If you have to fundraise..."

"If you have to fundraise, then you shouldn't be adopting."  I heard this from a friend of my husband's last week.  I understand where he's coming from, but he doesn't understand what adoptive families experience.


Having a family.
Can we afford to have a family?  Yes.  We both have good jobs, with good salaries and benefits.  Open enrollment just wrapped up, and the health insurance plans send out information with typical health procedures and your expected out of pocket expenses.  Do you know how much it would cost someone on my health plan to have a baby (give birth and all the prenatal care)?  $600.  Yup, $600 to go through pregnacy, labor and delivery.  May seem like a lot to some, but that's how much the application fee was to get started with the adoption.

What are you going to do when the kid gets here?
Well, we'd have to face those expenses whether we had a child biologically or adopted.  Child care, food, toys, medical care- all families face those expenses.  Families raise children on a lot less than we have.

Well, then why do you need to fundraise?
Yes, its true people get by on a lot less.  But adoption is a big expense and all at once.  We both have good jobs and benefits, we can afford to raise a child.  But like most people in our age cohort, we're paying student loans, just staring our careers- a lot of life expenses.  But we're building equity and preparing ourselves for our future.  We don't have $35K liquid assets for the adoption.  And we are just missing the adoption tax credit.

Adoption Tax Credit?
That's right, expiring December 2012 is a refundable tax credit of over $13K per adopted child.  Should the US government be handing out checks to adoptive families?  Well, without getting into the politics of whether the government should or not...  The adopted child tax credit was increased for several years until it reached its current level.  And every year, adoption agencies adjusted their fees accordingly.  If your adoption is completed by the end of December, you can claim this credit.  We are missing it by mere weeks.  Are the agencies going to lower their fees now that the tax credit is no more?  I wouldn't bet on it.  And the cherry on top is- adoption related expenses are not tax refundable.  So, that $10 we donated to a colleague walking for breast cancer (or some other worthy cause)- tax deductible.  That $3,000 we spent on our home study- not a chance. 

Bottom line.
No one likes asking for money.  If you don't want donate to the raffle, you don't have to.  We won't hold it against you.  We know families and individuals are facing a lot- they have their own life expenses, uncertainty in the job market, falling real estate. 
We have gotten a lot of support from family, friends, colleagues and even people we've never met.  Every dollar will be matched from a grant from Brittany's Hope.  We are so close to our goal with the raffle- just a few more tickets to go.

So if you are interested....
Tickets are 1 for $10 and 3 for $25 (remember every dollar will be matched- so a donation of $10 is a $20 gain for us!!).  You can donate via the Pay Pal on the right side of this blog, or you can mail checks to
Christ Church
620 G St SE
Washington, DC 20002. 
Be sure to put "iPad raffle" in the memo line.
Thanks!