Susannah, you're right. It IS expensive to adopt (at least it is if you don't adopt through the public child welfare system). I know that, depending on where you adopt from, an international adoption can run as high as $30,000. (Incidentally, a private, domestic infant adoption can run that high, too.) Of course we could never afford that. Adoption from Ethiopia runs about $11,000. We're financing ours the old-fashioned way: plastic! Once we had decided to adopt from Ethiopia, we figured we'd have to save for a few years before we could afford it. Then along came this little offer from my credit card company: I could withdraw my credit limit in the form of a check made out to me with an interest rate of 4.9% for the the life of the loan. There's no way we could get a personal loan for a rate that low! Because we will qualify for an adoption tax credit of $10,000, we decided to go ahead and take the loan and pay it back with our tax credit.

The way the tax credit works is that you have 5 years to claim up to $10,000 of adoption expenses and get those expenses paid back to you in the form of a refund. For example, suppose that Frank paid $2,000 in federal taxes every year. We could get $2,000 back a year for five years. If he paid more than that each year in taxes, we'd get the $10,000 back sooner, but if he paid less than $2,000 a year, we would only be able to get back as much as he paid each year for five years. Does that make any sense? I don't think I explained it well.

Here's a link:

http://www.adoption.com/library/articles/taxcredit.shtml

So basically, the government is paying for our adoption, even though it will takes us a while to get all that money.

If it weren't for the tax credit, I don't think we could do it, at least not for a long time. As it stands, it's going to take us at least 4 years to pay off the credit card loan.

I have read stories about people who see a child on an online photo listing, decide that's their child, and get all their dossier paperwork ready in about 2 weeks. I can't even imagine that! When I send our dossier paperwork tomorrow, I will be sending 20 separate documents or items (and multiple copies of each!), including local and county background checks, child abuse clearances, physical exam forms from our doctor, tax returns, bank letters, employment verificication, reference letters, insurance forms ... our homestudy alone took us 4 months! I don't know how people do it so quickly!

We decided that we would do this in as unhurried a manner as possible so that we didn't get stressed out about it. We are trying not to keep a mental timeframe of how long it "should" take (although it's hard not to), and we figure that the child we end up with will be the right child for us.

When I received information from the international agency in August, they sent us a text listing of currently available children that was dated July 2003. There is one child on that listing who meets our age requirements. I know nothing about him except his name and health status as of last July. I can't help thinking, "Will he be our son?"

Danna =]