Adopting Without Debt: Savings Tips
In this blog post, we will focus on how you can adopt without going into debt, and we are kicking off the first post in a three-post series. In each of the posts, we will talk about one of the three strategies either myself or my clients have used in their adoption journeys. And because you know that I always have your back, we will break down each of those strategies into steps to write your plan to fund your adoption.
The cost of adoption is one of the main reasons many people are scared to start the adoption process or never even pursue their adoption dreams. And that breaks my heart, friend. However, I am a firm believer that anything is possible with the right plan and support, so that is why I felt compelled to put together some strategies that I have coached my clients through over the years into one place so that more of you could apply these strategies in your own life.
According to US News and World Report, the range for a private domestic adoption with an agency is between $25-40,000, and for independent adoption, which some also call self-matching, the range is $15-40,000. No matter which private adoption route you choose, paying for your adoption can be a considerable impediment.
According to CNBC, the cost of adoption becomes even more concerning when you consider that the average American only has $8,863 in their savings account. When considering these two factors, the cost of adoption can quickly seem unattainable. But I have a fundamental belief that you should be able to adopt a child no matter your financial situation and that you should not have to go into a mountain of debt to pay for your adoption. Nor should you default to a particular type of adoption just because it is cheaper if it doesn’t fit your vision for your family.
Setting your family vision, which I do with my private clients, should be the deciding factor in what adoption route is suitable for your family. You should not default to foster care adoption because it is the cheapest option if you do not feel equipped to parent a child that has been in the foster care system. Nor should you pursue foster care adoption if you do not feel equipped to handle the more massive amount of uncertainty that can occur in foster care adoptions. Please know that I 1,000% support foster care adoption and believe that it is needed and necessary, but I firmly believe that you should pursue that if it is your first choice, not because that was your only option financially.
So if that is not your first choice for adoption or doesn't meet the vision you have for your family, let’s work together to pay for your adoption faster and without you going into a mountain of debt. Let’s put together a plan that makes you feel empowered and know that it is possible to reach your adoption goals. Let’s first focus on avoiding debt, and then we will cover how to put together your step-by-step plan.
To avoid going into debt to fund your adoption, there are three options:
Savings
Fundraisers
Grants
Savings:
When it comes to savings, I think it is important to talk about ways to grow it and not drain it completely. I think a few things are particularly great at helping you save money fast: look for savings accounts with a higher return, no spend challenges, finding ways to reduce or eliminate monthly recurring charges and increase your income so you can have more to save. Let’s talk about each of these a little more.
4 Ways To Grow Your Adoption Savings:
Grow your savings account
No spend challenges
Find ways to reduce monthly recurring expenses
Increase your income
Savings Account
While savings accounts don’t offer a ton of interest these days, there are a couple of different strategies that can add up for you here. According to nerdwallet.com, there are four ways to earn more interest in your money (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/4-ways-to-earn-more-interest-on-savings). The first strategy is choosing a checking account that is also a savings account; this allows your everyday funds to be used. Second, using the traditional savings account approach, you can consider online banks to have better rates than conventional local brick and mortar banks. The third is to use a cd ladder strategy. While this is a good strategy overall for saving money, it doesn’t feel like it would particularly help us from an adoption standpoint. The final savings strategy suggests joining a credit union because they offer higher yields on savings and checking accounts. No matter which savings account strategy you deploy, it is essential to be mindful of when you need your funds for your adoption and when the savings plan would benefit you. It will take a little research and planning, but this could be a couple of hundred dollars more towards your adoption savings which may not seem like much, but every penny helps!
No spend challenge
I love a good no-spend challenge. The basic idea is not to spend money that I know may sound crazy, but it is possible. Being more mindful of how you spend your money daily will shine a light on areas to find savings pretty quickly.
The best no-spend challenge that I have come across is from my friend Jen Smith at Modern Frugality. I will put a link in the show notes, but her no-spend challenges are epic. In fact, she has a couple of books on amazon about this subject too. https://www.modernfrugality.com/how-to-do-a-no-spend-month-that-will-help-your-finances-long-term/
She describes the no spend challenge of intentionally not spending on the areas you don’t have to for a certain period. For the sake of the example, let’s use one month as our time frame. The process that Jen uses is to write out a budget of all of the things that you have to pay, i.e., mortgage, water, rent, electricity, etc., tell your friends and family this is what you are doing and be super clear on your goals grounded in your reason not to spend. Next, she instructs you to create a list of what you must spend out of your monthly recurring costs, like holidays and gifts. Establishing a budget for these things can help you stay focused on your goal.
Since saving for your adoption is incredibly important, your why is super motivating, so next, I would focus on how aggressive you could be with your plan. Could you combine a no-spend challenge with our next tip for increasing your savings reducing monthly expenses?
Reducing Recurring Monthly Charges
We used this strategy during our adoption journey. We were ruthless in the way we tried to reduce our monthly recurring charges. We found ways to save on everything from electricity to gas for our cars, monthly subscriptions like our phone bill, cable bill, internet, gym membership, and many other things that I forget now. The list can sound overwhelming but let’s see how easy it is to deploy these strategies.
Saving Electricity
We did the easy thing of adjusting or thermostat by 3 degrees, and we used the fans and opened the windows more. Also, looking for power drainers that you don’t need also helps a ton too. A significant power drainer for us was the recirculation pump on our water heater. We put a timer on that to ensure the hot water was recirculating through our house when we would be up to taking a shower and doing dishes in the evening, but since we were gone a lot during the day, it didn’t need to run then. We deployed this strategy before we did anything else, and we saw a $20 monthly savings in our electricity bill. Then when we got more aggressive and deployed the thermostat and pulling from the plug on some items that we didn’t need all the time, that savings a month rose to $56 a month. It may not sound much on the surface, but that would have been enough to fund our background checks for the adoption over the year.
Gasoline
My husband and I worked two exits apart, so carpooling was how we could save the most money when it came to our monthly gasoline bill. It was also pretty handy that I didn’t need to leave the office during the day because I would pack my lunch. Then we also intentionally planned errands that we needed to run based on what was most efficient. We lived about 15 miles from the stores we frequented each week, so we started being intentional about going to the grocery store before or after work, running errands at lunch. At the same time, we were already closer to the locations. Things like this and carpooling saved us a little over $100 a month. Again may not seem like much on a day-to-day basis, but that intentional mindset helped us stay focused on our goals.
Monthly subscriptions
When it came to our list of monthly subscriptions, the list was embarrassingly long, and it felt a little like my hands were tied. But I decided to eat the elephant one bite at a time. I started by making a list of charges, their amounts, and any necessary contract timelines. Then I added to that list notes on what I felt we could give up. Things like do we need all those channels and how many minutes or texts we were using. Something to guide me during the negotiation calls, which I did next.
I called every vendor and explained that I needed to reduce our monthly expenses and share why I needed to reduce them. Explaining my why being grounded in adoption, I believe, actually helped me save more money. Several salespeople said they felt motivated to help me save for our adoption and find us better rates because of the reason to keep. I worked with each vendor throughout the list, and it resulted in us saving close to $500 a month. This was HUGE!
Increasing your income
This savings strategy was not one I had initially thought about deploying for our adoption journey, but it is one that my clients have used to great success. In fact, one of them earned $1,000 last month leveraging this strategy. She increased her income through a combination of asking for a raise, working for door dash, and using her unique talents to help a friend reorganize their house.
Asking for a raise at work
When asking for a raise at work, this can be a very tricky subject, but it is worth having a conversation about with your employer. Again I would rely on your why as the driving force behind giving you the courage to have the conversation. This conversation can be tricky and will likely result in a no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I asked the question during my journey and was told no, but others have gotten a resounding yes, so you have to decide if this is right. As a side note here, I would have the conversation grounded in the value you bring to the organization from a revenue perspective. What income did you recently generate for the company, or over a long period that demonstrates how much you give the company vs. what it provides to you? Be super careful here as it is a slippery slope with your manager and your feelings for the company.
Working for delivery companies
Finding ways to make extra income in what I call the margins of your day can be a compelling way to grow your savings. With the growing demand for grocery delivery in a post covid world, there is always a need for delivery drivers. So if driving people around via Lyft, Uber, etc., isn’t your jam try one of the grocery or dinner delivery companies. A different client just earned $750 doing this last month on nights and weekends. She said she just popped in a few podcasts and drove three nights a week and one weekend day delivering groceries and dinner for Uber Eats.
Using your unique talents to earn extra income for your adoption
Before you give yourself the excuse that you don’t have a unique talent and that this won’t work for you, let’s give ourselves some credit. Some things are truly your zone of genius that isn’t for someone else. Maybe it is organizing, wrapping gifts, computer repair, editing emails, and just a whole bunch of that one person is better at than another. That is what you want to focus on when using your talents to help you save money for your adoption. To get started here, I would list all the things you like to do that you are also really good at doing. Then on that same list, I would attach people’s names to use your help in those areas. Finally, you want to establish either an hourly or project rate.
Then reach out to them and ask if they would like your help. Tell them that you are trying to save money for your adoption so that hopefully you can adopt without going into debt, and then ask them if there is any way you could help them. Hopefully, they naturally go to where you are thinking, but if they don’t, volunteer your idea. Once you settle on an idea, decide on how you will receive the funds and by when. You want to be super clear on what you are doing when you are doing it and how much you will earn from fulfilling that task. That same client that I told you about that earned an extra $1,000 a month will most of that came from helping her friends and family organize, clean, and run errands to help them manage their super busy life.
So there, you have four ways to grow your savings to avoid going into debt while adopting a child. And some fantastic strategies for each way to create your plan will work for your family, and I truly hope you do just that.
My final piece of advice is to make sure you are planning rewards to hit your goals.
Of course, we created an aggressive monthly budget but planned rewards that were cheap if we hit our goals. It was also important to me that our quality of life didn’t suffer, and since vacations are my love language, I used our credit card that we earned hotel points, airlines miles, and cashback for every purchase but made myself pay it off at the end of the month no matter what. We actually earned enough miles and points to go to Hawaii for a week, and it did not cost us anything out of pocket. I must also admit that planning the budget to that detail and projecting our points on the various cards was also a great distraction in the waiting time, but I digress.
Overall, friend, please do not drain your account as there will be unexpected things that will come up along your adoption journey that you will need funds for, and after all, at the end of this journey, you will have a new little one to care for and sometimes that requires money. So having some money in savings is important for those unexpected life expenses that will help make your adoption journey just a little easier.
We will be talking a ton more about savings strategies in the Facebook group this week, so if you need inspiration, hope in there and if you have any tips, please share them with us. We are stronger when we work together in the community to achieve our goals. Remember, you can do anything with the right plan and support. I believe in you and have your back.
Hi, I Am Amanda
I help women build their families through adoption by giving them the step by step guide to adopt a child and support them on their journey
