I have been getting lots of questions about how much our adoption will cost, so I wanted to do a blog post to address some of those questions, especially since we are getting ready for another fundraiser raffle happening SOON!
Our adoption is estimated to cost between 30K and 35K depending on the time of travel and any unforeseen decreases or increases in government costs.
In this post, I just want to focus on our first set of fees. To me, the fees seem to be broken down into four stages. I will blog more about the other stages when we get ready to cross that bridge.
1.) Contracting stage
2.) Dossier stage
3.) Travel #1 stage
4.) Travel #2 stage
We are currently in stage one. We have applied to AGCI and have been tentatively "approved," but we have contracts pending. We cannot send them in until we have the fees needed for the contracting stage. Here's the break-down of our first set of fees and what they will be used for:
$300 - - - - application fee - - - - PAID!
$3,000 - - - - - Agency service fee - - - - - Due
$1,000 Bulgaria Program fee - - - - - - Due
$212 - - - - - - Adoptive Parent Educational Materials - - - - - Due
What does all this mean? Our agency is made up of social workers and case managers, and they have to make a living too. We will have several people doing lots of technical stuff for us. The agency will be a phone call away to field any questions or concerns we have, and they handle all the legal stuff that we are no where near qualified to handle ourselves. The agency fees & program fees pay for their services and overhead costs. Jeremy and I will receive an adoptive parent workbook and admission to an online course that will help prepare us to be the best adoptive parents we can be. Of course, we must pay for these materials as well.
Our deadline for completing this contracting stage is Oct. 2, 2012. We hope to have $4,212 and our notarized contracts all ready to mail in by that date!
At this moment, we have acquired $2,044 and we still need $2,168 in order to meet our goal. That's a lot of extra money to locate in about a month's time, but we know it is not impossible!
This weekend, we will be starting yet another exciting raffle via our blog. With your help, this raffle could dramatically help provide the needed funds for us to complete stage one of our adoption. I'm not a math person at all, but I was doing some calculating tonight and I deduced:
- If 50 of my Facebook friends purchase two $5 tickets (yay!) that would equal us raising $500!
- Now, that would be awesome, but if those same 50 friends shared the link to our raffle on their Facebook page or blog, and it resulted in just one other faithful person buying 2 tickets of their own, guess what? We raise $1,000! That's half of our remaining goal!! All it would take is $10 and a share on Facebook...simple really!
I really don't think this scenario is unreasonable, and with God, we know that all things are possible. Sometimes BIG things are accomplished by a lot of people each doing a little something. Please be praying for our upcoming raffle. Please pray that our child is safe right now and that he or she is being taken care of. Please pray for God's speed in this process. We know His timing is perfect, but we would hate for our adoption to be delayed because of a measly missed deadline. Please be on the lookout for our raffle to start this coming weekend, and consider how you could be a part.
Thanks so much, and for all those people who have been wondering what all this money is for, I hope this post has helped answer your questions.
-Shelly
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave some love