Do you have to be rich to adopt?
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Nope.
You do have to meet basic criteria. Most countries set a minimum income criteria and a minimum net worth bar, but those vary by country. Some countries - like Uganda - don't have set requirements, and then the criteria is set by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which states that your income must exceed 125% of the poverty threshold.
If you choose to adopt domestically through foster care, costs are minimal and, depending on the child, a monthly payments may be available for the family to help subsidize the costs involved with your new child's care; these payments continue until he or she turns 18. For friends of ours in Jacksonville, FL, who adopted their son through foster care, their adoption expenses only included travel costs to and from Tampa, where their son lived until he was legally placed with them.
I might as well put this out there, since NPR already did: we currently make $60,000 a year.
If I pick up freelance writing projects or speaking engagements, that usually goes to ministries we support (or – not gonna lie – the occasional purty area rug).
We’re comfortable with our income, in part because our only debt is our mortgage. Sure, with five of us and three on the way, we have to be creative at times to live within our means.
I detailed our adoption expenses last time in this post. This time the cost is a little higher, in part because of increased travel costs and the use of an agency this time around. We pay the agency to do some steps for us that we did on our own last time, and we’re very pleased with their ethics. Our agency is a non-profit (as I think every adoption agency should be).
Sure, fundraising isn’t fun. Well, it can be, but I haven’t found it to be terribly enjoyable. It’s a necessity, and it provides the opportunity for others to support adoption, as all of us in Christ as called to care for orphans in some way. We have been made rich in a different sense through adoption, as Zoe has certainly enriched our lives.
That’s the best kind of rich.
You do have to meet basic criteria. Most countries set a minimum income criteria and a minimum net worth bar, but those vary by country. Some countries - like Uganda - don't have set requirements, and then the criteria is set by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which states that your income must exceed 125% of the poverty threshold.
If you choose to adopt domestically through foster care, costs are minimal and, depending on the child, a monthly payments may be available for the family to help subsidize the costs involved with your new child's care; these payments continue until he or she turns 18. For friends of ours in Jacksonville, FL, who adopted their son through foster care, their adoption expenses only included travel costs to and from Tampa, where their son lived until he was legally placed with them.
I might as well put this out there, since NPR already did: we currently make $60,000 a year.
If I pick up freelance writing projects or speaking engagements, that usually goes to ministries we support (or – not gonna lie – the occasional purty area rug).
We’re comfortable with our income, in part because our only debt is our mortgage. Sure, with five of us and three on the way, we have to be creative at times to live within our means.
I detailed our adoption expenses last time in this post. This time the cost is a little higher, in part because of increased travel costs and the use of an agency this time around. We pay the agency to do some steps for us that we did on our own last time, and we’re very pleased with their ethics. Our agency is a non-profit (as I think every adoption agency should be).
Sure, fundraising isn’t fun. Well, it can be, but I haven’t found it to be terribly enjoyable. It’s a necessity, and it provides the opportunity for others to support adoption, as all of us in Christ as called to care for orphans in some way. We have been made rich in a different sense through adoption, as Zoe has certainly enriched our lives.
That’s the best kind of rich.