vrmlguy's Journal: Enlarging our family

Lots of people know this already, but for those of you who don't know, Mari and I are preparing to adopt two children from Russia sometime this summer. We had originally thought that we could only afford one, but it turned out we were wrong. Here's the hard financial facts.

At this time, I'm not going to get into the emotional side of the adoptions. That can wait until we finish the process. Instead, I'm going to talk about how we can afford to do someting that's hideously expensive.

Last year, the federal tax credit for adoptions was raised from $5,000 to $10,000. That's a credit, not a deduction, meaning that you get that much back on April 15th. It's also per-child. And Missouri as had a $10,000 tax credit per child for some time now. Finally, my employer reimburses some adoption expenses as well. Put it all together and we'll eventually get back $44,000 for a two-child adoption.

There are several costs for an international adoption that are fixed, such as round-trip tickets for Mari and myself. Also, Russia will charge lower fees for each child after the first, provided you adopt them all at the same time. Add it up, and it may wind up costing us less to adopt two than it would to adopt one. (Of course, all of the "regular" child-rearing expenses will be higher with two, but I've got almost twenty years to prepare for college.)

That's it for now. I'll post again when we're actually home with the kids.