Transparency

Originally Posted on our FB page on June 24th, 2016

A Little Transparency:
For YEARS I have been "throwing away" money on rent. Don't get me wrong, it is something I had to do. I had to keep a roof over my head, not just for me, but for my son. A little background information: when my son turned two my ex-husband moved out and I spent ten years being a single mom. A single mom with a child and for many of those years, a minimum wage job. On one income I had $65000+ in student loans, a car payment to get me to and from work, rent on my own and all utilities to pay with just my income. It seemed I always made just enough that I didn't qualify for help, yet had a very, very hard time paying all of my bills with money to spare. Not to mention, previous debt from my marriage and a child with special medical needs that involved expensive medicine. Needless to say, my credit went to crap. Since meeting Steve, I have worked REALLY hard at rebuilding my credit. My lack of credit is why I can't just "charge" the costs of the adoption and why I didn't own a house (which is also why we couldn't refinance our home to pay for our adoption). AND that is why Steve and I have been renting. I am in a much better financial place now, have been teaching at my current position for four full years (much better pay) and have completely rebuilt my credit. So, no more throwing away money on rent. We bought a house in May, pay a mortgage very comparable to what our rent was, and are now able to build equity in case something would happen in the future and we would have to borrow against it. Now, I was very reluctant to post this information since many people are quick to judge when people trying to save and raise money to adopt make purchases such as houses and cars. That is why I want to make it clear though that our mortgage is right in line with what we were paying in rent and never would have gotten any return on it in the future.
The timing is perfect though, considering we are still on the wait list to start our home study and be able to be "shown" to prospective birth mothers. If we had bought a house after that process started, then it would have cost up to $500 just to update the home study since a caseworker needs to come out to the house, look at everything, and update all of the paperwork. We closed on the house at the end of May and once school was out Steve and I started working on updating things in the house and painting almost every room in the house. By the way, this house gives us more room to bring a little one (or two if we get matched with twins) home. We will officially begin moving our things in next week!
This waiting to get our case started is HARD! I will fill you in on those details in my next post, but that is part of why I haven't posted much. There just isn't a lot of new news and it is frustrating for us. We are continuing to save and build our adoption fund.
More to come....
Alicia