Our Adoption Story

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Do you want to adopt two girls?”

I’ll never forget when Barb texted me that question. I was at work. We had looked into foreign adoption the year before, but after running into roadblocks, it wasn’t something I was actively thinking about anymore.

We had never talked about adopting siblings or more than one child. Our conversations had always centered on one child, and usually an infant.

I also hadn’t pictured us adopting girls. I was a boy dad, and that was the life I knew.

 “Sure.”

That was my response. Sure. I didn’t know what else to say. Despite what I’d come to believe about our future and adoption, I had this feeling that I was supposed to say yes (or sure).

Our Adoption Story

A note before we get too far into this story. Some details and events are intentionally left out. Our adoption story is also our daughters’ story, and some parts should come from them if they ever choose to share them.

Every adoption story is different, and ours was too. At the time, our family of four included Barb and me, and our two biological sons, ages 5 and 2. We lived in a suburb of Cleveland, both worked full-time, and had a full family life. We did not feel like something was missing or that adoption would fix anything.

Still, we both felt open to adoption at some point, even if we did not know when or how it would happen. We also did not yet understand how much that decision would affect our finances. That became clear quickly.

We could have had more biological children. Shortly after our first son was born, Barb was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Her doctor wanted to start more aggressive treatment, but that medicine would have made pregnancy unsafe, so we decided to have our second child first and then begin the new regimen. The treatment helped a lot, and after our second son was born, our family of four felt complete.

These two girls, ages eight and five, were never part of our original plan until they were. Barb is a public school teacher, and through the usual network of teachers talking to teachers, she heard about two girls from Florida who were spending the summer in Akron with cousins and needed a new home.

An Impossible Decision

The girls’ biological family had gone through years of heartbreak before the adoption. While overseas, their biological mom suffered a severe stroke. She survived, but she did not get timely medical care, and the damage was significant. We never met her, but we do know she was no longer able to care for herself, the girls, or make decisions as a parent.

Their biological dad was much older than their mom. His health was failing, and he lacked financial stability. He did what he could, but he was facing a terrible situation with very few good options. He had to decide whether to find someone who could take the girls or risk more involvement from Child Protective Services and the possibility that the girls would be separated in foster care.

As a dad, I cannot imagine having to make that call. I have a lot of respect for the girls’ biological dad and the decision he made. I have no doubt it was the hardest decision of his life.

Maybe he had run out of hope. Maybe he understood where things were heading. Both of the girls’ biological parents died within two years of the girls coming to live with us. I think about that often, not because I see us as heroes, but because it says a lot about how serious the situation was.

The Logistics

There is no manual for adopting two children who live in another state. There is also no clear playbook for an adoption where one parent is still involved, and the other is no longer capable of exercising parental rights. We were fortunate to find people who could help us through the process.

A local nonprofit conducted our home study. It took a long time, and moving to a larger house halfway through meant starting over. An adoption attorney in Florida helped us handle the legal side there and guided us through a lot of uncertainty. Several people stepped in at key moments to help us keep the process moving.

Because we did not adopt through an agency or pursue international adoption, our upfront costs were much lower than what many families pay. We also received help through donated time and financial support. We were fortunate. Adoption can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that price keeps many families from pursuing it.

Two Plus Two Doesn’t Always Equal Four

Caring for a child is expensive, even when you are careful with money. Because we already had two kids, we knew the biggest financial impact would come after the girls joined our family. It was never just a matter of adding two more kids to the grocery bill or buying more clothes.

Going from two children to four changed more than we expected. We needed a bigger house and a bigger vehicle, which turned out to be a minivan.

We also had a large family trip to the Outer Banks planned with extended family just two weeks after the girls came to live with us. We took them with us. The beach house had enough room, but we had not thought through the hotel stops on the drive. Very little is set up for a family of six, and that became obvious fast.

Our family expenses changed in several areas, including clothing, groceries, education, housing, and medical bills and insurance costs.

The financial side was only part of the adjustment. All four of our kids needed individual attention, and each had different physical, emotional, and educational needs. We were learning as we went. Our oldest son had gone from being first in the birth order to third, and he handled that shift with a lot of grace.

Adopting older children changed the experience, too. Some of the challenges we have faced over the years likely connect to the fact that we did not build a parent-child bond during those early formative years.

I have heard adoptive parents talk about feeling an instant connection with a child, especially when adopting a newborn or infant. That was not our experience. With older-child adoption, the bond can take longer, and that reality deserves honesty.

A Change in Our Financial Mindset

When I was younger, my dad took me on a camping trip that included several Major League ballparks and a stop at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. Years later, I realized how much that trip stayed with me. It shaped how I think about family experiences and what I want my own kids to remember.

I still wanted to create meaningful experiences for my family, but adding two more children made the financial side of that much harder to ignore. As our family grew, our spending changed too, and everything felt tighter.

We had more food and clothes to buy. We had more school, sports, and activity fees to pay. We had more needs, which left less room for wants.

Up to that point, I had given only limited attention to retirement, 401(k) accounts, college savings, and investing. We were not broke, and we were not living paycheck to paycheck. But we were not being intentional either.

That started to change. I began paying closer attention to where our money was going and what needed to be different. I spent a lot of time learning, adjusting our budget, and looking for ways to cut costs and pay down debt.

New Opportunities

I eventually realized that cutting expenses helps, but only to a point. If we wanted to save more, we also needed to find ways to earn more.

I had wanted to build something of my own for a long time. Because I had a background in public speaking, I thought that might become a second career. I took an online course and put together a plan, but booking speaking gigs while working full-time was difficult. Leaving my job was not a realistic option with four kids at home.

Writing had also been part of my life for a long time. After spending so much time learning about personal finance and travel, I started to think writing might be a better fit for that season of life.

That’s how Family Money Adventure started.

My growing focus on our finances pushed me toward freelance writing as a side hustle. I used the site as a portfolio, gradually found clients, and slowly moved into better-paying work. It took a lot of late nights and weekends, and Barb saw it all up close.

Years later, that work replaced my full-time income and eventually grew beyond it. I am grateful for what it has made possible for our family.

What They Don’t Tell You About Adopting

Adoption is more than adding people to your family or adjusting your budget. It changes the emotional life of everyone involved.

Adoption can be messy, painful, and chaotic. At times, it is overwhelming.

I can only speak from our experience. Our girls were older when we adopted them, and we already had children. I do not know what newborn adoption feels like, so I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Our adoption was traumatic in different ways for all of us. The girls carried more than anyone, with their whole world changing in a short period of time. But every person in our family felt some version of loss, disruption, tension, or grief.

Some of the challenges we have worked through include:

• having your whole life turned upside down in a matter of months
• having a parent place you with strangers
• having less than a week to decide whether to adopt
• experiencing postpartum or post-adoption depression
• a major shift in birth order
• multiple spinal fusion surgeries for our youngest daughter
• missing early family bonding years with the girls
• a major culture shift for the girls
• switching schools
• moving from Florida to Ohio
• leaving friends behind
• the deaths of the girls’ biological parents

That list only tells part of the story. The harder part is how those experiences continue to show up over time.

Friends of ours once described adoption as feeling like their old family had died and been replaced by a new one. I would not apply that language to every adoption story, but I understood what they meant. At times, it has felt like we were trying to build something new without fully understanding what had been lost.

The girls have often seemed well-adjusted from the outside, but looking fine and being fine are not the same thing. That applies to all six of us. There have been many conversations where we gave neat, polished answers instead of saying what we were really feeling.

Counseling has helped our family in many ways. I have learned that healing takes honesty, effort, and a willingness to sit with pain you would rather avoid. As our girls have gotten older, they have become more aware of how much their earlier experiences still affect them.

The Rest of the Story

The rest of our story is still being written. We still get to decide how we respond to what our family has lived through and how we move forward together.

Adoption has been a positive part of our lives, but it has also humbled us. We have made mistakes, sometimes big ones. We have also had real wins.

Our story is not neat, and it never will be. We all mess up. We are still learning each other, still learning ourselves, and still trying to love each other well.

If adoption is something you are considering, think through both the emotional and financial realities as early as you can. The decision affects far more than the legal process or the upfront cost.