Hoskinson Family Blog
I posted a challenge to Facebook two days ago- if we received $1000 in donations by April 1, I would shave my beard of more than 15 years and go "baby-faced" in order to move us closer to bringing a baby home.
We asked, and you responded! In just over 24 hours, you gave more than $1400, which moves us up to 30% of our total fundraising goal! I am truly overwhelmed!
In keeping with my end of the bargain, here is some "bonus content" from the process. Enjoy!
Once again, THANK YOU!!!
-Adam
Welcome to Leap Day (and happy birthday to a handful of friends actually born on February 29!) Maybe, like me, you contemplated doing something special with your extra day this year. Even though I didn't really miss those little parts of a day that the calendar has taken over the last three years, it still feels like a bit of a treat.
Since the time God started our adoption journey about a year ago, friends and family have given just over $6000 of the $34,000 we need. Our adoption agency (a secular institution) is skeptical that we will be able to raise the remaining funds. If we cannot demonstrate to them that we can cover the fees, they may ask us to withdraw our application.
We need you, as part of our community of faith, family, and friends, to join us and give. Raising $28,000 by April 30, 2016 would prove to our agency what God can do when His people live generously, and clear the way for us to bring home a son or daughter this year.
Today, we're issuing the Leap Day Challenge! We have an extra day, so let's make the most of it! Here are three ways you can give:
Donate your tax refund. The IRS reports an average tax refund of more than $2800 in recent years. If just ten "average" people donated their entire refunds, we would be fully funded!!
Set aside a portion of your tax refund. Just 20% of your refund would quickly close the gap and move us forward.
Give your "Leap Day salary." One extra day's pay would make a huge difference in our adoption.
Take a "leap" of faith and give however God has enabled you! This is a God-sized task, and if God has provided you with the resources, we need you to give.
Click here to donate securely through our website.
Please pray for us as we continue to follow the path of adoption where God is leading our family, and pray that he would give you the resources to help.
Thank you,
Adam, Allison, and Sam
"Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!"
If you're anything like me, you played Super Mario Brothers at some point while you were growing up, and you probably played a lot of other video games, too. Almost every game (sorry, Temple Run) has a primary objective- an end goal- that you pursue throughout. Save the Princess. Protect the planet from alien invaders. Take the enemy base. Crush all the candy. Completing this objective means winning the game.
Many games also contain secondary objectives that lead the hero along alternate paths for a time. These "side quests" enhance (rather than replace) the primary objective and come with a special reward. When you complete them, you are back on track and better prepared to deal with your main quest.
God has given us a side quest. Along the way to bringing a child home (our adoption quest), our agency asked us to take a deeper dive into our finances (our money side quest). We each have a good job, pay our bills on time each month, and have some savings and retirement set aside. We also have a mortgage, student loans, a car payment, and credit card debts. The overall picture is one where we are getting by, but not thriving. The agency's concern is that paying the adoption fees and adding a child to our family might do us more harm than good (financially speaking) if we don't make some changes now.
Other couples have asked us for advice or insight as we progress along our adoption path, and I think this is a great place to start. We've taken three important steps on our money side quest, and we're already seeing greater freedom, reduced stress, and progress toward our ultimate goal.
In ten years of blissful marriage (and nearly seventeen as an adult) I have never created a real, working budget. We go to our jobs, deposit our cash, and spend it "as necessary" on whatever fits in our cart at Target. It's a great recipe if your only goal is living paycheck to paycheck, and we have succeeded.
That's no longer good enough. In January, we created accounts with Mvelopes - free personal finance software and that uses some basic budgeting techniques to give us control over our finances. The idea is that you identify your income and then assign every dollar an envelope, or purpose. When an envelope has dollars, you can spend them only for that purpose and when the envelope is empty, you need to stop spending. Apps on our phones make it easy to keep track of everything.
For example, we put money in our mortgage envelope, our groceries envelope, our auto maintenance envelope, etc. A week ago when my headlight burned out, I used $17 from the auto maintenance envelope to buy a replacement. I felt free knowing that we had intentionally set money aside for that purpose, and I didn't have to second-guess whether that meant we could afford other bills.
I used to work with someone who had the worst name imaginable- Deb T. Debt. (True story. Sorry, Deb.) She was a good worker and friend. Debt is neither.
Regardless of how we acquired it, we agreed that debt needed to go, and go quickly. Cascading debt payments is easy and effective. We determined our minimum monthly payment for all of our debts, and will pay that every month. Notice that I said payment, not payments- the total we pay stays the same, even as the balances drop. As the first debt is paid off, that amount is added to the next payment in line, and so on. We'll cascade one payment into the next until by the end, we'll tackle each remaining debt with ginormous payments.
For our family, the biggest "Aha!" moment came from adding in the payment amounts for mortgage, auto, and student loans together with our credit cards. I had always dealt with them separately. I realized that sadly, one whole paycheck each month goes to paying debt, in all its forms. Thankfully that's not the end of our story.
Looking over our situation and applying cascading payments to our entire debt portfolio shows that we could be entirely debt-free - including our mortgage - in just over ten years. That's eleven years ahead of schedule, saving tens of thousands of dollars in interest. A month from now, we will already have eliminated our first two credit cards.
I think I'm pretty good with numbers, but you can see that I'm far from perfect when it came to finances. Our counselor asked us to meet with a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), someone with the tools and experience to keep us heading in the right direction. So far we've talked about our short- and long-term goals, and they're helping us formulate a plan for how we will get there.
We want stability for adding another child. Within a few years, we want to thrive on one income. We want to save for college, and maybe someday retire early to tour the national parks. If you had asked me two months ago what our financial goals were, I wouldn't have thought past one or two paychecks. Now we're looking out several decades, and with the help of our CFP, we may get there.
While we didn't think we'd be on this side quest, I can already see how God is orchestrating it for our good. Although it is delaying our progress on adoption, it is also something we desperately needed, and we wouldn't have done it on our own. As we work through these lessons, we're already starting to thrive. If you are adopting, or thinking about adopting, I wholeheartedly encourage you to get started on your financial quest now.
-Adam
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, whose birth and incarnation we celebrate!
This past year has given us many wonderful memories!
In March, Adam had the opportunity to travel out west with his brother, David, and (now) sister-in-law Hilary, spending the week taking photographs at some of his favorite national parks, including Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, and Canylonlands, as well as visiting beautiful sites in the Navajo Nation like Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon. Many of the photos are at his photography site, www.liveincontrast.com.
In May, our whole family traveled down to Florida with Allison's parents for a Walt Disney World vacation. This was the first visit for everyone except Adam, and we had a blast, including more than our share of "Disney magic." We participated in the unofficial opening of one of their new roller coasters (The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train), and also ended up visiting the Magic Kingdom for their once-a-year 24 hour extravaganza.
The whole family at Disney World
Over the summer, our family spent a couple of weeks camping with Adam's parents on our way to Arizona for David's wedding. After the wedding, we enjoyed several days at the Grand Canyon including a train ride, some hiking, and a sunrise at what we dubbed "Hoskinson Point" along the South Rim, before spending our 8th wedding anniversary in Moab, UT.
Sunrise from "Hoskinson Point" at the Grand Canyon
By the end of the summer, Adam only had three vacations days left for the remainder of the year. As he likes to say, "They were all used well."
In the fall, Sam began kindergarten at Westlake Christian Academy, where he had been attending preschool for the last two years. Each week he brings us new stories of his friends in class, his "popcorn" vocabulary words, and his new Bible memory verses. He also has a reading challenge each month where he can earn a free Pizza Hut pizza, and we have begun reading chapter books with him such as Henry Huggins (Cleary), Captain Underpants (Pilkey), and Peter Pan (Barrie).
First day of kindergarten at Westlake Christian Academy
Sam as Peter Pan for Halloween
On November 1, we officially began the process of adoption. The last few months have only just scratched the surface of this journey, as we tackle stacks of paperwork, fundraising, additional parenting classes, and preparing our home for a larger family.
As we've written on our blog, this isn't a new idea for us, but we are finally in a position to move forward. Sam prays faithfully each night to adopt a baby brother or sister. We have also been encouraged by the support and generosity of our family and friends, even in these initial stages. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to receive our updates, and if you are able, please make a donation to our adoption fund. As 2015 begins, we are still about $31,000 shy of our goal.
Finally, we offer a warm thank you for your friendship in the last year and the joy it brings us.
Peace to you and your family in the new year!
With Love,
Adam, Allison, and Sam
