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[quote=Anonymous]Our current HHI is 280k.  200 DH and 80 Me.  We have learned recently that we will have the honor of taking in my nephew.  One of his parents passed away 5 years ago via addiction and one is now serving a long prison sentence.  He happily has been staying with my in laws but now that we see his Dad will be away for a decade we have decided its best to make his permanent home with us.  I am going to drop down to part time in September. I know this is the correct thing for my own kids and my newest son.  Everyone will have a lot of adjustments and I want to be here as much as possible.  Nephew left last school year in turmoil and we are starting a new school this year for him and I expect it will be a bumpy transition.  I also want to keep my own kids lives "normal" and be able to do their ballet, piano and soccer schedules as well as help them adjust.  This is going to be quite a strain on us financially.  Our whole lives we have planned around 2 kids and now DH is worried about how we will catch up nephews college fund and emerge him into our lifestyle.  He is is strongly focused on making sure he is treated exactly as our children and he is very worried that a.) he won't be able to offer him the kind of life our kids have or b.) all of us take a lifestyle adjustment and start living as a family of 5.  I think b is the correct answer but it will take some tweaking.  Right now we are going to make 36 k less and have about 20k more in expenses.  (This figure comes from new insurance plan, some legal adoption paperwork, adding one more kid to aftercare, his out of pocket therapies, and putting the same amount of money aside for his extra curriculars as we do our other kids.)

Some ideas we have done immediately:

1.) Dropped cable, lawn service and have started grooming our own dog. Poor dog looks like shit right now but I will get better at it…I have watched a lot of youtube! Home hair cuts for DH and son (DD and I will stretch ours house and just go to a cheapo place), really really kept an eye on grocery budget. 
2.) Shopped around for better deals on car and home insurance. Saved about 380 just making some calls. 
3.) DH is gonna drop his phone our family plan and just use work phone. 
4.) I dropped my gym membership. I can workout outside for another few months and can reevaluate this winter.

Some bigger cuts we MAY do:

1.) My dad left us a lake house on Kelleys Island (a small island in Ohio) and we currently rent it and also enjoy it.  We break even after taxes.  We could skip "our weeks" and replace those weeks with renters. That would give us about 4k a year. 
2.) We have about 600k equity in our house.  We could sell for about 950k.  We could downsize within our school district if needed.  
3.) We could go to court and ask for what little assets my brother in law has be turned over to us. I dont know if thats worth it.

Has anyone taken in a child unexpectedly or had a similar lifestyle adjustment? Welcome to all ideas.  [/quote]

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