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Home > Possible windfall next year -- almost too exciting to contemplate!

Possible windfall next year -- almost too exciting to contemplate!

December 5th, 2011 at 05:39 am

I've been a bit worried that my work would balk if I requested parental leave...after all, I'm a third parent so they might feel I was trying to take advantage of them.

But since I am going to be legally adopting the new baby, I figured it was worth a try. I decided to ask for one week off after the birth and then one day per week for the next three to four months after that. You can actually ask for 12 weeks if you're adopting at my company, but we're comfortable with keeping the baby at home for just four months before putting him/her into daycare. If NT and I each take some days off, AS can go back to work part-time like I did and we can stretch our parental leave to 4 months instead of the standard 12 weeks.

I broached the subject with my supervisor, and he was supportive. (One of his best friends is AS's boss, so he's well aware of my family situation.) So I emailed the HR lady and let her know I'd be submitting a request. She knows my situation too, so I was relieved when she simply wrote back congratulations and that she'd be in touch with our DC headquarters to see what I was entitled to as an adoptive parent.

When I took the request form to her, we chatted a bit and she said she didn't think it would be any trouble at all to get what I was requesting. Most of it will be paid PTO anyway; I probably won't have to start short-term disability after that.

She also said she'd look into getting me some assistance for the cost of adoption! She said our company has some program for that. I feel like I may have heard her wrong, but I thought she then said that one man at our company submitted adoption expenses of $5000 and was reimbursed by our company.

!!!

I was so stunned I just said well, I wasn't counting on anything like that, but of course anything to ease the financial strain of adoption would be welcome.

After I left, it sank in and I was like, did I really hear that??

My lawyer estimated it would cost $5000 to $6500 to complete adoptions for both kids. I already have the $6500 saved up. If I could get even a portion of that reimbursed by my company, that would help a ton with student loan debt repayment!

Now that I think more about it, I guess they would probably only reimburse the portion that pertained to the child I was adopting versus AS adopting AA. But still!

I looked through our HR site and could not find mention of this type of benefit. That's why I'm slightly doubting what I heard. Would be nice though.

My company after being so crappy and stingy is finally paying out again, it seems!

***

In other random news, I was able to order $600 of Amazon gift certificates with my Chase Southwest rewards points, and they came Friday! When I signed up for this offer I thought I'd be getting $500 worth, but there's a sale on right now.

AS's and NT's points probably won't appear in time for this sale, but from what MonkeyMama has said, these sales don't seem to be that uncommon. Perhaps they'll get another one going for Xmas!

But, even if there's no sale and we just get $500 each for NT's and AS's Southwest cards, that would take us to a net of $3858 in credit card bonuses (not counting regular cash back earnings) for 2011!

I wrote to my Chase Southwest and to a Citi MasterCard that AS and I got for a bonus, asking them to close those accounts.

As soon as I get some accounts closed, I'm going to try for this card:
citi.com/travel
Spend $2500 and get $500 worth of points; annual fee waived for 1st year; sounds like there are other benefits to the account as well.

If I can get this before our Mexico vacation in January, we could put our planned spending on this card and nearly meet the requirement right there!

5 Responses to “Possible windfall next year -- almost too exciting to contemplate!”

  1. Looking Forward Says:
    1323068774

    Wow! That's really nice that your company has those types of benefits. Hopefully you'll be able to take advantage of that. Smile

  2. guppy Says:
    1323112955

    Awesome! I hope they come through with some money for you!

  3. MonkeyMama Says:
    1323114156

    That is nice!

  4. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1323137337

    I hope that works out!

  5. Jerry Says:
    1323644165

    I think it would be GREAT if your company's policy would lead to some help with the adoption costs, and if anyone would know it would be the HR people, right? I will cross some fingers for you, here. I was thinking that the time off itself would be a nice benefit, but some insurance of money to offset the costs? Awesome... keep us posted!
    Jerry

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