Value

A few weeks ago, a note given in my Economics class was, “The value of the dollar is based on its purchasing power.”

It wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I took this statement and applied to myself. Through the course of our adoption we spend $10,000. This is not including the foreign source fee that was refunded to us after we lost our referral. I don’t really know where that $10,000 came from. It seemed that whenever we needed the money, it was there. When we moved down here we had $15,000 saved. We had to spend a couple thousand when we closed on the house, when we checked out of our hotel on the day we closed, and we bought E a used pickup for about $7,000. I also bought E a kayak for Father’s Day, another $2k. I also got brand new front loading washer and dryer and a new lawnmower which came out to another $2.k. All of this spending has demolished our savings.

It got me thinking about the value of a dollar. In February, we were using that $15,000 to bring Lana home. That money was priceless to me. I worried that there wasn’t enough. I obsessed over our spending. In fact, I told my dentist that it was more important to me to bring my daughter home from Russia than to get a crown put on my tooth.

I look at the things that we have bought since we’ve moved down here. The kayak, that would have been our plane tickets for one trip. The truck; that would have been our foreign source fee and maybe hotel. Washer and dryer; more plane tickets. Closing costs on the house’ traveling cash and orphanage gifts.

I actually became a little disgusted. We think of a dollar as a dollar. It is a unit of exchange that has a set value. I was able to see that a dollar holds a different value to different people at different times. $150 to me is 2 weeks of groceries. $150 to an adopting family is fingerprints at their local Department of Homeland Security.

That $15k was so much more valuable to me as adoption costs. I look at the things that we have bought and I feel cheapened. I don’t feel like we honored the value of those dollars.

The value of the dollar indeed.