Financial Considerations Before Starting In Vitro Fertilization

As many of you know my wife and I just went through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and God has blessed us with a healthy pregnancy. For anyone considering this procedure (or others like it), I think it’s important to prepare for it both mentally and financially. Below are a few of my suggestions:

• The entire process is mentally and physically draining. My wife and I were blessed with success our first time. It’s terribly difficult waiting for everything to occur. The shots get old. You wait for the embryo’s to grow (3 or 5 days). There’s the 10 days after implantation to wait until the doctors can do a pregnancy test. It’s all mentally draining.
• Being on (reasonably) solid financial grounds helps reduce the worry. If you or  your spouse need to take a few days of unpaid leave it’s not a deal breaker.
• A solid emergency fund is a must. The procedures are expensive, and as most of you know hospitals and doctors don’t really offer payment plans (nor is going into debt a good idea anyway).
• Even if you save up for the procedure, which I would recommend if possible, an emergency fund is still necessary. The reason for this is that you won’t know in advance exactly what it will cost. You many need to pay more than expected for any one of the following: additional prescriptions, more than one procedure, freezing additional embryos, more blood tests and doctors visits than expected, embryologist costs depending on embryo and sperm quality, more days off work than expected, etc.
• You’ll have trouble focusing on the rest of your life for a while. That means less focus on the budget and spending. Your tendency to cut corners with more expensive options will increase. Take-out dinners, more phone calls to family, etc all have to be funded.
• If at all possible store up your vacation and sick time. There’s nothing worse that having to tell your wife that she has to go to work even though she feels crampy and lousy after an egg extraction because you need the money (or you need her full-time employee status for her medical insurance).
• Double-insure, or at least review both your medical benefits and your wife’s (if she currently works outside the home). This is another area where God blessed us, in that we did this without much thought. My wife and I had already agreed that she would stop work once we had our first child, and we realized that she would loose her (free) medical benefits when she quit. Therefore I insured her through my employer all year thinking that we would get pregnant naturally. As it turns out her company has great prescription drug coverage and infertility testing, but they don’t cover any IVF-type procedures. Fortunately my insurer does cover some of the costs.
• Load up your flexible spending account. If you’re planning to do IVF towards the end of the year and this works for your schedule, I would recommend waiting until the following year and loading up your flexible spending account based on your cost estimates.
• Discuss What-if’s early. I know this is a difficult topic, but you need to discuss the what-if’s before you start. You’ll not be in a clear enough state of mind to discuss them later. How far are you willing to go? How many IVF procedures will you do before considering adoption or other options? What will you do with any additional embryos? Donate them? Use them later in life? What will happen if your wife needs to quit work to go on bed rest three months earlier than expected. What is she has to go to part-time work and loses her full-time benefits? How many embryos will you implant (if your doctor is worth anything the number is usually between 1-3)? What happens if you have twins?
• Keep an eye of fixed costs. Just like all large financial events, having a live build around high fixed costs is a killer. Big houses, new cars, long-term contracts, and expensive time-shares (or any time-shares) will limit your financial flexibility and will make scraping up extra money difficult.
• If timing permits, evaluate your insurance choices. My company offers a “basic” insurance plan with a 20% copay and an “advanced” option with a 10% copay. Since my wife is pregnant now (September), I’ll get to make a choice on my insurance for next year when she has the kiddo(s) in May. This timing is also beneficial because we’ll know if it’s one kid or twins before I need to make that decision. You can also check your network if your company offers a choice of insurers. That way you can find the best hospital and/or doctors and make sure they’re “in-network” before signing up for your insurance.

Have any of you gone through this? Do you have any other recommendations?

Image Credit: F.S.M.

If You Liked This Post Then Please Check These Out...

• The Cost of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)
• Preparations To Become A One-Income Family
• We’re Having Twins!

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