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Past Article of the Month
Originally Published 04/04/2011
How Are We Going To Pay For This?
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As soon as Sandy sat down, she burst into tears. We just heard from our accountant, she sobbed. Our tax refund is much less than we had expected AND he said we couldnt write anything off this year. That was my last chance. There is no more money left.
With tax season upon us, money concerns may be on your mind. You may be struggling under the weight of the financial burden of infertility treatment or adoption. Lets face it these are expensive options for family building. You may have had to cut back at work or left your job altogether in order to concentrate on the demands of treatment, adding to the financial stress. Couples often have different attitudes toward money, and may disagree on how to proceed. If you are single, you may be carrying the financial burden alone. The costliness of infertility treatment, or using a donor or surrogate, or adopting brings up the unfairness of it all. People may feel as if they have to buy a baby as they navigate the unsavory business aspect of treatment; this was not how it was supposed to be and it really isnt fair.
There are a number of aspects to this part of the infertility experience that we have found helpful to think about. First, it is important for you to realize that, just as you and your partner each have your own reproductive story, your each also have a personal financial story. Like the reproductive story, a persons feelings and attitudes about money often derive from their own experiences as children, and the attitudes their parents conveyed. If, for example, your family struggled financially, you may be much more anxious at the prospect of spending money, fearing that you might run out, as Sandy expressed above. If, on the other hand, you came from a family of means, you may be much more comfortable with paying for treatment, confident that the money will come from somewhere; it always does. These differences can also reflect personality style and risk tolerance; if you tend to be positive and spontaneous, you may not feel as worried about money, but if you are a planner who needs to know exactly what will happen, you will be much more anxious and risk averse.
Risk tolerance is an important aspect of infertility treatment, because the outcome can never be guaranteed. From this perspective, treatment must be viewed as an investment, with an uncertain return. We also encourage clients to remember that this phase of life is temporary: it can help to view these financial stresses in the context of your whole life story. While enormously stressful, the expense of treatment can be seen as a short-term expense in the service of a long term gain, a short-term risk to have the possibility of a lifetime of parenting. We will sometimes compare this to the expense of a college education: if a student changes majors midway to build a better future, does that invalidate all the course work that came before? Of course not, yet the tuition had to be paid anyway.
So how do you manage to pay for treatment? Each individual or couple must assess their own unique situation: for example sometimes people take out a loan, or postpone buying a new car for another year. Sometimes the money that has been squirreled away to buy a home will be spent on family building instead. Sometimes clients turn to their parents for help. The issue of borrowing from parents, or allowing them to pay for treatment, can be a contentious one. Even if your parents have offered to help, you may be reluctant to be in debt to them, feeling like a kid who is still not independent. Your sense of privacy may be affronted in the need to share the details of your reproductive dilemmas with your parents or you may worry that your parents will want to direct your treatment, since they are paying for it. Again, each persons family dynamics will differ, but it can be helpful to think together about the pros and cons of these various options.
In fact, as with all decisions that you and your partner must make, the decisions about the finances of treatment need to be negotiated; compromises need to be found that take into account each persons financial story and risk tolerance. It can be helpful to discuss your family background and feelings about money with your partner. This allows you to understand where the other is coming from, and not presume that your partner is being thoughtless, either in spending or not spending.
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