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Past Article of the Month Originally Published 07/06/2009
Finances and Decisions About Treatment

When you are going through reproductive difficulties, one of the stressors that adds to the trauma is the financial burden that treatment creates, whether it is for medical procedures, or adoption proceedings. In todays economy, these issues may be even more salient. Every day, you can open the newspaper or listen to the news and hear doomsday reports of the economy tanking, unemployment rising, stocks collapsing; the dire news goes on and on. Given that couples are already often concerned about how to pay for treatment, such news may raise their anxiety to a tipping point. What if you are about to begin another IVF or have signed a contract with an egg donor or adoption attorney and you go to work one day to learn that you are being laid-off? Or your partner comes home and announces that his/her company is requiring a 30% salary reduction in order to avoid lay-offs? Under the best of circumstances, couples often differ in how they feel about money and may disagree about how to proceed with their family building when finances are an issue. If, for example, you were raised in a family where money was tight, you may feel much more anxious about spending for treatment, worrying that your funds might run out. If on the other hand, you came from a family of means, you may feel much more confident that any money you spend on creating your family will be replenished over time and is not a worry. These differences can easily polarize a couple into parodies of themselves, with each viewing the other as a tightwad or a spendthrift; typically, neither of these words accurately reflect how someone really feels, but when stressed, we dont think as clearly and tend to revert to this kind of black and white thinking. Couples may also differ in their financial risk tolerance. One may be more risk adverse, and feel uncomfortable spending when the outcome is uncertain, while the other may feel that the risk is worth the cost. These differences can cause great conflict between couples, and may become magnified when the society at large is mirroring, and perhaps fueling, the same anxieties and differences. There is no easy answer, or one size fits all solution to such quandaries. Each couple must assess their own circumstances and determine what is best. But what is crucial, and can make an enormous difference in decreasing conflict, is to identify and articulate each of your attitudes about money, including the impact of your upbringing. How we were raised is only one part of how we function as adults however, and it can be very helpful for a couple to examine which attitudes about finances they carry by choice and which ones are imprinted from their childhoods and which may or may not be valid now. These discussions can go far in helping couples understand each other so that they do not take their differences personally or view their partner as obstructionist; it is another way of sharing your reproductive story. We often advise couples to view their efforts to build a family as an investment, and that while there is a chance that money will be lost, the return has the potential to be very great. We also compare these risks to some of the changes that people experience in college. We remind them that young people often change their majors, or even go back to school to get a different degree as they gradually determine their professional path. The added expense involved in no way renders the prior learning wasteful or invalid, as the process of becoming an educated person involves many academic and personal experiences. In fact, often one member of the couple did just thatstarted out as a business major and then switched to education, or started in philosophy and ended up in chemistry. They may even be considering it now, as a response to the weak economy. And most people feel that the growth they experienced from these changes was well worth the extra tuition. Finally, it is important to realize that economies go up and down, but that family building is a life experience. If we allow ourselves to blow with the winds of change in the financial markets, none of us would move forward with our lives. Maybe youll decide to put less in your retirement plan for a little while, or go back to school to enhance your resume. Maybe youll decide that it is actually easier to focus on family building without the demands of a full-time job, even if you need to cut back on other expenses. Sometimes, it is best to stay the course and recognize that the financial markets, and ones own finances, will balance out eventually. * Back
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