-One of my biggest dreams is to buy a house.
My mom was a single parent,
and owning a home just wasn't something we could afford
when I was little.
-Okay. -Here we go.
Okay, like 90 -- I'd say 94.
-A lot of wall space there. -Not bad, yeah.
Now that I'm an adult, I can make that a reality on my own.
I'd probably put the bed, like, on that side,
have a reading nook over here,
and, like, a mini fridge for wine.
I've been saving for a really long time,
and so far, I've got $30,000 --
just enough for a down payment on a house.
Yeah. I mean, it's lovely.
This feels like a vacation.
-It's so quiet.
Decisions, decisions. -I know.
-But creating a family is also really important to me,
so I asked my financial planner, Tonya Rapley,
to look at the numbers and tell me
if I can make home ownership a reality and freeze my eggs
without going into too much debt.
Oh, my God.
These numbers hurt.
-Some women feel inherently called to be mothers,
and they don't think about the other consequences involved
and the other costs involved and how it will shift their life
outside of just becoming a mother,
so I'm really happy that you're thinking about that, too,
as you think about this process.
My one concern is how spending this money
affects your long-term goals.
We know having a child is one of your long-term goals,
but what are your other long-term goals.
-I mean, a huge one is owning property.
-Okay.
-It's something that I am very passionate about,
'cause my mom has never been a homeowner.
And it's something that just, like, maybe
I'm irrationally obsessed with at this point,
'cause I'm just like, "I want my family to be secure."
-Yeah. Let's talk about the overall
cost of what you'll be incurring in order
to just get your eggs frozen.
-In order to securely sort of feel safe
in the likelihood of conceiving one child
and delivering a live birth, the goal is 20 eggs.
There is no set price for egg-freezing.
It's pretty expensive and rarely covered by insurance.
The main up-front costs are the procedure itself
and clinic visits leading up to it,
plus daily hormone medications and storage.
Storage fees are kind of a constant,
no matter how many times you freeze,
so we'll focus on the procedure itself first.
The average cost of extracting your eggs in the U.
S. is $11,000 per cycle,
and that doesn't include medications,
which can cost an additional $3,000 to $6,000 per cycle.
For my budget, Tonya and I decided to price meds at $4,500.
In episodes 1 and 2,
we learn that not every egg becomes a baby, and as we age,
the quality and number of eggs we have decreases.
Because I have a low ovarian reserve,
it could take up to three cycles to get to 20 eggs.
Three cycles of egg extraction plus meds
would come out to $46,500.
At that price, I'd be in debt.
Luckily, some clinics offer bundle packages
that lock you in to a set price for a specific number of eggs.
So whether you need one cycle or several,
you pay the same price.
One clinic nearby guarantees 20 eggs for up
to four cycles of extraction for $12,500, not including meds.
After crunching the numbers, it would cost $26,000
if I went with the bundle package,
and I'd have a little money left over.
But that still doesn't include storage.
Egg storage can cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a year.
A clinic near me charges $50 a month.
$50 might not sound like a lot of money,
but as a monthly expense, I don't know if I can afford it.
-It will affect your monthly day-to-day, especially
if you don't downsize, so you would need to downsize
or move into a more affordable place.
Cutting your rent costs maybe by $300, $400 or you'll be tight
and hopefully not resenting those eggs in the freezer.
Cut and dry, can you technically afford to do this
based on what you have saved?
Absolutely.
And you can afford to do it without creating debt,
which is really important.
But it's not smart for you to freeze your eggs
and purchase a home on your own.
You just have to decide how willing are you
to sacrifice everything else.
-Yeah. That's a lot to think about.
-Yeah, yeah.
-Life is full of difficult financial choices.
Whether we realize it or not, every time we open our wallets,
we're deciding to go without something else.
In my case, it means choosing between preserving my fertility
and buying a house.
I can't have both.
Being able to afford egg-freezing
is only half the battle.
The other half is whether or not it works.
In the next episode, we'll talk about risks and success rates,
especially for women of color like me.
So stay tuned.
Coming up in episode 7 --
-It was the day before Thanksgiving,
and I was cooking with my parents,
and I had a sudden pain, very excruciating pain,
and I fell to my knees.
I had never heard of the word fibroid until I went to the
doctor.