Author Topic: Throwing good money after bad  (Read 10750 times)

commodore perry

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Throwing good money after bad
« on: July 09, 2014, 09:20:37 PM »
I get wanting to get pregnant but at some point (before spending $82k that you don't have) its time for other options (adoption!).

http://time.com/money/page/waiting-for-baby/

401k loans; $43k in credit card debt on 13 cards & paying the minimum & almost nothing saved for retirement. The more I read the more depressing it got.

geekette

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2014, 10:22:04 PM »
Ouch. This brings back strong (and bad) memories. We gave up after, well, too much.  It's amazing how intense the pull to have a child can be. For us, the emotional cost was steeper than the financial cost.

Adoption isn't free or easy either.  I have three friends who have adopted (foreign and domestic) and one couple who was devastated when multiple adoptions fell through. In all cases, it cost a good bit.

I'd love to reassure them that not having kids can end up fine, too. At least it's fine for us for now. 


kite

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2014, 05:43:55 AM »
Ouch. This brings back strong (and bad) memories. We gave up after, well, too much.  It's amazing how intense the pull to have a child can be. For us, the emotional cost was steeper than the financial cost.

Adoption isn't free or easy either.  I have three friends who have adopted (foreign and domestic) and one couple who was devastated when multiple adoptions fell through. In all cases, it cost a good bit.

I'd love to reassure them that not having kids can end up fine, too. At least it's fine for us for now.

Amen to that.
We were fortunate to have the first specialist we worked with be absolutely honest about our chances for success.   The odds were terrible,  we went ahead anyway,  figuring someone is in that lucky 4%, might as well be us.  After we stopped trying and the statistics really sunk in, it was easier to grasp that most infertile couples won't conceive and carry a pregnancy.  You usually only get to read success stories,  and the clinics don't post pictures of couples who went home empty handed.   

dude

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2014, 09:08:11 AM »
"In addition to the program fee, the Zampiches needed money for plane tickets and hotels. At her friends’ encouragement, Carrie began blogging about their experience and set up a personal crowdfunding website at GoFundMe.com for friends reading the blog who wanted to contribute. That brought in $3,000."

:-o

golden1

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2014, 09:12:24 AM »
That just makes me so sad.  Like pp's have said, the pull to have a baby is very powerful.  I have heard some absolutely tragic infertility stories over the years.  I hope they get to realize their dream of becoming parents.

gillstone

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2014, 09:48:23 AM »
The pull is significant.  Fertility issues easily get mixed in with all the common issues within a marriage: money, religion & family.  The mix can be such that its easy to believe that the issues in a marriage are all related to fertility and will be resolved once there's a child.  If the infertility issues go unresolved (and having a child is not the resolution) it will make the pull seem stronger and harder to break from.

Eventually the pull can be so great that its easy to succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy.  After you've put so much money and emotion in, you can't bring yourself to just give up now.  The rationale can eventually blot out other options such as adoption as all sorts of reasons crop up to make your choice the only good one.  Having been where they are, I can't bring myself to judge them.

Megatron

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2014, 04:29:47 PM »
Quote
Last Christmas, Carrie let one of her siblings charge $2,000 worth of presents on her Best Buy card. “I get a lot of joy giving gifts, but I know I need to be more realistic about spending,” Carrie admits.

dafuq?

commodore perry

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2014, 04:42:23 PM »
Quote
Last Christmas, Carrie let one of her siblings charge $2,000 worth of presents on her Best Buy card. “I get a lot of joy giving gifts, but I know I need to be more realistic about spending,” Carrie admits.

dafuq?

I know! When I first started reading this I felt bad for them because the obviously really wanted to get pregnant but by the end I couldn't help thinking they were just financially irresponsible in general.

kmm

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2014, 10:01:04 PM »
I can't judge, either. I've been there. I won't even tell you how much we spent to have our son, but we were one of the lucky couples for whom treatment worked (after four years of heartbreak).

Agree with PP's that adoption is neither a simple nor inexpensive "solution" to infertility. Our good friends started exploring international adoption right around the time many countries began shutting down or limiting their programs due to a host of ethical concerns.

socaso

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2014, 11:34:46 AM »
This is a worry for me right now because we are trying for our second child and I'm older now. We are going to see a fertility specialist but I have already told my husband I can't justify spending a lot of money on this. We already have one child and while we both want another child we make less than the couple profiled here and live in a higher COL area. I admit I have a very hard time sympathizing with people who spend so much trying to have a child. I truly don't understand the urge to have your own being that big a motivator. I would turn to adoption.

geekette

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #10 on: July 15, 2014, 12:54:16 PM »
As if adoption is cheap and easy...

MrsPete

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #11 on: July 18, 2014, 10:18:40 AM »
As if adoption is cheap and easy...
Yes and no . . . adopting a healthy white baby from an agency is near impossible, though acting as a foster home may increase your chances.  Many, many people are competing for those few babies.  A dear friend of mine actually took out a loan to adopt her son.  On the other hand, older children and children with special needs often stay in foster homes for years and years.

The only type of adoption that is really cheap and easy is family adoption.  That's an adoption in which the child is never really "available" for adoption to the general public; rather, the grandparents adopt a grandchild whose mother is unable to care for her, or a brother adopts his deceased sister's children. 

greenmimama

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2014, 09:17:10 AM »
I will speak from experience, we have adopted 3 times, all healthy white males, (we did not request that, it just happens the birth moms that chose us were pregnant with that scenario)

We had to pay around 10k for each adoption up front but after taxes and a few years we got almost every single dollar back. It certainly can be done if that is what you really desire, but some people really want to raise their own DNA, we just wanted to be parents.

It has been a good situation for us, we have very open adoptions with each of their birth families, more than we could have ever dreamed!

gillstone

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2014, 09:12:08 AM »
As if adoption is cheap and easy...
Yes and no . . . adopting a healthy white baby from an agency is near impossible, though acting as a foster home may increase your chances.  Many, many people are competing for those few babies.  A dear friend of mine actually took out a loan to adopt her son.  On the other hand, older children and children with special needs often stay in foster homes for years and years.

The only type of adoption that is really cheap and easy is family adoption.  That's an adoption in which the child is never really "available" for adoption to the general public; rather, the grandparents adopt a grandchild whose mother is unable to care for her, or a brother adopts his deceased sister's children.

Oh where to start on this....
First, getting “healthy white kids” is not as easy as you state.  Speaking from experience of growing up in a family that has housed over three dozen foster children and adopted six the idea that foster care is the easy place to get healthy kids is like saying McDonalds is a good place to get health food.  If a child is in the foster system it is because parental rights have been or are in danger of being terminated.  It can be because they can’t/won’t get clean or it could be because severe neglect or abuse.  Even if they are physically healthy (no fetal alcohol, genetic disorders etc…) the emotional damage of where they were pulled from is also significant and dropping them in a new home won’t make the damage disappear overnight.  On top of that, being a foster family exposes the adults to significant legal risk.  False accusations do happen and about 1 in 3 foster families will face some form of accusation either from the children or from relatives.  If you are accused, you will not have a presumption of innocence and you may end up spending tens of thousands to defend yourself.

Second, “healthy white baby” ummmm why does the baby need to be white?

Third, in family adoptions can be much more complicated than you make it sound.  All the baggage that enters into any family relationship will also show up in the interaction of the members of the adoption triad.  Maintaining a genuine, open relationship that recognizes the emotions of all involved and doesn’t get everything tangled in the rest of the family baggage is more difficult that you make it sound.  If you were judgmental of that relative’s poor decisions before, imagine how you’ll feel when you are raising their kid and still trying to maintain an open relationship.

Finally, there is no such thing as an easy option when it comes to adoption or infertility.  At the point adoption is being considered, both the birth parents and adoptive parents are in a less than ideal situation.  We are fortunate that our open adoption went well and that we have a good relationship with the birth mother and her family.  We are lucky to have them in our lives and we wouldn’t change how we did it.  But that doesn’t mean his birth mother doesn’t sometimes struggle with having placed, or that we aren’t; struggling to maintain even the most basic level of relationship with the birth father and his family.  Adoption is wonderful, challenging, fulfilling and complicated - it is never easy. 

Oh where to start....
Lets get going

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #14 on: July 21, 2014, 09:53:28 AM »
This is a worry for me right now because we are trying for our second child and I'm older now. We are going to see a fertility specialist but I have already told my husband I can't justify spending a lot of money on this. We already have one child and while we both want another child we make less than the couple profiled here and live in a higher COL area. I admit I have a very hard time sympathizing with people who spend so much trying to have a child. I truly don't understand the urge to have your own being that big a motivator. I would turn to adoption.

People who say "I would adopt" or "you/they should just adopt" are usually well meaning, as I'm sure you are, but frankly it's an utterly clueless thing to say. When you are talking with people who are dealing with infertility, it is also anywhere from mildly offensive to hurtful, because OBVIOUSLY adoption has crossed their minds and they are almost certainly better informed about it than you are, so if they're not pursuing it there is probably a good reason.

And here are some reasons, just FYI.

First off, there are more than 7 million infertile people in this country (and it only takes one infertile person to make an infertile couple), but only 20,000-30,000 women place their babies for adoption in the US each year.

Second, adoption is more expensive than fertility treatments. Whether you adopt domestically or abroad, these days it can be upwards of $30-$40k per adoption (i.e., usually--unless the birth mom has twins--per child), plus legal fees and travel expenses. Compare that to $12k-$25k for IVF, $20k-$50k for IVF with donor eggs (which can produce your entire family--I know people who've had 3 or 4 kids from one round of donor-egg IVF), or for those who are willing/able to travel for IVF, you can do IVF in Europe for $5000 or donor-egg IVF for $8000.

The only way to adopt cheaply is to adopt from the foster care system, and if you want we can discuss why foster-adopt is legitimately not the right path for a lot of people, but even for those who do want to pursue it, there are only a hair over 100,000 foster kids of ANY age available for adoption in the ENTIRE US, and you can only adopt from foster care in the state where you live so far fewer than 100,000 kids are potentially available for you personally. (You can look up the numbers for your state, or just ballpark by noting what fraction of the US population lives in your state and then applying that fraction to the 100k number to guesstimate how many foster kids are available for adoption in your state).

Also, when foster kids are made available for adoption there is an automatic preference for them to be adopted by relatives, however distant, rather than strangers. You can be right on the verge of adopting the kid, after years of waiting and caring and paperwork, but if their second cousin shows up wanting to adopt them, generally speaking you are out of luck.

Third, the adoption process is incredibly invasive (you have to share thorough financial and health records with adoption agencies, and submit to home studies), and it has no guarantees--in most domestic and some foreign adoptions the birth moms choose the adoptive parents, so after spending thousands and opening up your life to some agency you might wait years without being chosen, and/or it might turn out that your age, your religion or ethnicity or non-heterosexuality, your asthma or overweight, or whatever other health factor--including minor ones--disqualifies you under a given country's adoption laws.

Fourth, in the US birth moms obviously and very legitimately have the right to change their minds, so you could spend $20k+ on a birth mom's medical expenses and then have her back out, even weeks after giving you the baby. There's a good recipe for complete heartbreak and massive financial loss (no, you can't get back the money you spent on her medical expenses). By the same token, birth fathers sometimes come after adopted children even years later--I'm sure you've seen the occasional news headline on that--and they not infrequently win. Even when they don't win, i.e. the child stays with you, you are still out tens of thousands in legal bills, not to mention therapy bills for the poor kid.

Fifth, adopting internationally can be an ethical minefield and is sometimes catastrophically unpredictable (just ask all the people who were right about to bring their adopted Russian kids home when Putin decreed that no more Russian kids could be adopted to the US). Even when it goes smoothly, it takes an incredibly long time. The part I understand the least is that even after you've waited it out and finally been matched with a child--they send you photos and info--you can still wait another year before they actually let you go GET the child. So your kid is sitting there in a third-world orphanage for NO REASON, risking malnutrition and exposure to disease, not getting the love you want to pour into it... for NO REASON other than that some third-world bureaucrat hasn't signed certain documents yet. It's absolutely maddening. We have friends going through this right now.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 10:02:09 AM by Daleth »

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #15 on: July 21, 2014, 09:59:36 AM »
I get wanting to get pregnant but at some point (before spending $82k that you don't have) its time for other options (adoption!).

http://time.com/money/page/waiting-for-baby/

401k loans; $43k in credit card debt on 13 cards & paying the minimum & almost nothing saved for retirement. The more I read the more depressing it got.

For these people, struggling financially is obviously less depressing than being childless for the rest of their lives. That is their call to make, and for what it's worth, probably the majority of people would feel the same way (i.e. if faced with financial difficulties or childlessness, they would choose financial difficulties). In addition, since they were at least initially trying with the wife's eggs rather than donor eggs, waiting until they had the money was not an option. She was already 36 when they first discovered they had fertility problems.

gillstone

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2014, 10:26:02 AM »
Daleth,

Not disagreeing that adoption can be complicated and the process incredibly invasive, but some of what you said about obstacles to adoption are not representative of the whole picture.

Yes, adoption can be expensive, but there are agencies that carry out ethical open adoptions that cost only 10-15k.  I would know, its how we got our first child. These agencies pay the medial costs if insurance or medicaid is not available.  Of that 10-15k, a large amount can be refunded on your taxes.  We spent approximately 11k and received 7500 back after the adoption was complete.  Catholic Social Services, Lutheran Social Services and Adoption All-Stars are good examples of this

And yes a mother can change her mind, but not after the point she signs the relinquishment paperwork.  If your agency acts in an ethical manner, makes sure the mother had received the required counseling and is doing this willingly, and the agency meets all its legal obligations, there is no undoing the relinquishment.  The problem is that some agencies cut corners so they get more profit from their adoption fee.  The cases where kids bounce back and forth is because the agency failed in its obligation to do things in an open, legal and ethical manner.

Finally you are dead-on about international, and I'll throw one more on top of what you said.  Human trafficking in international adoption has been a huge problem.  One of the reasons so many countries have shut down their adoption pipeline is because of discoveries of severe corruption, kidnapping, and even violence to support trafficking of children to the first world for adoption.  Complicating it is the number of middlemen and brokers that obscure the child's true origins and make resolution of the issue near impossible. 

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2014, 12:18:09 PM »
Daleth,

Not disagreeing that adoption can be complicated and the process incredibly invasive, but some of what you said about obstacles to adoption are not representative of the whole picture.

Yes, adoption can be expensive, but there are agencies that carry out ethical open adoptions that cost only 10-15k.  I would know, its how we got our first child. These agencies pay the medial costs if insurance or medicaid is not available.  Of that 10-15k, a large amount can be refunded on your taxes.  We spent approximately 11k and received 7500 back after the adoption was complete.  Catholic Social Services, Lutheran Social Services and Adoption All-Stars are good examples of this

The adoption tax credit is no doubt very helpful, and it sounds like things went really well for you--I'm happy to hear that, especially since the folks I know who have adopted or are adopting have made the process sound very difficult and expensive--they aren't having as good a time of it as you guys did.

Just so we're on the same page, the costs of IVF, including all the costs of donor-egg IVF (donor compensation, legal fees etc.), are tax deductible as medical expenses to the extent they exceed 10% of your AGI--and that's true whether you do the procedures in the US or abroad (travel expenses, whether domestic or international, may also fall under that rubric though not dollar-for-dollar). Or I should say, they're tax deductible if you're doing it to treat infertility, since that's a medical condition. I did hear of a case where a single man wasn't allowed to deduct egg donation and surrogacy costs because the only reason he needed it was because he didn't have a wife or girlfriend to procreate with.

$10k-$15k is by far the lowest I've ever heard (though it's still more expensive than the lower-cost IVF options), and it makes me wonder how long ago that was, whether it's available in all states (I'm guessing not) and also, since you mention two clearly religious adoption agencies, how that works for people who don't fit the religious mission of the agency in question--whether because they're a nonreligious couple, one that adheres to a different religion, or because they're unmarried or gay. You have to work with an adoption agency in your own state, at least for the home study part of things, so if there isn't an agency in your area that's okay dealing with people of your religion (or lack of religion), that can be a significant obstacle.

My understanding is that not all overtly religious agencies impose religion requirements on adoptive parents, but some certainly do quite explicitly, and I'm guessing that birth mothers who choose religious agencies to go through may have some religious preferences themselves--meaning the birth mother wouldn't pick the nonreligious couple.

And yes a mother can change her mind, but not after the point she signs the relinquishment paperwork.  If your agency acts in an ethical manner, makes sure the mother had received the required counseling and is doing this willingly, and the agency meets all its legal obligations, there is no undoing the relinquishment. The problem is that some agencies cut corners so they get more profit from their adoption fee.

A birth mom's rights to get her kid back depend on state law. In some states it's easier than others, or her right to do so lasts longer than in others, so I wouldn't place all the blame at the feet of the agency.

Finally you are dead-on about international, and I'll throw one more on top of what you said.  Human trafficking in international adoption has been a huge problem.  One of the reasons so many countries have shut down their adoption pipeline is because of discoveries of severe corruption, kidnapping, and even violence to support trafficking of children to the first world for adoption.

And if the shutdowns or delays happen when you're, say, 20-30 months into the adoption process, many thousands of bucks out of pocket, and already matched with a child whose photo you dote on and whom you eagerly anticipate bringing home, it's absolutely devastating. I cannot blame people who don't want to take that risk, and that's one of the many reasons it annoys me so much when people blithely criticize other people's decision to do fertility treatments by saying, "Just adopt!" There is no such thing as "just" adopting. It's typically a grueling, years-long, expensive process.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 12:30:15 PM by Daleth »

greenmimama

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #18 on: July 21, 2014, 03:39:14 PM »
Adoption is not for the faint of heart, neither is parenting in general.

I am not sure what your experience with adoption is Daleth, you sound like you are only willing to believe the stories that it costs only $50,000 and take a grueling many years.

I do not think everyone should adopt, and I do agree with you it isn't easy, but in that same vein, our 3 adoptions took a total of 18mo all separate adoptions done domestically. We never waited a full year.

We researched quite a bit before going forward with an infant adoption, it was what fit our needs at the time.

To anyone who is experiencing infertility, I am so sorry, it is a hard hard road, with no easy to navigate map, everyones wishes and personalities are so different. If you have any questions about adoption, I am happy to talk about our experiences.

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2014, 04:01:31 PM »
Oh, no, I completely believe that adoption sometimes goes smoothly and quickly and costs less than $25k. It's just that you can't know in advance whether YOUR adoption will go smoothly and not cost more than $x, or not take years. Some people just don't want to deal with that risk or put something so important under the control of random birth mothers or bureaucrats.

Obviously IVF isn't predictable either but you can make it more so by choosing excellent doctors and clinics with excellent stats, and even when it remains unpredictable you can at least try again quickly--unlike adoptions that get complicated, you can start over with new doctors or a new approach (eg switching to donor eggs) every few months if you want.

By that I just mean that with IVF, if it fails you know within 1-3 months of starting X process that it didn't work, and you meet with the doctor to hopefully figure out why, and if you want you can get a second opinion or change your approach. With adoption it could take 6-18 months to be sure that X approach wasn't going to work (shorter periods if the problem is the birth mom backing out, potentially much longer if the problem is your agency is incompetent or the foster kid's family got its act together and wants him back or your target country is backlogged or changing its laws). And then you switch to a different approach, which also can take 6-18 months before you realize that it too is not working...

These are worst-case scenarios, but their timeline is a lot longer than the timeline of IVF not working and new approaches being tried. IOW by deciding on adoption you decide on a path that COULD take an extremely long time, and whether it does is out of your control. With IVF the timelines are much shorter, which is one reason a lot of people decide to do IVF first and move to adoption only if IVF doesn't work.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 04:13:26 PM by Daleth »

greenmimama

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #20 on: July 21, 2014, 04:17:15 PM »
Oh, no, I completely believe that adoption sometimes goes smoothly and quickly and costs less than $25k. It's just that you can't know in advance whether YOUR adoption will go smoothly and not cost more than $x, or not take years. Some people just don't want to deal with that risk or put something so important under the control of random birth mothers or bureaucrats.

Obviously IVF isn't predictable either but you can make it more so by choosing excellent doctors and clinics with excellent stats, and even when it remains unpredictable you can at least try again quickly--unlike adoptions that get complicated, you can start over with new doctors or a new approach (eg switching to donor eggs) every few months if you want.

By that I just mean that with IVF, if it fails you know within 1-3 months of starting X process that it didn't work, and you meet with the doctor to hopefully figure out why, and if you want you can get a second opinion or change your approach. With adoption it could take 6-18 months to be sure that X approach wasn't going to work (shorter periods if the problem is the birth mom backing out, potentially much longer if the problem is your agency is incompetent or the foster kid's family got its act together and wants him back or your target country is backlogged or changing its laws). And then you switch to a different approach, which also can take 6-18 months before you realize that it too is not working...

These are worst-case scenarios, but their timeline is a lot longer than the timeline of IVF not working and new approaches being tried. IOW by deciding on adoption you decide on a path that COULD take an extremely long time, and whether it does is out of your control. With IVF the timelines are much shorter, which is one reason a lot of people decide to do IVF first and move to adoption only if IVF doesn't work.

Has IVF come down in price? seems it used to be a lot more expensive maybe 9 years ago when we very briefly considered it.

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #21 on: July 21, 2014, 05:50:24 PM »
Has IVF come down in price? seems it used to be a lot more expensive maybe 9 years ago when we very briefly considered it.

It's not that it's come down so much as that there are a lot of different options with widely varying price points. So maybe on average it has come down, just because there are now more options. For instance:

- Do IVF in Europe. Costs $5000-$6000 *including* travel, assuming you don't choose to travel in high season. Spain and the Czech Republic are the biggest destinations. If you want to use donor egg, add maybe $3000 to that price.

- Use a multiple-cycle package. A lot of clinics offer things like 3 cycles plus all frozen transfers for the price of 2 fresh cycles.

- Get a guarantee package. These vary widely in price in part because they have different parameters (i.e. a cycle that guarantees "if it doesn't work in 3 fresh cycles you get 80% of your money back" costs less "if it doesn't work in 3 fresh cycles plus all frozen cycles you get 100% of your money back"). BTW the money you get back is what you paid the clinic, not what you paid the pharmacy--IOW either way you are out the cost of medications, which if you have no coverage under your insurance can be $3500-$6500 per fresh cycle.

- If you're using donor egg, all the above options apply plus some clinics offer shared cycles. In other words, one donor who in the past has produced lots of eggs does a fresh cycle and her eggs are shared between 2 or 3 couples. Obviously this is way cheaper per couple than for each couple to pay for its own egg donor.

- Another option if you're using donor egg is to use frozen eggs. This is much like a shared cycle, costwise, because if the donor you chose has 18 eggs in the bank, you get six of them and other couples may choose to buy the rest. IOW you get a set number of eggs for $X, which keeps the cost low and also keeps the uncertainty factor much lower because the eggs are already there--you don't have to cross your fingers and hope the donor produces enough good eggs for you to have a baby (some donor cycles are a bust, with few to no good eggs--the donor still gets paid of course, since she's being paid for her time/inconvenience/risk, but you are out of luck; this problem doesn't exist if you use frozen eggs).

- If you have insurance coverage for IVF, clinics that accept your insurance will charge you only the insurance-negotiated rates. You could get three cycles for, say, $18k instead of the usual $12k per cycle. Deals like that can be found anywhere but are, obviously, the norm in the few states that mandate IVF coverage (Massachusetts, Illinois...).

- If both members of the couple have fertility issues, or if, say, it's a lesbian couple with fertility issues, donor embryos can be a good option. In other words, frozen embryos left over from someone else's IVF (or embryos created using "double donor," sperm and eggs) could be how you make your family. It is (wisely) illegal to sell embryos, so the cost of doing a donor-embryo cycle is nothing more than the cost of meds and procedures to have the frozen embryo(s) transferred into the intended mom--in other words, $2000-$4000. There may also be travel or shipping costs if the donor embryos are far from you.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2014, 05:56:32 PM by Daleth »

MrsPete

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #22 on: July 22, 2014, 09:07:21 PM »
First, getting “healthy white kids” is not as easy as you state.  Speaking from experience of growing up in a family that has housed over three dozen foster children and adopted six the idea that foster care is the easy place to get healthy kids is like saying McDonalds is a good place to get health food.
Which is why I said "may increase your chances" instead of "it's as easy as going through the drive through!"  No adoption is an easy process, which was kind of the theme of my post.
Second, “healthy white baby” ummmm why does the baby need to be white?
Because that's the baby whom most couples hope to adopt -- the one who's hardest to get.  That desire is one of the reasons people have a hard time adopting. 
Third, in family adoptions can be much more complicated than you make it sound.  All the baggage that enters into any family relationship will also show up in the interaction of the members of the adoption triad.  Maintaining a genuine, open relationship that recognizes the emotions of all involved and doesn’t get everything tangled in the rest of the family baggage is more difficult that you make it sound.  If you were judgmental of that relative’s poor decisions before, imagine how you’ll feel when you are raising their kid and still trying to maintain an open relationship.
Yes, but those issues don't tend to taint the legal adoption process -- they become issues later within the family.  The courts are pretty quick to allow an adoption by grandparents or an aunt, for example. 


suburbanmom

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #23 on: July 23, 2014, 05:56:44 AM »
We are in the process of domestic adoption now. It is very expensive, financially risky (can easily lose $10,000-15,000 in match fees if the mother changes her mind before placement) and hard. Our situation is a bit different as we are able to have children, but our youngest daughter passed away due to a genetic condition last year. There is no easy answer for people who have the misfortune of not being able to get pregnant naturally or chose not to because of medical risks.

gillstone

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #24 on: July 23, 2014, 08:39:13 AM »
There is no easy answer for people who have the misfortune of not being able to get pregnant naturally or chose not to because of medical risks.

+1 - Even if some routes are easier than others - its always a relative value.  Some of us have been very fortunate that our experiences with medical intervention or adoption have gone well.  Others have not had the same fortune.  Which circles back to the main point at the beginning of the thread: there is no simple "just do x" option for infertile couples.   I can't agree with the couple in the article, but I can empathize with what they went through and understand how they got there. 

Daleth

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Re: Throwing good money after bad
« Reply #25 on: July 24, 2014, 09:48:04 AM »
I'm so sorry about your daughter, Daala.

And I don't know why people so often want to Monday-morning quarterback other people's fertility struggles, especially since those who offer comment usually reveal by their comments that they don't know much about infertility or adoption. Even the title of this thread is misleading, since the couple in question, after spending tons of money on procedures with a very low chance of success, has now switched to donor eggs (it says so towards the end of the article), which is actually much more likely to work than not to work. The national average success rate for donor eggs is about a 58% chance of working *on the first try* (though the best clinics have rates of 70%-80+%) and the first try usually leaves you with extra frozen embryos for much cheaper future attempts. Something like 90% of couples who try donor egg have a baby within the first three transfers (one expensive fresh cycle and two much cheaper frozen ones).