Affording IVF

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Crowd Sourcing your IVF fundraising

crowd sourcing
Want to take advantage of the crowd? Why not crowd-source?

Crowd-sourcing is the new hot thing these days. From companies like Kickstarter, where anyone can help fund the projects most dear to them; to AirBnB, which allows its members to rent room/houses and run their own BnB; and new additions like Sidecar, which hopes to offer a better system of ride-sharing; there are a lot of new ways for people to interact with their community in mutually beneficial ways. It is the 21st century and people are more connected then they have ever been in the past, as such there are exciting new ways to interact with your friends/family/online acquaintances/everything in between.  Today I am going to talk about one such way – crowd sourced fund raising, and highlight a couple web services that enable you to do just that.

Think of crowd sourced fund raising as a combination between a gift registry and an online donation box. It enables people to set up web pages for their particular cause/want/need or whatever and easily take donations from people. Some of the advantages of these sites are that they enable you to take payments from credit cards or Paypal, allow easy distribution of your donation page through your existing social network, and perhaps best of all, they take away most of the awkwardness that often comes from asking others for money ;)

Here are three of the services out there right now:

GoGetFunding.com

This is another popular crowd funding site. It offers the advantage of taking a variety of different currencies and using Paypal for all its transactions. They offer functionality for fun things such as rewards for donating above certain amounts (totally optional), various social media integration, and allow all types of fundraisers. They charge 4% of the total amount, plus PayPal fees of about 3% +$0.30 per transaction; which is right in the same range as the other services I have listed here. In addition, they return all the money raised for your fundraiser.

Giveforward.com

This site is more of a traditional fund raising site. It is one of the more popular fund raising sites and they state you can be up and accepting donations within 10 minutes. The process is simple: you create your page with a goal and description then send out the link to your friends and family. You can withdraw money from your fundraiser early, but they stipulate that you must leave at least $500 in your account until the fundraiser is closed. The service charges 7% (unclear if the donor, or receiver pays it) and you can access your funds wither through PayPal or personal check.

DepositaGift.com

This site is leaning more towards the gift registry side, but all donations are in the form of cash (made with credit card). You create a custom page for yourself and you have the option of creating a registry with items with individual prices to better clarify what the money is going to be used for. People can then select one or more items and then “pay” for them with their gift or just give any amount they feel comfortable with. You can add more event specific information to your page like, and the site offers areas where you can take comments, a la a guestbook. The service costs 7.5% (4% for the service and 3.5% for credit card processing) of the total gift amount, and you can either set it to collect the amount from the giver or deduct it from the amount given. You can use the money anyway you please and they offer the convenience of ACH transfer directly to a bank account or paper checks when it comes to withdrawing your money.

Crowd funding can be a great tool for raising funds for your cause, be it for your infertility treatment, or any other medical treatment. It allows you to leverage your social networks to help you raise the money you need for your cause. Unfortunately, infertility is often a very sensitive subject and many do not want others to know of their troubles. Would you want your friends and family to know about your medical troubles? Let us know in the comments.

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Paying for IVF: Your Options

Paying for IVF can be emotional and troubling affair
Paying for IVF can be emotional and troubling affair

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a great technique in the infertility MD’s arsenal that has helped countless couple’s conceive over the years. Due to the complexity of the modern IVF process it can also be rather expensive. A single cycle, without any insurance can cost upwards of 30K when you include medications and some auxiliary treatments such as PGD or Donor eggs. I am going to list some of the ways you can pay for the costs of IVF.

    1. Have great insurance (for a lucky few)

This is a great option for a small few. The truth is, the majority of people will not have sufficient insurance to fully cover their fertility treatments. More likely, your insurance will cover some/most of the diagnostic phase of infertility and very little, or none of the actual treatments required to help you get pregnant. The sad fact is that most insurance companies treat any medical intervention to have kids as “elective” treatments, not as a medical necessity. As such, the total price of IVF will likely fall entirely on you to pay for.

    1. Pay Cash

This is a good option for those with large amounts of cash, and/or semi-liquid assets floating around. Chances are the interest rates you would have been earning with those funds were far less than what you might pay with other options. Another advantage is many clinics will be able to negotiate their prices down (usually only applicable if you do not go through your insurance company). If you are doing well enough financially to have this kind of money floating around then you will likely want to put the expenses on your reward cards (see next item) for that extra % back.

    1. Credit Card(s)

Credit cards are great for those who will be able to pay off the balance within a couple months (the earlier the better).  Reward cards are the way to go here – giving you the opportunity to earn miles/cash back/ or other rewards on the money you were going to spend anyways. On the down side: credit cards often have high interest rates and the longer you carry a balance the more interest you will end up paying. Introductory offers and balance transfers can also be used to save money. Be aware that opening up new lines of credit, or high % credit card utilization can affect your credit score negatively.

    1. Financing

Getting a loan from a finance company can be the way to go if you don’t have the money to pay for your treatments, but can manage a monthly payment. When you shop around for medical loans be aware that they might have higher %APR than other kinds of loans. If you own your own home consider taking out a line of credit on it, or using some of your equity. You can often lockdown a much more attractive rate than if you went with a medical loan. The IVF clinic you are working with might have a few outfits they recommend so don’t hesitate to ask them.

    1. Friends/Family

I wasn’t going to mention this but asking your friends and family can be a great way to raise some/all the money required for your fertility treatments. Asking others for money can be difficult, at best, and most people don’t like to do it. Thank goodness for the internet! Sites such as Gogetfunding.com  or gofundme.com (follow the links for two examples of couples asking for donations for their IVF treatment) take much of the unpleasantness out of the ordeal and make the whole process much easier to manage.

  1. fill in the ________

What is this option? You tell me. I have covered many of the main ways to fund your IVF treatment, but my list is not complete. Did I leave something out? Let us know in the comments!!