How Much Does It Cost To Freeze Your Eggs?

Motherhood is personal. And for many of us, it’s more than a little bit complicated. Whether you’re already a mom, hoping to become one, or intentionally choosing a child-free life, these decisions are more emotionally and financially loaded than ever. And perhaps that’s because more women now understand what motherhood really requires — not just emotionally, but practically and professionally, too.

Today, for the first time in U.S. history, more women over 40 are having babies than teenagers, which is certainly worth celebrating. But there’s also a cost to waiting. If you’re wondering how much does it cost to freeze your eggs, here’s the reality: Egg retrieval alone can cost around $5,000. And a single round of IVF can cost anywhere from $12,000 to $30,000 in the U.S.

Ruthie Ackerman knows all of this intimately. She is the author of: “The Mother Code: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us,” and she joined Jean Chatzky this week on the HerMoney podcast to share her deeply personal story — and pull back the curtain on what fertility decisions really cost, financially and emotionally.

How Much Does It Cost To Freeze Your Eggs? 

Jean Chatzky: What you ended up doing in freezing your eggs turned out to send you down a pretty expensive road. So, how much does it cost to freeze your eggs, really? What do you think women need to understand about this particular path? What questions should we ask ourselves and our doctors before we sign on?

Ruthie Ackerman: I paid $15,000 for this process, not including the storage fees, which are additional costs and are very expensive too. It’s $1,200 a year. It’s as much as a gym membership, but none of the benefits. And so I had these eggs, and I was told that I had an 80% chance of having a child. Now, being somebody who is not a medical doctor. I’m not a scientist. 80% sounded pretty good to me.

It never occurred to me that I would be in the 20% because 80% sounded great, yet the reality is that doctors and the whole fertility industry need to do a better job of discussing probability with patients, with women and families. And we have to do a better job as consumers to understand that egg freezing is a tool in our fertility tool belt, so to speak, but that it is not guaranteed.

The Fertility Wealth Gap Is Real

Jean Chatzky: Do we live in a world where reproductive choices are very closely tied to privilege? And is that changing in any meaningful way?

Ruthie Ackerman: We absolutely live in a world where reproductive choices are tied to privilege, and there is no question about that. I think it’s so unfortunate that the image we have of a woman who needs, or who uses fertility treatment, is a white, upper-middle-class woman when the truth is that those who need fertility treatments, or those who statistically are the most infertile, are usually Black and Brown women.

And so we have a case of the haves and the have-nots, and what I call the fertility wealth gap. This idea that we, as women, start off already making less money than men. We don’t ask for raises or promotions as often. Often, we don’t save as much for retirement for those reasons. And now it’s falling on us in our twenties and early thirties and even beyond to pay for the privilege, if we even have that option of fertility preservation. And yet we know that as a society, it benefits all of us when women start their families later, and it benefits men too.

There Are No Wrong Paths

Jean Chatzky: And what do you say to women who go down the road and decide It is really not for me?

Ruthie Ackerman: That is a great decision. Any decision that is decision that is aligned with your deepest desires is a good one. Everyone has a different story. Every person has their own mother code or parent code or human code, and there’s no one who should be telling us who we should be in the world or whether or not we should mother. I could have made a decision not to mother back when I was making that decision in my mid-thirties, and that would’ve been a good one too. It would’ve been a different path, a different life. I don’t know what it would look like, I’ll never know, but that would’ve been a good decision. What I know now is that there are no wrong paths. Every path can be a good one, and we do deserve a good life.

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MORE ON HERMONEY:

• How To Navigate The Cost of Infertility Treatments 
• Financing Your Fertility: How To Have Kids Later Without Breaking The Bank
• What Financial Freedom Means For Millennials

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