Saturday, March 26, 2011

The "soft" costs of infertility

It's tax season and all of the deductions and exemptions, like number of children and child tax credits, stick out like a sore thumb - another slam to the infertiles. I think that "attempts at having children" or "number of tried children (i.e. embryos)" should count for something, but alas they do not.

Sure I've spent more than I care to think about on fertility treatments, acupuncture, the many, many prescriptions, OPKs, HPTs, and other "hard" expenses. But, what about the "soft" costs?

I'm talking about the gallons of ice cream, Oreos, bottles of wine and margaritas. I can also add massages for stress, expensive purses bought as retail therapy, and interventional vacations to the tally.

While I'm at it, I can include therapy sessions, anti-depressants, minutes on my cell phone venting to my family and friends and days that I've taken off work to "re-group."

Adding all that up over a six-year period starts to be quite a big number. And, don't forget the cost of the loss of a dream, but that's a whole other story.

What am I forgetting or what "soft" costs have you incurred?

11 comments:

  1. don't forget the thousands of boxes of tissues. Or the dog (and his associated toys and vet bills) that my husband bought to cheer himself up.

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  2. Two margaritas, two pairs of shoes and a pair of jeggings just in the last 24 hours, right over here.

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  3. We should get federal stimulus money or some kind of deduction for all the economic recovery we've been funding!

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  4. oh God this SO hit home. I was thinking this year that there really DOES need to be some kind of special credit for us infertiles going through infertility treatments. After all, we typically end up spending MORE in one year than what it costs to raise a child for like 3 years. Seriously. We wrote off $30K in medical expenses last year and still hardly got back shit.
    Then you speak of the soft expenses. my oh my.....I would also include the "soft" cost of seeing other people have babies and with that, the hard cost of MY TAXES paying for their Wic, their birth, etc. Yeah, i'm bitter. So what?

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  5. the cost's of losing friends, because I just can't handle being around all of these fertiles.

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  6. Emptywhole - I should've added the pets to the list. We have 2 dogs and 3 cats! Talk about food and vet bills!

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  7. My expenses last year related to infertility were about 11K-along with expenses related to non-fertility, it was well over 16K. Yay! I was able to use this as a deduction on my taxes; even though my insurance covers IVF for 4 cycles, it doesn't cover ICSI that we'll need, and our medication coverage isn't the greatest, so I have a feeling that my meds aren't going to be the cheapest.

    I think that we won't be able to deduct over the counter (OTC) expenses this year, unless we have a prescription for it.

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  8. When I added up all the cost of our first IVF, I included the $1.07 that it cost to fax in paperwork. The cost of cupcakes that I bought for the doctor and pharmacist when I ran out of meds. So when I went to do our taxes, I had to subtract that at but our fertility treatments did get us a higher return.

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  9. I love that you wrote this. I tried to write off my expenses this year but the 7K I paid didn't quite cut it. Apparently that's not enough for someone with my income to spend according to the IRS, but I'll tell you it certainly felt like a lot at the time.

    At the time though, I was thinking "this should cover my various wine purchases, ice cream, french fries, shoes, and even the freaking water I used each time I filled my jacuzzi tub for a nice steaming soak."

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  10. Oh I had quite a few friends who gave birth last year talking about the fancy child tax credit. It's so great. Fuck them! What Cherbear said, I'm paying their WIC, welfare, food stamps, health insurance. I should get their child tax credit.

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  11. The cost of the dieting I did after gaining all that "trying to have a baby" weight.

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