F You Finances!

I've spent the last 24 hours feeling especially hopeless.  Hopeless about money, hopeless about my future, hopeless at my chances of ever becoming anything in life.

There's a new focus.  By the time I'm 45, I want to be raising 2 kids.  So my current 35 year old self has some choices to make.

Do I tread softly trying to save my financial future at the risk of not having those 2 kids, or do I say fuck it, throw all caution to the wind and go for broke?  Literally.

I'm going for broke.  I'm going to extend every line of credit, take out whatever loans are available, and go into whatever debt it takes.

If it's a choice between living in a tent the rest of my life while the debt collectors try to hunt me down and having my kids versus keeping my house and manageable credit card payments with no family to bury me when my time comes, I'm getting those kids.

I'll be making a new appointment with my IVF doctor to determine what my smartest reproductive choices are right now regardless of the financial choices.  No more of this "well, you have a good chance with the embryos you've got, let's see how that works out."  NO.

No more draining the bank account one attempt at a time hoping to save money in the long run.  That's the decision we made a year ago and it didn't work out for us.  If we had prepurchased the 3 attempt plan, we would still have another attempt in the bank for not much more that we've already spent.  I will NOT be looking back on this moment in 5 years having done the same thing over and over again and have nothing to show for it.

I will do whatever it takes to get the money in my hands NOW so that I can prepurchase a plan that has the most attempts for the best price.  Without further details, I believe that's a program that offers 3 fresh attempts and 3 frozen transfers for a discounted price by paying up front in a lump sum.

The success rates that have to do with age are based on the age at which the embryos are created.  So I'm going to spend the next year doing as many fresh attempts as it takes to get pregnant and freezing any extra embryos that are created.  If the next three attempts fail, I should have plenty of frozen attempts banked by then.  We got 5 embyos out of the last attempt.  We implanted 2 and banked 3.  If that pattern keeps up for three more attempts, I'll have about a dozen embryos frozen when I was either 35 or 36.

So if one of the fresh attempts works, and I have my first baby, my 40 year old self will have better embryos to work with in order to try for my second child.  And since stress is one of the factors in success, I will have less stress knowing that I have more attempts if this one doesn't work, so my stress will be a lot lower, thus my chances of success higher.  If it costs me more to have that security and be successful on the first try than than it would have been to take the cautious option and being stressed out the whole time....I'm perfectly happy with that first successful attempt costing more than 3 failed ones.

I simply refuse to look back on this moment and say I made smarter financial decisions, but dumber reproductive decisions.

So I'm risking it all.  My house, bankruptcy, starvation, whatever it takes.  In my life, having children is more important to me than anything else in the world I hold dear - except my husband.  If it's a choice between my husband and my kids, I'll choose my husband.  But if it's a choice between money and my kids?  I'm choosing kids.

This is the opposite of everything we've ever known.  We are both the responsible, don't get in over your head types.  There are going to be times when I'm going to regret doing this to my credit rating, but I'd rather regret being broke than regret being alone.  K is trepidacious, but when it came right down to it, he's on board with this decision.  It's dumb, it's not the wisest thing in the world, but it's a considered, eyes wide open decision.

So now that the decision is made, there's only one question left.  How do I go about being this dumb as intelligently as possible?

I'm terrified.