馃攳
How These Moms Financed Fertility Treatments & Debt-Free Journey | Real Moms Real Money | Parents - YouTube
Channel: Parents
[0]
I'm Precious Ares.
[1]
Here's how my wife and I paid for our
fertility journey and why we're more
[5]
confident than ever about our finances.
[10]
I grew up in a split home.
[13]
So my mom was a single parent of two,
but she really stuck to her financial
[18]
goal and sacrificed a lot in order that
she can get us a three bedroom house.
[22]
So that, um, me and my brother,
um, each had our own room.
[25]
So seeing her really instilled
the value of hard work.
[29]
Coming out of college,
[30]
I started my law enforcement career.
[32]
I had this steady salary and I was
living at home, so I really didn't
[35]
have a complete grasp of my finances.
[38]
My wife and I met early 2015.
[42]
It was like love at first sight.
[43]
We knew that we wanted to
spend our lives together.
[46]
We purchased our home in May, 2016.
[50]
Starting to purchase a
home was very intimidating.
[53]
Now having bills coming in,
I started to educate myself.
[57]
In 2017, we went to an event which
was couples talking about money.
[62]
And that's how the idea of money dates
came about, where we actually held
[67]
space in our calendar to say, we are
going to meet and discuss finances.
[71]
Being able to just be
vulnerable and transparent
[74]
and say, I'm worried, I'm concerned.
[75]
My wife has been homeless.
[77]
So for her seeing our situation,
she's like, "We have shelter?
[80]
We're okay."
[81]
Having children was important to
both of us so we began to start
[85]
that journey of building our family.
[87]
My expectation was I was going
to get pregnant right away.
[90]
I thought we'd spend one to $2,000,
but after trying different methods of
[95]
IUI, the costs started racking up and
I'm like, "oh my gosh, there is more to
[99]
fertility and conception than we realize."
[102]
So after a year of trying, we decided to
go with IVF, which cost us about $30,000.
[108]
We ended up having to
take out a personal loan.
[112]
Definitely was very stressful decision,
but my wife being able to go through
[115]
that process of carrying him, that
was special and important to us.
[119]
So we just had to be very
intentional with our plan.
[122]
So now, here we are $40,000
later between two healthy women.
[128]
In 2019, I was a police officer
in San Francisco, but my wife
[133]
was located in our home in LA.
[135]
I was making a higher salary, but
emotionally kind of that distance and
[139]
knowing that we were still kind of in the
process of wanting to conceive, I realized
[143]
that this probably wouldn't be ideal for
the family life I was trying to create.
[147]
So I decided to take a job in LA.
[151]
My salary was cut in half, but it
allowed me more time to be at home.
[156]
My wife was able to get pregnant
right around Christmas time of 2019.
[163]
I was immediately hit with just
overwhelming joy of having a baby,
[167]
but still in the back of my mind, this
fear of am I financially prepared?
[172]
We had about $120,000 worth of loans.
[176]
We decided to have three to six
months worth of an emergency fund
[179]
first because knowing that the baby
was on the way became our priority.
[183]
So we just kept putting $200 into that
bank and letting that bank grow and every
[188]
other penny goes to the debt snowball.
[191]
Probably the number one thing that we
did was just downsize our lifestyle.
[195]
So really looking at each line item one by
one and saying, "what do we have to have?"
[200]
We actually sold our house to be
able to pay some of that loan off.
[204]
My wife has through her job
access to a free apartment.
[208]
And we knew that if we were able to cut
back on our lifestyle now, we can actually
[213]
have a better life for our family.
[216]
Paying off the $120,000 worth of
debt, it took approximately a year.
[220]
And from there we decided
to completely rebuild.
[224]
And so during this time we are going to
not only finish off whatever debts we
[229]
have, as far as the public loans, but
also begin saving for our dream home.
[233]
When you have other people relying on
you, it's just a different type of drive.
[238]
Just saving for whatever their goals may
be, whether they use it for college or
[241]
maybe they use it to start a business.
[243]
That's definitely a future
goal for our children.
[246]
Family planning is unpredictable.
[249]
It's not just having to settle
and say, well, I'm same sex.
[252]
So that means I'll never have kids.
[254]
And it's like, no, the
world is our oyster.
[256]
We financially plan.
[258]
We can live our lives in
the way that we want to.
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage