An “Apples and Eggs” Question of the Day

Friend of the Billfold Helaine Olen tackled a very difficult question in today’s Slate:

Should I sell my shares in Apple, currently worth about $4,000, to help cover the costs of freezing my eggs? I am 34, have about $100,000 in retirement accounts, and am in year one of buying my apartment on a 15-year mortgage. I put 9 percent of my earnings in a 401(k). There’s not a whole lot extra after the mortgage, bills, and other normal expenses to put toward egg freezing, which will cost at least $10,000. Having $4,000 would mean the difference between doing it this year and waiting another 12 months or so while I save.

How would you respond to this? On the one hand, it’s Apple stock; on the other hand, it’s a possible child. Both options with enormous theoretical potential, as it were.

Olen brings up one point the letter-writer might not have considered:

The fertility industry is a big business, with estimated annual revenues between $3 billion and $4 billion in the United States. Not only does it make money charging you for the initial egg-freezing procedure; it charges egg storage fees of anywhere between $500 and $1,000 annually. That adds up! Critical articles on egg freezing often rightly bemoan how women are still — in 2016! — put in the position of choosing between career and parenthood in a way that men are not, but we read far less about the procedure’s high failure rate.

In the end, she advises the letter-writer not to sell her stock for this particular treatment. Would you give the same advice?

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