We faced an £11,000 bill and didn’t know how to pay it.

After one round of funded IVF with the NHS, in 2023 we started to pay for private fertility treatment.

You can feel the pressure increase, it’s no longer free and there’s a lot to think about.

We decided to go with a company called Access Fertility and pay for two rounds of IVF, which was an investment of £11,000.

*Insert shocked face.*

We didn’t have any savings as we had recently got married. So, we had two options; pay for the treatment upfront or split the cost over 12 months, interest free – an option that had just launched luckily for us.

If you do the maths, that works out at £916.67/month.

Before jumping in, I want to say the IVF was successful and I am incredibly grateful for that, so even if it was £50,000 we would have found a way to pay for it.

It just means Jesse won’t be going to University – ha.

How my business helped me pay for an £11,000 IVF bill

Realistically the only place the additional £916.67/m could come from was my business. To be clear, this isn’t claiming IVF as an expense, this is taking increased profit from the business, to fund IVF.

House, holiday, IVF, maternity, weddings, debt there are so many things that show up in your personal life that cost a lot financially.

That’s what I love about business, it gives you the opportunity to pay for these things. When you’re in a job you typically have a set wage, but business gives you a lot of financial upside.

I remember when I was working at a previous practice, I would have a few hundred pounds additional income to save, which means most things would have taken a life time to pay for.

Fast forward and I was drawing out roughly £1600/month from my Limited company as the business was getting going. Now I needed to be able to take out the additional £916, meaning I had to draw out over £2500/month.

Profit needed from limited company

I will keep everything simple, but this is what needed to happen.

This is through a limited company, so the profit would need to drawn out and declared as dividends. It would be slightly different if you are a sole trader, but the example is still relevant, in factoring your costs and tax.

Profit needed to pay for IVF illustration which can be seen below.

£3,586 revenue/month

-£500 costs

£3,086 profit

-£586 tax at 19%

£2500 profit after tax

I would then need to declare dividends for the full amount of £2500 profit.

This is the minimum needed as the profit or ‘retained earnings’ have to be there to declare the dividends.

So now I knew I had to generate £3500 in sales a month to pay myself and pay for the additional IVF cost. Ouch.

Work out what your sales need to be

  1. Decide on how much you need personally. I started with the £2500 needed, yours might be different.
  2. If you then divide that number by 0.81, it factors the 19% corporation tax and gives you a figure of the profit needed before tax. This is based on making less than the £50,000 profit threshold, if you think you will make more, you could use 0.75, factoring for 25% corporation tax.
  3. Then add on your usual monthly costs, mine are £500. Which gives you the top line revenue needed.

For example, say you need £3,000 profit each month, here’s what it looks like backwards:

£3,000 profit after tax

+£704 Corporation tax at 19%

£3,704 profit before tax (£3000/0.81)

+£1,000 costs

£4,704 revenue per month needed

Business is the vehicle to give you the life you want

It was positive in that it forced me to focus on getting the business to generate that, but at the same time £916/m felt a lot and there was no escaping it, it felt like a lot of pressure for many months.

Now are not far off paying the IVF and in hindsight it may have been better to have a long term bank loan so there was less of a payment each month.

I strongly believe business HAS to be the vehicle to give you what you need financially for your personal life. You put blood, sweat and tears in and it has to give you what you need financially and lifestyle wise otherwise there’s no point.

Thankfully we now have a baby boy and whilst writing this my wife is on maternity leave, which may be the basis for a future post – finding the money for the salary short fall on maternity.

Next steps

I publish the Every Cloud Accounting results and I also posted about building a 6-figure service lifestyle business here. Both are great next steps.

Thanks for reading. On a personal note if you’re going through IVF and need someone to talk to or you want to ask any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email tom@everycloudaccounting.co.uk