What is the right age to freeze your eggs?

Women may choose to freeze their eggs at any age throughout their 20s and 30s, but freezing eggs by the age of 34 seems to lead to the best chances of a resulting pregnancy.  In fairness by age 34 we have usually not yet amassed a Scrooge McDuck vault of gold coins that would allow us to easily elect for the procedure without worrying about money, but those are the cards we’ve been dealt.  Additionally, over 38 seems to be the scientific number of when it may no longer makes sense to undergo the process. The reasoning is about both quality and cost.

Age and Quality

The younger the woman’s age when freezing her eggs, the healthier those eggs will be, with better chances at a successful pregnancy when she uses them later on. Because the foresight to predict if you’ll need to prolong your fertility isn’t typically on a woman’s mind in her 20s (half the time we’re still in school and are thinking about babies about as often as we’re remembering that we’re supposed to add to our 401K), most women decide to freeze their eggs in their 30s.  

By 30, women start to think about their fertility and realize that the longer they delay pregnancy or egg freezing, the more difficult it may become to have a child down the road.  For the record, men at 30 are focusing on things like “buying a recliner for their video game room” and “enthusiastically discovering artisinal tacos.”

While studies vary and the research continues, one study suggests that women who freeze their eggs before the age of 34 have the best chances of a resulting pregnancy from a cycle of frozen eggs.

After 38, the progressive decline of egg quality takes a steeper downturn, meaning that preserving these eggs doesn’t make as much sense as opting for multiple rounds of IVF using fresh eggs. Assuming you want to have kids right away. If that is not the case, then freezing your eggs is always the best option because 38 year old eggs still tend to be better than 43 year old eggs.

Age and Cost

For women in their 20s, if it’s not for medical reasons, paying the costs to store frozen eggs doesn’t make much sense, because they may decide to have a baby without needing them in the next 10 to 15 years.  There’s a reasonable chance that they may wind up having babies the traditional way.  

There are constant references to “women’s biological clock” which means that in their early 30’s women begin hearing a nonstop version of the Final Jeopardy theme song, alerting them to the fact that time is running out.  By age 30, women start to think about their fertility and realize that the costs to preserve it may be worth the costs associated with egg freezing, if they don’t plan to have children in the near future.  In fact, egg freezing may be a less expensive option than trying multiple rounds of IVF later in life using less healthy, older eggs.  As the old saying sort of goes, “A stitch in time...saves nine...rounds of IVF.”  (Except that if you can actually afford 9 rounds of IVF, congrats on the oil well you found in your backyard.)

As an example of cost and age, research has found that 62% of 35-year-old women who freeze their eggs and try to have a baby at 40 are successful with a cost of $40,000, while only 42% of women who use only IVF at the age of 40 will have a successful pregnancy with a cost of over $55,000.

The Bottom Line

Age and quality-wise, the age that maximizes your quality of eggs without risking the possibility of unnecessarily paying for egg freezing, is between 30 to 37. It takes a certain amount of foresight at age 30-37 to know that you might need to freeze your eggs (and a certain amount of foresight to have amassed the money beforehand when other girls your age are hitting their credit card limit on cute shoes for work) but if having children is something you know you’d like to eventually, think of it as just another stage of “family planning.”