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location:  Transition  >  Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)  >  Financing Transition 1. What health insurance do you have? 2. How have you financed your transition? 3. How did you pay for your transition while being a student? 4. How much has your transition cost so far? 1. What health insurance do you have? I have had many different health insurance companies over the years, mostly due to being in school (undergraduate and graduate school). The specific insurance policies I have had have been dictated by whatever my school has contracted with them to provide their students. The vast majority of transition expenses they have covered (with the exception of my hysterectomy) occurred after I became “male” on the insurance policy. In fact, I never actually “changed” from female to male on one insurance policy – after I changed my sex designation on my driver’s license, social security number, passport, etc., I waited until I changed insurance policies, then just signed up with the new one as “male.” I prefer not to give the exact names of the insurance companies I have had, purely in the interest of preserving my own coverage. 2. How have you financed your transition? Besides working while being a student and living as cheaply as possible, I budgeted my student loans to include expenses to pay for testosterone and endocrinologist visits. To pay for chest surgery, I convinced my parents to take out the school loans intended for parents (and let me borrow it) through my undergraduate university, promising I would pay those loans back, even though they are in my parents’ names. To pay for my hysterectomy, I first had a laparoscopic procedure to look for suspected endometriosis; and it turned out I did have endometriosis so insurance paid 80% of my hysterectomy. The 20% of both procedures was paid partially by me, partially by my parents, but most of it was forgiven by the hospital after I applied for patient financial assistance due to limited income. To pay for my bottom surgery, my parents paid for about half of it, and my partner and I saved up the rest. Revisions to my bottom surgery have been paid by my health insurance, because they are now seen as medically-necessary repairs. 3. How did you pay for your transition while being a student? Being a student is virtually the only way I’ve afforded it at all! I paid for schooling using virtually all loans and worked while in school to help pay for transition expenses. If I lived cheaply enough, I could manage to save some of my loans intended for living expenses to help pay for surgery. So, I may have been able to afford to have surgery, but make no mistake about it – I will be paying the loans off for decades to come. 4. How much has your transition cost so far? Most of the subsections within the transition section have a specific page dedicated to describing the costs of each procedure. If you add all of these sections up, my transition overall has cost about $270,000* (including both insurance payments and out-of-pocket expenses) so far. *as of 7/2010