By 27, you could recite money advice in your sleep. Open the Roth IRA, build your credit, start the emergency fund, negotiate like you mean it. Good moves, all of them. But there's one that almost never makes the list, and it might be the smartest one you'll make all decade. 

It's also the first thing we'd tell any woman at 27 to do, so here's ours to you: 

Set your fertility coverage up now, while you're young and the door is wide open.

Do that one thing, and the whole decade ahead feels different. 

You can take the job in the new city. You can give it another few years to see if they're the one, or realize they're not and start fresh. You can want kids at 34, or decide you never do. Fewer of those choices get made in a panic, or made half out of a fear that time is running out on you. 

The thing most women quietly dread about waiting is needing help one day and having no way to reach for it. And this is the one thing you'll already have in place that’s been handled. That is what fertility coverage really buys you. It’s the freedom to live your whole life, your relationships, and your career, all at your own pace.

Here's how the move works. You can look at it like health insurance, the fertility kind your regular plan usually leaves out. 

You set a policy up while you're young, lock in a lower premium, and hope you never need it. If you ever do, you're not left scrambling to find five figures on your own, the kind of bill that can run past $19,000 a round and mostly isn't covered.

The interest in this type of benefit is more on the rise than perceived. Trouble conceiving turns up in 10 to 15% of couples, and it barely tracks with how young or healthy or careful you've been. Most of it never becomes the dramatic kind, 85 to 90% is treated with medication or surgery rather than IVF. But there's no telling in advance who lands in the group that needs more, and by the time you know, the chance to get ahead of the cost has already passed.

So take this as advice from a friend, because that's honestly all it is. We want you covered, whether that's a FLORA policy or something else entirely, we don't mind which. Set it up young, and go live like the time is yours, because once it's handled, it mostly is.