To think funerals are outrageously expensive?

[crunchymint]

I have been shocked when organising a funeral at how expensive they are. Even a basic cremation with no service costs a £1000. A very ordinary funeral will cost about £3,000. It is a lot of money.

An interesting thread. I recently worked as a funeral arranger for 3 and a half weeks. ( the job itself was ok but the company was shit, that's a whole other thread!)
I'm in Sussex. The basic funeral is about £3k. The cremation is £633, burials are much dearer. You have to purchase the plot and pay for the grave to be dug. You need 2 doctors to certify the death @ £82 each.
You can easily spend £5k. Embalming, should you wish to have it done, is £71 if I remember correctly.
And our pay was very poor, when you consider the responsibility that comes with the job. You don't want any mistakes. Also there is loads of official paperwork. The admin involved was horrendous.

You can apply for a grant from the government if you can't afford to bury your loved one, but you're still looking at a bill of £2k. It really is expensive.

Thank you crunchymint. I admit I am surprised you can but so many people are saying it I wanted to check if you could.

Muddling

They do prepaid funeral plans so then it wouldn’t cost you anything because it’s already been paid for that’s what my nan did meant that the only thing that had to be paid for was adding her name to the headstone which cost £375. But if your relative doesn’t have a prepaid plan then it does soon mount up and if they are being put in with someone else they charge you for opening the grave up and then there’s adding their name to the headstone. I really think that more people should do the prepaid plan it takes all the stress out of arranging a funeral because it’s all been done for you.

The average cost of a funeral here in the US is $7000-$10,000. And that doesn't include the church and vicar donation, nor the cost of food for the gathering afterwards nor hall rental if you don't have it in someone's home or at the church. Nor does it include flowers. Cremation can be done for around $800.00. DH and I would rather our children take that money and have a lovely holiday with it or a hell of a party in my memory. And that's what we've told them.

Our mum did the whole works for our dad when he died, that was what she believed to be the 'right thing' and what she wanted to do. But now, 20 years later, all her friends and most of her generation of the family have either died or are too ill to get about. The younger family is scattered to the four winds. She no longer has a 'home church' in our home town nor a minister who knows 'who she was'. When Mum goes, DB and I are having a graveside service with only the close family in attendance. We will remember her with love and memories and sing her favourite hymns and read her favourite scriptures. That will be truly meaningful. Not a strange church 3/4 empty and a minister talking about a woman he never knew.

it's not just the cost of transporting the body - you need to think about how you are going to store it - some crematoriums are booked 3 weeks in advance. Where are you gonna put the body for 3 weeks? Coz you know what will happen if it's not kept at a very low temperature don't you?

shootfirst - I imagine that many people who die unexpectedly haven’t thought about the need, and of course others won’t have the funds to do so.

I actually think an element of National Insurance or similar should go to funding a ‘standard’ funeral contribution of, eg, £2k

It doesn’t seem right to me that basic costs should be down to the individual familes / next of kin.

Simple - traditional - divine.

stoneletters.com/blog/diy-or-family-led-funeral

It doesn’t seem right to me that basic costs should be down to the individual familes / next of kin.

Me neither, which is why i'll be taking responsibility for my own funeral costs.

Simple pimple- yes that's divine and so sweet. I also love when retired engineers/ joiners etc put their minds to new uses.

@bbcessex my nan paid £20 a month towards her funeral and my grandparents have done the same thing so it doesn’t cost the earth to prepay for it and it means that your family don’t get hit with a massive bill and your loved one gets the send off that they want. I’m going to do the same thing.

My DM's final arrangements were £2,800. She didn't want a funeral. This cost covered transport from home to hospital for a post-mortem - sudden death. Transport to funeral home to prepare for cremation. Transport to crematorium. No service. No flowers.

Given the ridiculous amounts people are prepared to spend on weddings, it seems pretty miserable to carp at the cost of a funeral.

Bluelady I don't think people are carping. I thinks its a genuine worry that a vast majority of people have a lot of month left over at the end of their wages and cannot put anything by for a funeral of themselves or a loved one.

The only funeral I have arranged is my father's. The crematorium costs were in the region of £ 1000, slightly less for the undertaker. We had one arrangement of flowers from the family, a friend drove us to the service and back to my cousin's house where she had prepared lunch for the family. The pall bearers were younger male relatives (my son, my cousin, my dad's godson and his father) and the service was conducted by another cousin.

In accordance with my dad's wishes we spent as little as possible. He had a cardboard coffin although it looked like light pine and that was a huge saving. We chose not to have his ashes returned to us so there was no cost for an urn.

We were fortunate to be in a position to pay for the funeral but we kept costs as low as we possibly could. The funeral director was brilliant and did a lot of the running round that we didn't want to do - putting the notice in the paper, organising the orders of service, finding the music (I wanted a particular obscure hymn for the coffin to come in) etc. The only thing we paid more for was to have a double length time slot at the crem so I wasn't stressed about the service ending on time.

It is a horrible time and I did feel I begrudged paying for something that I had never wanted to face which made it all seem much more expensive somehow.

My DP’s Gran died in June and her funeral cost £10k . I’ve never heard of one costing quite so much although I know my DM’s ex partner’s cost her 5k, even that is astronomical.

Hers cost so much because she had requested a specific crematorium and they basically were absolute rip off merchants. They charged for each individual song the family wanted playing and each photo they wanted showing and it wasn’t even like £2 per song, it was £10! They said it was a ‘processing fee’ but DP could’ve done it all himself, apparently that wasn’t allowed .

Oh and some relatives refused to be a pallbearer so they had to pay for two to make up the shortfall, I found that very shocking and sad.

My DM was suddenly hit with the 5k funeral cost overnight as her partner died very suddenly aged 50.

Get a funeral plan people.

I think the problem is a lot of people end up paying for their relatives funeral when they don't have a lot of money themselves. So they feel obliged to pay to give them a 'send off' even though they don't have any or much spare money.

And for those that are left to pay please do check that there isn't any money in the estate because the basic funeral costs (this does not include flowers, wake, headstones etc) have to be paid out from the estate before anyone else.

I wish to go with as little expense to my family as possible. Just sprinkle my ashes around Sephora and be done with it.

We have avoided this whole business of expensive funerals. Both me and OH have selected a shared plot in a local woodland burial place. No fussy service, biodegradable cardboard coffin and we will go in the woodlands own no frills van. The money that we have saved by paying for this now, we have put aside so that after the first funeral, we can all go away and spend time together as a family. Same with the second. I want my family to walk away from the woodland, get on a plane and go remember me/us in a positive way instead of worrying about repaying ££££.

DMs small funeral, burial, no cars apart from funeral car, sandwiches in room at funeral parlour was £3500 which came out of her estate, headstone was £1000.

The thing is the people who can least afford a funeral are probably the ones whose relatives leave no estate, it is a huge amount of money to find. People who are better off or have funeral plans will have estates to leave or be left the estate so not so much of a problem then as it will be paid

Given the ridiculous amounts people are prepared to spend on weddings, it seems pretty miserable to carp at the cost of a funeral.

Well I'm not prepared to spend money on either.

On the subject of funeral plans, it's important to look into exactly what's included ... not all are equal, and families can be faced with paying a lot of "top ups" because costs have gone up for the crematorium, doctor, etc.

Obviously there's also still the "wake", flowers and so on to pay for, so while the plans can be helpful they're not quite the "nothing else to pay" some assume

Hmm funeral plans are a great deal. From the co-op website:

±£16.17 a month is based on a 30 year old purchasing a Simple Funeral Plan online at £2,845 over 25 years (total amount repayable £4852.50). The same plan purchased by a 50 year old is £16.39 a month (total amount repayable £4918.50).

I recently had to organise my dads funeral. The cost was split between 4 of us siblings and was just over 1000 each. In no way did we begrudge this, it was and still is the least of my concerns given how unexpected his death was. Whilst none of us are in any way rich we are lucky enough that this was doable without any financial hardship.

Posters saying that people must hate or begrudge their loved ones a funeral must have absolutely no understanding of simply not having the money. We grew up with very little, my dad had literally nothing to leave us. None of this matters to me, I just wish he were still here. If I had had no money to pay for his funeral it would’ve made an awful time even more distressing. Please have some compassion. Not having several thousand pounds doesn’t mean you loved that person any less.