Why do funerals cost so much money

[Frickssake]

Read recently that a standard funeral can cost upwards of 3k, cremation not being much cheaper. I know you can pay for a funeral plan etc but 3k plus! I'm off to look if there's a cheaper way when I go!

@Turnedouttoes

Out of interest who usually pays for the funeral? I’m very low contact with my horrible Dad for lots of reasons and there’s no way I’d be forking out for his funeral but I’m also his only family member and I doubt he has any money saved for it.

AFAIK, he can have a 'paupers funeral' (I'm sure they're not called that any more!) where the council will pay for the absolute basics - a cremation without any ceremony.

[quote Corrag]@SpeckledyHen Breakdown...

Arrangement services etc £800
Care of deceased £370
Coffin £550
Hearse £250
Funerary staff on day etc £830
Order of service £69
Flowers £75
Doctors fee £82
Crem fee £778[/quote]
Thanks, very useful.

my mother has a bee in her bonnet about funerals and has it all sorted...one of these companies that do a basic cremation and ashes delivery

I have the copy paperwork, and it was £1900 I think...and she has paid "on my credit card dear, so if they are scammers the credit people will sort it all out"

Isn’t there some sort of burial with a tree splint that’s about £1500? I’ve heard of tow of these recently.

A childless aunt of mine had prepaid her funeral well before she died, again with a local family firm. We were very grateful for her foresight, since she’d specified what she wanted - fairly simple and cremation - so we didn’t have to wonder.

I was there when the undertakers took her away, and as requested by her, they removed her heavy gold wedding ring and handed it to me.

I don't think £3k is expensive but willing to accept I might be in the minority 🤷‍♀️

Yep - my mums funeral this week, there will be ten antendees no wake - best part of 4k.

@lynetteScavo the live stream is £30

Dying us an expensive business. My mum didn't actually want a funeral but i couldn't let her go without. Thankfully she had the money saved otherwise i could never have afforded it.

I do think that it is a fair price when i look at the breakdown of costs, the undertakers have a challenging job but yes, dying us an expensive business

@Chasingsquirrels

This is true. One of the wealthiest people I know is a funeral director. He's also horrible The ones I know are lovely people.

Not a job I'd want to do though, not the dead body side so much but the on-call part.

Oh yes, definitely, I'm not saying funeral directors are horrible, far from it, it's just him as an individual!

The funeral directors who we have actually used have been lovely. Compassionate, understanding, good with people. And in fairness, even the man I dislike so has a good reputation as a funeral director it's just that I know him outside of that and see a very different side to him.

It was mu Dad’s funeral (cremation) last month, it cost £2000. I thought that was ok, the funeral directors dealt with everything and arranged a really lovely officiant to phone me and talk about my Dad’s life and then chose music and poems with him.
I didn’t organise a wake as it was just after lockdown 2.0 and in a high risk area.

I've instructed mine (only half in jest) to leave me at the morgue, which will force the council to pay for a paupers funeral, and spend the money they save on a nice holiday. My eldest would do it too!

@Oysterbabe

My dad has signed up with a University to donate his body for med students to use. When he goes we have a number to call so that they can collect him. He is very much of the opinion that his body was just the container that he lived in and isn't needed, we can mark and mourn his death in another way.

I watched a programme on this a few years ago. They don't keep the body forever though. They use it for their needs and return it back to you after.

My grandad’s cost my mum around 7.5k which included the wake and car etc too. The day didn’t have any bells and whistles.
I’ve told DP I want a direct cremation for mine (no service and he would be sent my ashes afterwards to keep or scatter). It’s a much cheaper way to do it but still around £1500.

[quote Corrag]@SpeckledyHen Breakdown...

Arrangement services etc £800
Care of deceased £370
Coffin £550
Hearse £250
Funerary staff on day etc £830
Order of service £69
Flowers £75
Doctors fee £82
Crem fee £778[/quote]
Thank you very much .

I think both the English and Scottish governments have been holding reviews into the cost of funerals.

There are things you can do to cut the cost, but most of us aren't thinking straight enough to do it. We have had a whole raft of funerals to organise in the last few years sadly, and did our own order of service and used a local florist for flowers. You can buy a coffin much more cheaply online too.

Generally I'd say that funeral directors lack transparency on their billing, I haven't been given a breakdown of how much each part of the funeral costs on any occasion. And they insisted on full payment upfront before doing anything.

Must admit I’m tempted by the idea of a funerals plan but what if you pay the money and the funeral director goes bust?

Well, it's a Covid secure industry which is forever growing, so that is unlikely. A smaller company would just be bought out by a bigger one, so your funeral would be directed by someone else, but you'd still get your funeral.

My parents and I have spoken about this a lot. My mum is very insistent that she wants a direct to cremation funeral. So basically no funeral. A cardboard coffin etc. This is for two reasons. One is cost, she wants us to use the money that a funeral would have cost, and have a holiday with it, or such like. And secondly, she absolutely hates having a fuss made of her, and she says she feels the same even in death. I will then have her ashes and scatter somewhere she loves.

I’m having a direct to cremation with the cheapest coffin. I hate funerals and don’t want one.

@MindGrapes - not sure if you’re aware but if a person dies “out of borough” to where the grave plot is, the council are able to charge more for opening the plot. My dad died in a hospice just outside the boundary of our family plot and Rochdale Council charged us £1000 to open the grave. If he’d died in borough it would have been a couple of hundred. Death brings out the worst in people, at all levels.

I work in the funeral industry and depends how you are looking at costs.

Though about it funeral homes have staff on call 24/7, 365 they usually aren't expensive salaries but you need a few people to manage that if.you think about rotas/ time off.

Then you need bearers to help during the funeral and the actual funeral director preferably not the people that have been up all night so there's more employees.

Then you need people running the actual funeral homes and caring for the deceased, so more employees.

You also want good well trained staff who know all the legislation that applies to funerals so not only are you going to pay for the training but they need time off to do that.

Then you have the cost of premises, insurance all the usual overheads a business has.

Coffins are made to a very particular standard so the costs of them are reflective of that.

Hearses and Limousines aren't just bought from car manufacturers they are built by specialists (there's not a big enough market for the car manufacturers to be interested) they aren't just thrown together it takes a huge amount of work and specialist knowledge which isn't cheap, so they cost between £100-250,000+ new so there's those costs to offset and obviously they don't want them breaking down they are replaced every 4-10 years.

Then there's the costs funeral directors have no control over like how much the church, crematorium or the council charge for a burial or cremation.

You can already see from my list were the costs all add up. Also just like any other business they should be allowed to make money, there's very few industries were you are expected to arrange the equivalent of a wedding within a few weeks without making any profit at all.

Both in laws died without assets or savings so we paid for their funerals . I think they were about £2.5k each which was 10 and 6 years ago. Very basic set up,church service and buried. We had no idea we would be expected to pay as we had assumed they might have thought about it at some point and BIL blatantly said he wasnt prepared to contribute , so we were caught on the back foot. We asked what other options there were and they said a paupers funeral which meant no flowers and no marked grave. So that was £5k debt for us.

Thanks for Corrag for the breakdown. It's much more expensive than I imagined. I can't accept some of these costs. It seems wrong. Why can't it be done cheaply?

If you were allowed to , We could all could make most of the 'arrangements' , saving £800. Do we are really need £830 of staff. I could do the flowers myself.

I can't see it myself!

My DF died in July and we had a burial with 20 mourners, two cars plus hearse. We already owned the plot. It came to just under £3000.

He had a burial insurance plan which he’d paid for in full which turned out to be worth less than what he’d paid by a few hundred - the undertaker said that wasn’t the worst he’d seen so maybe it’s something to be careful of.

It seems even the cheap option is £3k. How can that be ok?

@Oysterbabe

My dad has signed up with a University to donate his body for med students to use. When he goes we have a number to call so that they can collect him. He is very much of the opinion that his body was just the container that he lived in and isn't needed, we can mark and mourn his death in another way.

This isn’t always a reliable option, Universities reject a large amount of ‘donations’ at the time of death if they’re not suitable for their needs, leaving the family to unexpectedly pay for a funeral. Especially at the moment when they’re not using the teaching labs as much.