I think a funeral is the last thing you can do for a loved one. So I don’t like the idea of direct cremation.
I agree with this. I think that, in the same way that your parents make a lot of choices on your behalf when you’re born/still too young to make them yourself – but ones that they believe/hope will be the ones that you would want (and not necessarily what they would prefer); you need to consider those for whom the funeral is actually taking place. It’s all about you but it’s absolutely not for you.
My will states that my family should use the "most cost effective" method to dispose of me. There's only really my brother and nephews and my brother is on the same page as me. I want my money to go to my family, not a funeral director.
By all means make your express wishes known to your loved ones, but the funeral/cremation/body disposal will need to have been dealt with long before it comes to the reading and executing of the will, so don’t rely on communicating anything to do with the immediate post-death practical arrangements that way.
If a DC is what you truly want, and you think it will suit your family (the ones actually grieving), by all means go for it; but I think that for some people, it’s almost a fake modesty. Sometimes, when people say they don’t want anything for Christmas, but they do really – they frame it like they’re trying to make it easier and more convenient for you, whereas they’re (sometimes) really attention-seeking and making it much more difficult for you than if they’d just told you two or three things that they would like to receive.
I reckon a major problem for those who haven’t carefully thought about it is that it’s the easiest thing in the world to declare, when you’re still very much living, that you just want the cheapest, simplest option; but a very different matter when the time comes for it to actually be done. After all, few people would feel comfortable in plainly saying that they do want all of the fuss and pomp on their behalf – it just doesn’t feel very ‘British’. And, unlike many things, you aren’t the one with the agency to change your mind when it comes down to it.
In fact, I imagine that, even if people do definitively change their minds when they know that they’re dying, they may well feel it’s too late/irresponsible to switch to having a funeral, as I highly doubt the direct cremation plan costs would be refundable. If one of the main ideas (as suggested by all the adverts) is that you can save money by opting for DC, who wouldn’t feel awkward/guilty ending up paying for both that AND a funeral?
And as for that woman in the ad weirdly saying that she wasn’t charged when she was born, so she doesn’t expect to pay much more when she dies – it’s not like being born and neonatal care doesn’t genuinely incur a lot of costs, it’s just that a baby obviously has no means of paying for it themselves. As with most things, adults (who’ve had chance to earn/save money) pay for what needs paying – and for the (lucky) majority of us, we will be very much adults just before we die.