It's Your Funeral: How to Save Money Through Planning

Some years ago I wrote a home care manual for families of people with Alzheimer's disease called Coping with Alzheimer's. Near the end of the book, which addresses the final stages of the disease, I recommended that the family start preparing for the end by gathering the insurance policies, wills and other legal documents that will be needed when death occurs and to help plan for the funeral. To my chagrin, a reader in Texas followed my directions to the letter.

The deceased was a retired schoolteacher. When he retired in 1959, I'm sure the $12,000 life insurance policy he bought seemed a goodly sum. When his widow visited the funeral home twenty years later, however, she walked out with a funeral that cost $12,000 to the penny. This seemed a bit opportunistic to me. I decided to do some research into the funeral business so I could revise that chapter of my book's next edition. What I learned spawned another book, The Affordable Funeral, as well as the Funeral Help Program, which helps save thousands of families millions of dollars each year on funeral costs.

Americans tend to ignore the death industry until we absolutely have to pay attention. Then we find it is filled with arcane terminology, unfamiliar technology and vague descriptions of goods and services. Rather than inquire, research or—heaven forbid!—shop, we tend to say something like,"Give me what you think I need and make it nice." Not surprisingly, a funeral with burial today can easily cost more than $15,000—but it doesn't have to. If you know what to ask, what to say and who to call at the various steps of the arrangement process, you can save thousands—perhaps as much as half of the usual costs.

In future articles we will attempt to pierce the mystique surrounding the funeral business so you'll know all your options when the time comes. Each article will contain a nugget of information that can save your family $1,000 or more on funeral costs. If, after we've lifted the veil a bit, you decide you just can't live (or die!) without that high-tech, seamless, heavy bronze, glass-lined, $50,000 casket with a matching $20,000 vault, so be it. At least you'll be doing so from an informed standpoint. Just remember: NASA spent several millions developing a ballpoint pen that would write in zero gravity, while Russia used…a pencil.

It's your funeral.

Ed Markin, BS, MBA, PhD, is Director of Research for the Alzheimer's Disease Research Foundation and author of over a dozen books. For the past fifteen years he has operated the Funeral Help Program, which is a clearinghouse for consumer information. He has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows as well as being published or quoted in hundreds of magazines and newspapers.

Posted in Funeral Planning: Going in Style, Talking to Aging Parents