Why Pre-Planning Your Funeral Is the Ultimate Final Gift to Your Family
By planning your own funeral, you can spare your loved ones some stress and create a meaningful send-off.
Few subjects are as difficult to consider as your own mortality. "Americans are famously afraid to talk about death," says Tanya Marsh, a Wake Forest University professor who teaches a class on funeral and cemetery law. "We almost willfully don’t want to confront the inevitability of the end."
So if you’re like most people, planning your own funeral is not top of mind. But making your wishes known before you pass away can be a real gift to your family, says Sara Williams, past president of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, the watchdog organization for the funeral industry.
Emotions run high following the death of a loved one, and outlining whether you would like to be buried or cremated, the type of memorial you prefer, and other elements of your end-of-life services relieves your family of making those decisions while they’re grieving.
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"It gives the family peace of mind because they don’t have questions like, ‘What did Mom or Dad want?’ Mom or Dad already answered those questions," says Camelia Clarke, president of Paradise Memorial Funeral and Cremation Services in Milwaukee and a spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association. Clarifying your wishes can also help head off family disputes, she says.
Planning your own funeral can save your family money
Planning your funeral may alleviate the cost burden, too. According to a study by the National Funeral Directors Association, from 2021 to 2023 (the most recent data available), the median cost of a funeral with a casket and burial increased by 5.8%, from $7,848 to $8,300; the median cost of a funeral with cremation, including a cremation casket and urn, rose by 8.1%, from $5,810 to $6,280.
By creating a plan now, you may be able to lock in current costs on some aspects of the funeral or set aside the right amount of funds to cover the expenses later.
Another reason to make your own arrangements: You get a say in them. Increasingly, baby boomers are planning their funerals because they are more likely to shun a traditional service involving an open-casket viewing at a funeral home and a graveside service to bury the remains, says Marsh.
She has seen a growing interest not just in standard cremation but also in practices such as water cremation and natural organic reduction (human composting), as well as in memorial services at locations such as museums, parks and restaurants.
Settling the details in advance can make it easier on your family
If your children or other relatives don’t live near you, or if you plan to be buried in a different geographic area from where you live now, settling the details ahead of time can ease the logistics for your family.
Michael Adell, of Frisco, Texas, experienced that challenge firsthand when his father passed away last year. His father, who was also living in Texas when he died, had purchased cemetery plots for himself and his family in Michigan, where he was raised. But he hadn’t made any other plans. Adell had to handle such matters as flying his father’s body to Michigan and then getting him to the funeral home.
"You’re learning when you’re doing, which makes it stressful and hard with all the other emotions that are going on," Adell says.
Eager to avoid that situation again, Adell approached his family members and offered to plan their funerals as well as his own. His mother, his wife and his brother all agreed to it. When his mother died suddenly just a few months later, "all I had to do was call the funeral home, and they did everything else," he said. "It was a lot easier."
Decide your arrangements
The first step is to decide the kind of arrangements you want. Details can include any elements that you feel are important, whether it’s selecting a funeral plot, headstone or cremation urn, choosing who will give the eulogy, specifying a photo you want in your obituary or the clothes you’d like to be buried in, or even listing the type of food to be served at the memorial service.
Clarke recalls one individual who loved M&M’s and requested to have bowls of the candy placed around the funeral home, while another wanted a lakeside service featuring an all-white color scheme. "The casket was white, and everyone at the service wore white," Clarke says. Engaging in this planning allows the individual "to be very specific in what they want."
Adell designed his family members’ footstones, right down to the font and height of the lettering and leaving room just for the date of death, to ensure they would look consistent. "It’s a dumb detail, but it’s a detail I get to control because I’m here," he says.
Consider the costs and how you'll cover them
You’ll also need to think about the costs and how you’ll cover them. Ask several funeral homes for a general price list, an itemized menu of all their goods and services; funeral homes are required to provide this list, says Williams.
Shopping around could save you a lot of money, she says, pointing out that in the same town, a direct cremation (which involves no viewing, visitation or other services) could vary in price by thousands of dollars.
Many funeral homes allow you to pay for some or all the services in advance, and you may be able to lock in current prices by going this route. But think twice before you make a financial commitment. What happens if the funeral home goes out of business, or if you move away and no longer want to use its services?
And you need to make sure you understand whether additional expenses may apply at the time of your death, even if you pay now. Because the cost of certain items, such as transportation and cremation, increase over time, some funeral homes will make prearrangements with you via a contract but will not guarantee current pricing, says Katie Sheehan, a former estate-planning attorney and now a managing director and wealth strategist at Crestwood Advisors in Boston.
"It is important for clients to know which they are purchasing," she says. "Always read the fine print."
Buying a cemetery plot and structuring your arrangements in advance are good steps to take, says Williams, but she discourages prepaying for the entire funeral. Instead, she recommends opening a payable-on-death account, in which you can deposit enough money to cover the estimated expenses. When you die, the designated beneficiary receives the funds.
Put the plan in writing
Once your plan is complete, put it in writing, and make sure your loved ones know about it. Many estate-planning attorneys prepare a binder for clients that includes a funeral tab where they can leave instructions to family members, including their wishes regarding disposition and services, says Sheehan.
If they have made prearrangements with a funeral home, that would also be the place to keep a copy of that paperwork. And regardless of whether you work with an attorney, you can have conversations with your loved ones about your wishes and provide them with written copies of the plans and documents, says Marsh.
Note: This item first appeared in Kiplinger Personal Finance Magazine, a monthly, trustworthy source of advice and guidance. Subscribe to help you make more money and keep more of the money you make here.
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