Prepaid Funeral Plans

Knowing What You Want

May 19th, 2008 Posted in Knowing What You Want | No Comments »

The most important thing for you to remember as you decide on a prepaid funeral agreement is what you want. At the end of the day, what matters most is that you get the funeral you want, at a price you can afford. Just because funerals are depressing and it’s something we don’t want to talk about unless absolutely necessary, doesn’t make them any less of a business. This simply means that if you don’t know what you want before you get there, you’ll end up with something you don’t want, or cannot afford. Know what you want before you visit the funeral home director and you can avoid some common mistakes.

How do you want to be buried? This is the first question you should ask yourself before you decide whether to secure a prepaid funeral agreement. It’s a logical question and one you should know the answer to before you’re duped into paying a lot of money for unnecessary items. You can decide to be buried in the ground, entombed in a mausoleum, or cremated. Each option has it own set of advantages and disadvantages, but the decision ultimately comes down to what option makes you most comfortable. In the event you cannot decide, always err on the side of the cheaper choice.

Where do you want your final resting place to be? If there’s a family plot to use when the time comes, you should make note of this to avoid paying for a burial plot supplied by the funeral home. This is a perfect example of why it’s so important to know what you want; a family burial plot can save you a few thousand dollars if you reveal it before you sign the agreement. Even if you have no family plot to be buried in, you may have a preferred location for your final resting place that differs from the location that will be used by the funeral home.

What kind of service do you want? As difficult as it is to believe, not everyone wants the same type of funeral. Some may want a religious send-off lead by their religious leader, whereas others may want a non-traditional funeral. Many people are now choosing to have a “celebration of life”, rather than a funeral spent mourning a loss. These may seem like insignificant choices right now, but if you don’t vocalize your desires, you’ll end up with the same basic funeral if you had never planned at all.

As depressing as it is to plan for your own death, doing so now will save you and your family the difficult task of giving you a funeral true to your spirit and the headache of paying for it. Prepaid funeral agreements allow you to choose exactly how you want to bid your final farewell to this earth, all that’s required is that you have an idea about what you want. Going blind into planning a prepaid funeral almost guarantees that you’ll end up paying more than you want for a funeral service that you don’t really want.