Save money on funeral costs by making arrangements at a low-priced funeral home and cemetery

Posted by on May 9, 2009

 

Many people don’t realize that prices can vary greatly between funeral homes.   

 

Over just the last three years many family-run funeral homes (and local cemeteries) have been taken-over by big global corporations. 

 

These big corporate funeral homes often keep the original owner’s family name on the door so they don’t scare away their old customers.  Unfortunately, these corporations often raise prices by 30% to 50%. 

 

This is why you should NOT automatically use the same funeral home you have used in the past UNTIL you check to see if they have SINCE become part of one of the big funeral corporations – as so many have!

 

Choosing a reasonably-priced local funeral home instead of one of the many corporate funeral homes can substantially reduce your out-of-pocket funeral expenses. …often reducing your overall funeral bill by $2,000 – to $4,000 for the same exact items.

 

This same principle applies to cemeteries.  These funeral corporations have also been buying up many of the older, better established cemeteries across the country.  They realize that if you already have a family history with a particular cemetery you are more likely to pay their larger fees just to be buried next to a deceased relative. 

 

So what can you do about all this?  Well, the first thing you should do is call a few funeral homes in your area and ask them if they are now owned by one of the big corporations.  If they’re still a family-run business they’ll be proud to tell you so.   

 

If you don’t feel comfortable calling and asking funeral homes about this, check out section 3 of the Funeral $aver’s Kit to learn a neat little trick that lets you to use your computer to find out each and every corporate funeral home in your area.  You can do it right from the comfort of you home in less than 5 minutes and it’s completely free. 

 

After eliminating the really expensive funeral homes, you’ll want to find out which funeral homes offer the most reasonable prices.  Again, you can do this simply by calling funeral homes in your area and requesting their price information. 

 

Although funeral homes are NOT required to send you price information when you ask for it over the phone, some are still willing to do this.

 

 

Unfortunately, a lot of families have trouble getting accurate price information from funeral homes….so the Funeral $aver’s Kit now includes detailed price estimates for all funeral, burial, and cremation goods and services….this makes it easier to know what to expect in terms of costs.

 

Once you get price information from several funeral homes, simply compare prices for each of the goods and services that interest you.  Families using the Funeral $aver’s Kit have access to both a computer spreadsheet and a simple paper form that can be completed with just a pencil and calculator.  These forms make it easy to see which funeral home in your area offers the lowest overall price for the type of service you want. 

 

You can repeat this same process for cemeteries in your area.  Once you have identified the funeral home and cemetery that offer the most reasonable prices, contact the funeral home and schedule an “arrangement” conference.

 

If you need to save money on funeral costs, check out the Funeral Saver’s Kit.

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