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How to Protect Yourself From Insurance Scams Preplanning your funeral is a great way to spare your family the burden of making your final arrangements, but unfortunately it also provides unsavory service providers with the opportunity to sell you a false bill of goods. The impulse to provide for one’s future and loved ones is noble, [...]

Final expense planning is the ultimate gift We hear about death quite often. In fact, it’s a natural part of our daily lives. Some of us have experienced a death in the family. We read about tragedies in the news. Countless characters have died in our favorite TV shows this season. Like this man, we may face losing a spouse in the near future (if not to a space exploration mission, then to another risky venture). While it may be difficult to consider our own deaths, doing so is immensely worthwhile. Planning a funeral or cremation ahead of time cuts down on funeral costs, provides peace of mind, and lets us clarify and communicate our final wishes. Deaths are a meaningful life event. We save money for our weddings and college tuition for our kids. Why not for our funerals? Pre-planning and setting aside money for your funeral is a priceless gift to those you are leaving behind.  […]

Insurance protects us from serious financial harm when adverse events occur. Most of the insurance we purchase we hope to never use. We hope to never need collision coverage on our cars or flood insurance on our houses. Life insurance is one insurance policy, though, we are sure to use. Funeral insurance is a type of life insurance. Funeral insurance is also called final expense life insurance and preneed insurance. Final expense insurance companies issue life insurance policies with small values for funeral coverage. Here’s how it works. 1. You choose a funeral home where you would like to have a funeral. Alternatively, choose an insurance company with funeral insurance plans. Some insurance companies have you assign a particular funeral home while others allow your family to choose any funeral home at the time of death. 2. Calculate the amount of coverage you need to pay for funeral and cremation services at the time of death. A funeral director at a funeral home helps you calculate this number. 3. Purchase funeral expenses insurance sufficient to cover the cost of your funeral and/or cremation. 4. Make monthly payments on the funeral expense insurance. […]

We spend our lives planning. We plan school, careers, events…. from the mundane to the life altering, we plan. Despite the inevitability of death, it is the one thing we’d prefer not to plan, and so we tend to put it off. Here are three reasons you shouldn’t put off creating a death plan and burial plan. 1. Get What You Want Despite the fact that you won’t be present to appreciate it, you may have definitive ideas for your funeral and interment. Perhaps your faith requires funeral rites and a specific means of interment. Perhaps you’d prefer a simple cremation, and that your family and friends have a more joyous get-together to celebrate your life. Your loved ones on the other hand, especially in their grief, may have decidedly different ideas, or may not understand religious rites and your preferences. Make funeral plans to define your personal wishes, and discuss them with your family. 2. Save Money Make funeral plans and burial plans in advance to save money. Funeral pre planning allows you time to research funeral homes, funeral products, and funeral prices. You can carefully consider the best products and services for you, as well as an optimal funeral service provider, and add those to your final plan. Additionally, death planning allows you to manage payment of funeral expenses. You can choose to prepay costs to lock in current prices for goods and services, and avoid inflationary increases in prices. Or you can purchase funeral insurance to pay modest monthly payments for a return that will cover funeral and cremation costs at the time of death. Similarly, a burial plan may include a plan to purchase a cemetery plot now if you believe that prices will increase in the future. Cemetery plots, like other real estate, tend to increase in price over time. […]

A final plan defines your wishes for final needs and manages final expenses. When cremation is chosen for final needs, the final plan may include a simple cremation (cremation without funeral services; also called direct cremation) or cremation with funeral services. Final expenses vary tremendously based on additional services. Direct cremation is a very affordable cremation, however, coming up with a couple thousand dollars to cover a low cost cremation is still problematic for some families. When a funeral or memorial service is included, families need to manage thousands of dollars more in expenses. All these services are tremendously valuable so services shouldn’t be chosen based on cost alone. Instead, individuals and families should plan a meaningful service befitting their faith and preferences, and find a way to manage final expenses. When sufficient cash to cover the cost of cremation is not expected to be immediately available, prepaying the cost of cremation or purchasing final expense insurance makes sense. […]

There are two pieces to developing a final plan. The first piece is the design part, where you consider your options for final needs, decide on services that best fit you and your family, and build your funeral plan. The second piece is setting the stage to implement the plan, including determining a manageable [...]