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.
3. Protect Your Family
Funeral plans, particularly prepaid funeral plans, protect your family. First, it saves your loved ones the stress of figuring out appropriate funeral plans or debating your wishes. Second, it avoids all too common emotional overspending. While grieving, family members are less conscientious about goods and services, and may spend more on a funeral than needed. And, third, by prepaying funeral expenses, your family will not need to unexpectedly cover funeral costs or cremation costs.
Funeral pre planning is a gift to yourself and your family.