How to Save on Funeral Costs

On average, a traditional funeral in the United States falls within the range of $7,000 to $12,000, with some savings if you choose cremation instead of burial. However, these costs can escalate significantly with the selection of premium services and products. Understanding a breakdown of funeral costs can be helpful with budgeting, setting expectations, and figuring out where you can save on costs. 

1. Pre-plan your funeral

At Funeralocity, we’re a proponent of pre-planning funerals–not only because it allows you to make the specific decisions about your own end-of-life plans, but because there are several cost-saving opportunities when you plan a funeral ahead of time.

While most of us don’t want to think about our death and end-of-life plans like whether we want to be buried or cremated, it can take a huge burden off family members and loved ones after you’ve passed away. If you’re making plans ahead of the game, you can even invest in “final expense insurance”, a type of insurance that specifically helps with covering the costs associated with your funeral.

2. Choose cremation over traditional burial

When comparing the average prices of funerals, it’s easy to see that cremation is significantly more affordable than burials. If you or your family and loved ones have no reason to choose burial over cremation, this is an area of opportunity to cut down on costs.

If you’re looking for more information on how cremation works, the pricing involved, we’ve got all your cremation questions covered.

3. Ask funeral homes for price breakdowns

Funeralocity is an advocate of price transparency–unfortunately not all funeral homes or cremation providers are completely forthright with cost breakdown on their websites. When planning a funeral, make sure to advocate for your rights to information, and ask specifics about what the individual costs are for all services and fees before paying for anything. 

4. Avoid luxury items bought directly from funeral homes

If you’re looking to save on funeral costs, it’s important to know that there are plenty of ways you can cut costs. While we all want to honor our lives or those of our loved ones, it’s not necessary to spend tens of thousands on products and services that aren’t necessary. Some of the funeral add-ons that can be avoided: 

• Expensive caskets or urns – these don’t have to be bought through funeral homes, you can shop around and purchase them online from non-specialty retailers like Costco
• Headstones – if you or your loved one have opted for a traditional burial, it’s important to know that headstones have a huge cost range and buying one for thousands of dollars isn’t necessary
• Flowers – everyone knows that flowers are a staple for funeral services, but make sure that you look around online for funeral flowers before just buying from your funeral home, because there are likely opportunities to save.

5. Get quotes from multiple funeral homes 

Funeralocity’s primary goal is to provide price transparency in the funeral industry, which is why we make it so easy to look at average funeral home prices as well as the prices of specific funeral homes in your area–all you have to do is search by your city, zip code, or a specific business to see clear pricing, without having to call multiple funeral home directors.

For more details on how to cut down on funeral costs, check out Funeralocity’s blog posts covering everything about funeral costs.

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