Funeral expenses can be considerably expensive, especially if you have not planned ahead for your own death or the death of a loved one. Therefore, you should make sure that you do your homework and look around. It’s easy to feel bad about “shopping around” for a deal when it comes to funeral expenses – but you shouldn’t feel bad about it. While you will want to make sure that you follow the last wishes of your loved one, you should not feel obligated to pay more for the same funeral in one location than you would somewhere else.
The first thing that you should do is to make sure that you look for a locally owned and run funeral home. The reason for this is that local funeral homes will generally have much lower rates than the corporate run funeral homes – and they also tend to take better care of your loved one’s funeral.
However, you should not assume that the local funeral home will have the best rates for funeral expenses. Make sure that you ask around, and see if you can find good prices on caskets. There are many different casket styles available, and you should be able to find one that your loved one would like without too much trouble. You can also ask your local funeral director to help you pick one out that is affordable.
If you would like your loved one to have a nicer casket for the viewing than the one that you end up burying him or her in, then you can also ask the funeral home about rental caskets. These are a good way to save some money on the funeral – which can be important when you consider how expensive the rest of the funeral expenses will be.
You should also make sure to ask ahead of time how much the clergy will cost if your loved one asked for that type of service in his or her last instructions. Make sure that you stick as closely to your loved one’s wishes as you can. Finally, if you would like to make sure that your family members do not have to deal with funeral expenses after you die, you can always purchase a funeral plot and casket ahead of time.