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Funeral Costs: How to Keep it Inexpensive, Without Being Cheap

MIAMI - JANUARY 24:  A pallbearer for Poitier ...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The average funeral costs $6500.    Many people die with absolutely no savings.   Even if there is life insurance, it takes weeks to get the money, while a funeral is completed within a week.

Funeral homes have an easy sales pitch.  Nobody wants to sully the memory of their loved ones.   The tiniest hint of a guilt trip will have most families upgrading to the silk pillow in a second.   Here’s a secret: Your loved one doesn’t care.  I’m not recommending using garbage bags and a dumpster.   By all means, treat your loved ones with care, but don’t go overboard.

Not everyone is comfortable with cremation, and some religions don’t permit it, but it is probably the least expensive way to process a body.   It costs approximately $1400 to cremate a body and you can get very attractive urns for under $100.  Compare that to a $3500 casket and storage & transportation fees, and–from a strictly monetary standpoint–the choice is clear.

Don’t worry too much about decorating.   Flowers aren’t cheap and florists don’t tend to offer discounts to people who aren’t emotionally prepared to negotiate and who are in a time crunch to find the flowers they need.   Get a few bouquets for a small display around the casket or urn, and let the rest take care of itself.   Many of the guests will bring flowers, so the entrance will soon be decorated for free, and that’s the part that makes the first impression.

Shopping online can save you a lot of money on an urn.  Funeral homes will try to sell you a $500 urn, which may include a 1000% markup.    If you buy online, you will have to pay for overnight shipping, but that’s a small cost compared to the standard markup.  You can also find a huge discount on attractive caskets by shopping outside of the funeral home.   Federal law prohibits funeral homes from requiring that you buy a casket from them or charging you a fee for getting one elsewhere.
This may be the most ghoulish part of this article, but you can dig the grave yourself.   It’s probably not worth it for a full-size casket, but for an urn, you can save hundreds of dollars.   An urn generally only needs to be buried 18 inches deep, as opposed to the 6 feet required for caskets.  Just be sure to check with the cemetery and get the burial location right.  If you think it’s ghoulish to dig the grave, just picture digging it up.  Not fun.
Planning a funeral is never enjoyable, and it’s often expensive.  Nothing you do will make it fun, but it is possible to make it affordable.
Have you had to coordinate a funeral?  Did you take the funeral director’s recommendations, or did you cut some costs?

 

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Unlicensed Health “Insurance”

Gibraltar monkey
Image by Salim Virji via Flickr

Health insurance is–without a doubt–expensive.

As much as I hate the idea of socialized health care, it does have one shiny selling point to counter its absolute immorality: it’s cheap.  Assuming, of course, you ignore the higher taxes and skewed supply/demand balance.

Here in the US, we’re free from that burdensome contrivance.  Instead, we have health care and health insurance industries that are heavily regulated and ultimately run by people who have A) never held a job outside of government or academia, and B) have no idea how to run either a hospital or a business.  That works so much better.    Some days, I think our health system would be better run by giving syringes and band-aids to drunken monkeys.   The high-level decision making wouldn’t be worse.

Thanks to that mess and the high unemployment rate that somehow hasn’t been remedied by the 27 bazillion imaginary jobs that have been save or created in the last 2 years, some people are hurting.    Not the poor.  We have so many “safety net” programs that the poor are covered.  I’m talking about the “too rich to be considered poor, but too poor to be comfortable”, the middle class.

If are much above the poverty line, you will stop qualifying for some of the affordable programs.  The higher above the line you go, the less you qualify for.  That makes sense, but the fact that we have so many safety net programs means there is a lot of demand created by all of the people who are getting their health care “free”.

That drives the prices up for the people who actually have to pay for their own care.  Yes, even if you have an employer-sponsored plan, you are paying for the health insurance.   That insurance is a benefit that is a part of your total compensation.  If employers weren’t paying that, they could afford higher wages.

As the price goes up, employers are moving to a high-deductible plans, which puts a squeeze on the employees’ budgets.   Employees–you and I, the people who actually have to pay these bills–are looking for ways to save money on the care, so they can actually afford to see a doctor.

In response to that squeeze, some unscrupulous people(#$%#@%! scammers) are capitalizing on the financial pain and selling “health discount plans” which promise extensive discounts for a cheap membership fee.   These plans are not insurance.   In a best-case scenario, the discount plans will get you a small discount from a tiny network of doctors and clinics.  Prescription drug plans are no better.  You may get a 60% discount, but only if you use a back-alley pharmacy in Nome, Alaska between the hours of 8 AM and 8:15 AM on January 32nd of odd leap years.

How can you tell it’s a scam?

The scammers will try to sell you on false scarcity. They’ll say the plan is filling up fast and you have to buy now if you want to get in on it.   For all major purchases, if you aren’t going to be allowed time to research your options, assume it’s a scam.  Good deals won’t evaporate.

They aren’t licensed. Call the Department of Commerce for your state and see if the company is a licensed insurance provider.  Pro tip: they aren’t.

They don’t want you to read the plan until after you’ve paid.   That’s a flashing, screaming, electro-shock warning sign for anything.  Once you’ve given them your money, your options are reduced.

The price is amazingly low.  Of course it is.  They aren’t actually providing any services, so their overhead is nonexistent.  They only have to pay for gas to get to the bank to cash your checks.

Really, the best way to judge if something is a scam is to go with your gut. Does it feel like a scam?  Do you feel like you’re getting away with something? Does it sound too good to be true?

To recap: health care/prescription discount plans = bad juju.

 

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Why do you need a trailer?

As I mentioned before, we recently bought a Chevy Tahoe.   When we bought it, we had a Ford F150 and a Dodge Caliber that we could have traded in, but decided to sell on our own, instead.

About a month ago, we sold the truck.   If you’ve never owned a truck, you probably don’t realize how handy they are to have.   From hauling brush to moving furniture to donating large amount of crap to Goodwill, we used our truck.

We’ve also been on a mission to replace all of our old crappy stuff with nicer things, without spending a ton to make that happen.  We’ve been selling stuff on Craigslist, then taking that money to buy other stuff we’re finding good deals on.

We found a 4×8 utility trailer for $300.   It came home with us.   The first thing I heard was “Why do you need a trailer?”

Now, we could have made do with delivery fees or rental trucks, but that seemed silly to me.

  • We recently replaced our living room couches.   One of our cats had mistaken one of them for a litter box.   No amount of enzyme cleaner gets that smell out of a couch cushion.   Shortly after that, my fat a** popped two of the springs out of the bottom.    Bad couch.    We found a good deal on brand new replacements, but the delivery fee would have been $80.
  • My wife found a beautiful entertainment center last week that matched the corner entertainment center we already have.  We don’t need another entertainment center, but after convincing the seller to sell us the side units without the center unit, we have glass-doored bookshelves that exactly match the largest piece of furniture we own.   Without the trailer, we would have had to rent a truck to get them home.
  • Tomorrow, we’ll be taking the last load of stuff out of my mother-in-law’s house.   Without the trailer, that would be several trips in the car.

We’ve had the thing for 3 weeks and it has almost paid for itself in time and money.   I think that makes for a good investment.  I don’t expect to buy a new living room set every month, but it’s nice to be able to deal with large things when the need arises.

Multiracial Skinhead Love Triangle

English: A goat
English: A goat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Honey, here on national television, in front of a live studio audience, I’ve got a secret I’d like to share.   You’re not our child’s mother.  I’ve been sleeping with the milkman.  And the goat.  Your mom is the star of my new adult website.  With the goat.  And the milkman.  I’ve got three other families, in three other cities.  I lost the house to my gambling addiction.   Those sores?  Herpesyphiligonoritis.  I got it from the foreign exchange student we hosted before I moved her to Dubuque and married her.  The goat gave her away.  The milkman cried.   Oh, and I wore your panties to the Illinois Nazi reunion.   I know how much you hate Illinois Nazis.  But I still love you.  And your sister.  Especially your sister.  She does that thing with her tongue….”

Why would anyone go on national television to share things like that?

More interesting: why would anybody stay on stage after hearing that?

Stay tuned.

I have this friend.  He bought a couple of cars.  He’s got some issues with money, partially revolving around a need to keep his assets below a certain threshold.   So he put the cars in his girlfriend’s name.  I know, it’s slightly crooked, but that makes the story more fun.

They broke up.

Recently, she called him to say she was suing him for the cars.  She wanted them.  She wanted to hurt him.  She was mean.   Somehow that turned into them agreeing to settle the case on Judge Joe Brown, on national television.

My friend spoke with the show’s producer, then last week, he was flown to California and put up in a hotel for a couple of days.   When he arrived at the TV studio, he was informed that it wasn’t Judge Joe Brown, but a new show that will start airing in the fall called, The Test.   According to CBS, The Test “is a one-hour conflict resolution talk show that will use lie detector and DNA tests to settle relationship and paternity disputes among the guests.”   Coincidentally, CBS also owns Judge Joe Brown.

My friend got on stage with Dr. Phil’s son, Jay McGraw, and was accused of cheating on his girlfriend and stealing her identity.   Lie detectors.  Yelling.  Accusations.

Why did he stay?

He wasn’t given his return plane ticket until they were done filming.

When he was done, they handed him a voucher for cab fare and the itinerary for his return flight.  Until then, he had no other way to get home.

That’s why people stay on stage.  It’s probably also why none of those shows ever have people with money of their own; they can find their own way home in a pinch.

Interesting side note:  The show paid $200  and booked the cheapest possible return flight, with a 6 hour layover.

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