Planning for the future with prepaid funeral plans

Planning helps you to meet many of life’s major events. With a plan in place, you may rest easier in the knowledge that arrangements have been made for them to proceed smoothly and in a way that suits you.

Although it might involve some of the more difficult and more anxious decisions, planning ahead for your funeral is also likely to give you that same peace of mind. Making your own plans for your funeral saves family and loved ones the anxiety of deciding whatever it is you might have wanted and what might be the most fitting and suitable ceremony.

Planning ahead for your funeral may also save them a good deal of money – and here’s how.

Who is going to pay for your funeral?

Citizens’ Advice explains that whoever arranges a funeral is the person who becomes responsible for paying the bill – to the funeral directors and for any additional services such as flowers, memorial stones, and reception, for example.

Prepaid funeral plans, however, provide you a way of planning for the future that avoids leaving your relatives and loved ones with that bill.

But prepaid funeral plans do much more than that – they also let you pay at today’s prices for a funeral that may not take place until many years from now, so avoiding the more or less inevitable escalation likely to be seen as a result of inflation.

In the past decade, funeral costs have risen by as much as 70% – much more than the underlying rate of inflation in practically any other cost of living – to a current average of £4,078, reported the Metro newspaper on the 13^th of September 2017.

What does the prepayment cover?

This depends entirely on the funeral plan you choose – and also reflects the quite wide variations in average funeral costs from one part of the country to another.

Nevertheless, a prepaid funeral plan typically guarantees to cover all the normal costs generally charged by funeral directors – namely, transport of the deceased to the funeral home, care and preparation of the body, the provision of a coffin, a hearse to the burial or cremation site and attendance by the funeral directors at the funeral ceremony.

Additional elements of the ceremony, such as floral tributes, cars for mourners, memorial stones, and a reception or wake, you or your relatives might want to arrange separately.

Whatever type of funeral plan you choose, however, it is important to understand carefully and in detail precisely what costs are going to be covered when the time comes.

In the meantime, any national prepaid funeral plan provider which is registered with the Funeral Planning Authority (FPA) undertakes to safeguard the monies you have paid in advance by placing them in a separate, independent trust fund or using the proceeds to purchase a whole of life insurance policy in your name, which pays out the sum you need for the funeral you have chosen.

If you are planning for the future, with an eye to keeping all your affairs in order, a prepaid funeral plan may give you security and peace of mind in knowing that your final wishes and arrangements have already been put in hand.