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Two Together: Save £100!
Save £100 when you purchase two funeral plans together. Call us for more details.
Buy now, pay in January
Buy your funeral plan today and pay in January for peace of mind this Christmas. Click here for full T&Cs.
Two Together: Save £100!
Save £100 when you purchase two funeral plans together. Call us for more details.
Buy now, pay in January
Buy your funeral plan today and pay in January for peace of mind this Christmas. Click here for full T&Cs.
12 minute read
How to pay for a funeral is often the first thing we wonder to ourselves when we are faced with the prospect of organising one. The financial strain of funeral arranging is something that many people feel, and, naturally, it can make an already difficult time even harder to handle. In this article, we will examine how to pay for a funeral, looking at some of the different ways in which people approach the matter.
We’d also just like to acknowledge that you might find yourself reading this article because you yourself are confronted with the reality of needing to organise a funeral, and that we recognise the difficulty you might be experiencing. Aura’s funeral services are available to all who need them, whether they are looking for a direct cremation in the short-term, or a prepaid funeral plan for themselves for the future. We are here to help.
One of the first things we need to do when someone dies is to get an understanding of funeral costs, as this is one of the things that will help us understand how to pay for a funeral. In general there are different types of funeral costs which we can group into ‘necessary costs’ and ‘avoidable costs’. Necessary costs, typically included in the price quoted by a funeral director, may include:
Besides that, there might be certain avoidable burial or cremation costs which a family may need to pay. These could include.
You may also have to decide on the type of funeral that would be best, for instance, by weighing up cremation vs burial. This decision-making process will be guided by a mixture of your financial consideration, and personal or religious preferences. Starting a funeral checklist can help you to keep all of the funeral matters you need to see to organised, and to help you budget more effectively.
Many people intend to have their family rely on personal savings to pay for their funeral, where others prefer to get a funeral plan in place.
In using personal savings, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages. Personal savings can be more easily budgeted and accounted for than anything else, as they simply need to be held in some kind of account. This can give people a sense of control and certainty over the budget that they are working with.
However, there could be some difficulty attached to the use of personal savings. For one thing, if this is how you intend your family to pay for your future funeral, they will need to access your bank account when you are no longer here, and that is not as straightforward as you might think. They will likely need your Death Certificate in order to prove to the bank that you have died; in order to get that they will first need to register your death. In other words, their access to your money could depend on the completion of various protracted administrative processes, and in the meantime, they may find that they’ll need to pay for your funeral out of their own pockets before later being reimbursed.
Many people prefer the option of a prepaid funeral plan for securing their funeral choice. With a prepaid funeral plan, you can pay for your funeral in advance, as well as specify exactly what you want to happen beforehand, and spare your family from worrying about how to pay for things. With Aura, you will choose a close loved one to be our port of call, and they’ll notify us that it’s time to put things in place. At that point, we will withdraw the money we need to pay for everything from our secure, independently managed trust.
You can rest assured that our funeral plans are safe: Our trust gives every plan FSCS protection, which comes from our status as a company fully regulated by the FCA. It means that your money is safe from the potential impact of inflation and from rising funeral costs, unlike with cash savings held in a bank account. These could be eaten up by inflation, and, when the time comes, end up not being large enough to cope with sudden or unexpected cost-increases.
Before settling on a funeral plan, you can compare Aura funeral plans with other leading providers to get a better sense of what’s out there, or head to objective consumer research sites, such as Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert for some useful information.
An over-50s life insurance policy, sometimes called funeral insurance, is another way in which people attempt to secure their future funeral. In this model, a policy holder will pay monthly premiums until they die, and, upon death, their family will be able to claim a pay out in the form of a lump sum which they can put towards funeral expenses. There is not normally a medical before sign-up, and monthly premiums are often very small.
With that said, as pointed out by Martin Lewis, there are quite a few possible drawbacks with an over-50s life insurance policy which can be avoided with a prepaid funeral plan. For one thing, depending on when you start paying in and how old you are when you die, you could end up paying in more over your lifetime than your family will see in the payout. This means you could be better off by simply not bothering, and by just keeping the money you’d have otherwise spent to one side.
Over-50s life insurance policies are mainly used to cover funeral expenses, but they are not specifically designed with that in mind. It means that the payout may not keep pace with inflation, and that your insurance may not cover your funeral costs. On the other hand, with an Aura prepaid funeral plan, your money is held in our secure trust, protected against those things until it is needed.
Something else to bear in mind is that, with an over-50s life insurance policy, your family will usually need to share your Death Certificate with them in order to prove the fact of your death and receive the payout. If they are relying on this in order to pay for everything, it could put them under financial strain and cause them to worry when they are simply trying to grieve your loss. It can make time when they are trying to cope with the death of a parent or deal with the unexpected death of a loved one even harder than it already is. With an Aura funeral plan, they simply need to let us know that the time has come and we will take care of the rest, and there will be nothing left to pay for the family.
Finally, it’s worth bearing in mind that the manner of your death can impact the payout received by your family. For instance, if you have declared that you don’t smoke, but smoking was found to impact your cause of death, then they could refuse to payout altogether. Regardless of how you die, if you have purchased a funeral plan, it will always be valid.
The government can sometimes step in and help with funeral and direct cremation prices through various schemes for those who are eligible. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has two programs helping those who are eligible: the Bereavement Support Payment and the Funeral Expenses Payment. Your family may also be able to gain access to your bank or building society account in order to pay your funeral costs directly from your funds there; this can be done through the Grant of Probate scheme.
Your family might be able to claim funeral costs in this way, but the support payments generally have an eligibility criteria. They may need to be the next-of-kin of the person who has died, or the next-of-kin’s partner, and they will likely already need to be claiming some form of benefit payment from the state before they can claim any support. If they live in Scotland, they can apply for the funeral support payment on the Scottish government website.
As a further form of support, veterans of the British military may be eligible for burial benefits and other forms of funeral support; you can learn more about what to do when a veteran dies on the UK government website.
There are a range of charities and non-profit organisations out there that can sign-post to assistance, and possibly contribute to the cost of a funeral. Quaker Social Action charity can show you funding opportunities, whether through the government or industry-specific charities.
Other charities focus more on helping you with overcoming grief. For instance, Sue Ryder has recommendations on things like joining local death cafes. They can be a really great way to learn how to talk about death and dying with others who are grieving near you, but with a certain sense of anonymity away from those who may be grieving the loss of the same person who you are.
Some people turn to funeral loans and crowdfunding for the purpose of paying for a funeral.
For those who don’t have the means to pay out of pocket for a funeral at short notice, but who are not eligible for any government support, a funeral loan could be an option. Much like with any kind of financing, eligibility for a funeral loan will depend on your credit rating and ability to pay the loan back in instalments over time. A funeral plan is a way of avoiding the need to take out a loan, and of avoiding the interest payments that come with it.
More and more people, in response to financial difficulty, use crowdfunding to raise funeral funds. Families can ask their wider family and friends for a financial contribution towards funeral costs, or of the costs of a post-funeral celebration of life with families often choosing to split costs evenly among themselves.
It’s also possible to look for support from the general public, on such platforms as GoFundMe or JustGiving, which often help families to quickly raise the funds they need to pay for funeral expenses through the generosity of others. Once a request has been set up, it can be easily shared on social media, for instance, when announcing a death to friends and family, or sharing details of their funeral.
We may also feel that we can or should turn to family, friends, or our wider local and religious communities for support with funeral costs.
A death in the family can sometimes cause family tensions to flare, particularly if there has been difficulty in saying goodbye, or if there are different beliefs on death and funerals in the family for religious reasons. That said, the family can also be a back source of support, both of an emotional and financial kind, when facing the need to organise a funeral.
Much like with breaking bad news, try to broach the subject of sharing the burden of funeral costs in person, at a neutral venue, when it is a good time for those you are asking.
Organising a fundraiser or memorial, perhaps based around the interests or pursuits of the person who has died, can be an engaging and appealing way to raise funds for their funeral, as well as a touching way of remembering a loved one. For instance, if your loved one was a keen cyclist, you arrange a sponsored bike ride somewhere dear to them.
While the decline of religion in the UK has seen a corresponding decline in the number of religious funerals, seeking support, whether financial or otherwise, is still a way in which some people pay for a funeral. You can request support from your local congregation, or from the local clergy, if you are unsure of how to pay for a funeral. They may be able to bring financial support from the wider community, or point you to religious sources of funding.
We hope that this article has helped you feel more informed about how to pay for a funeral. If you’re currently organising a funeral for a loved one, we want you to feel as reassured and as well informed as possible. If you’d like Aura’s assistance with funeral arrangements, whether in the here and now or as part of a prepaid funeral plan for the future, our Angel team is always ready to take your call. We are the top-rated provider of ‘Cremation Services’ in the UK, with a score on Trustpilot of 4.9/5 stars. We are ready to offer you our compassionate, people-focused service whenever you need.
