What are The Pitfalls of Prepaying for a Funeral?
A typical sales pitch for a prepaid funeral might sound like this: No one wants to leave the burden of decision-making on their children in their time of grief … prearranging your funeral brings you and your family peace of mind. Or like this: Protect yourself against inflation — prearranging your funeral gives you today’s prices for your service in the future. Each technique plays on anxieties near and dear to the American heart — the effect your death will have on your family; rising prices — and each is misleading. “Preneed”* funerals may not cover every item of service you and your family expect, and there’s often no guarantee the money you pay today will keep up with inflation to pay the cost of the service you’ve picked out. Read more below the fold. . . . *A note on terminology — the term “preneed,” as used by the industry, means a funeral purchased before death. Funeral directors often use this term interchangeably with “prearranging,” but prearrangement can be and is frequentl
