CNN: Beating the high cost of funerals

Its a topic that intrigued us: how are people coping with funeral costs in a tough economy?

Watch Kyra Phillips interview with Josh Slocum of the Funeral Consumers Association and learn about the big mark up on casket costs and why embalming is actually optional.

What do you think? Leave your comments.

Joshua Slocum, the Executive Director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, recommend AGAINST prepaying for a funeral for the following reasons:

1. Only a few states have adequate legal protections for prepaid funeral customers.

2. In many states, you can lose a significant portion of what you prepaid if you cancel or transfer your account to another funeral home or cemetery. This means the original funeral home or cemetery gets paid for having provided you with nothing.

3. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone missing, or have been stolen, from supposedly safe prepaid funeral trusts. Go to Google news and put in the terms prepaid funeral NPS IFDA for a recent sample.

4. At FCA, we get at least 10,000 calls, emails, and letters every year. Of the complaints we receive, prepaid funerals are one of the single biggest categories. In my experience, those who prepay falsely believe everything is taken care of, but they *dont* tell their kids the details of the contract. They dont give the survivors the tools they need if circumstances change (such as dying out of state, the funeral home changing ownership, etc.) Those whose parents have prepaid are often less well taken care of than those who have a frank family *planning* discussion about funerals.

There is one situation in which it may be a good idea to prepay: if youre facing a Medicaid spend down. But the majority of those who prepay are not in that situation, and do not understand the options theyve given up or what they stand to lose if they change their minds.

I realize that those of you who had a good experience when your parents prepaid their funerals arent likely to believe how big a problem they are. Im glad that it went smoothly for you, and I know that it does happen. But as a national expert on this for consumers, the picture is much worse around the country than you probably know. We simply cannot recommend prepaid funerals until the states and the feds take effective financial regulation of these products seriously.

Joshua Slocum
Executive Director
Funeral Consumers Alliance
http://www.funerals.org

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[FortNikitaBullion]

Can't you donate your body to science and they pay for all these expenses?