Preplanning a funeral has been described as one of the best gifts you can buy your relatives / friends. This takes a huge load off their chest and they can concentrate on grieving and the other details that are involved in this process. Prepaying a funeral is paying (or an estimation) for the funeral ahead of time. Preplanning and prepaying go hand in hand but both can be done separately. 

Decisions that need to be made:

1. Pick a Funeral Home (which will pick up the body)
2. Burial or Cremation
3. Viewing/Visitation or Not
4. Coffin or Not
5. Type of Funeral 

• Traditional – Funeral home viewing / church or funeral home service and cemetery service.
• Direct Cremation – No embalming is needed or required and a memorial service can be held in a couple of days of even a month or two later.
• Direct Burial – No viewing or visitation and embalming is not needed or required and the memorial service usual follows at either burial site or later
• Home Burial – Legal in all but 8 states and is a small but growing option.

Action Step: If you preplan / pre-fund your funeral please let relatives and or friends know where the information is kept. A safety deposit box is probably not the best place to keep the information due to deaths on weekends or holidays.

Action Step: If you choose cremation and are not interested in a “showing” then you do not need to embalm the deceased and incur the cost.

Golden Nugget: Cremation in the US has gone from 3% of all deaths in 1960 to an estimated 45% today. Nevada leads the country with almost 75% while Mississippi is still around 10%. The major reasons for the increase include many factors including religion (Catholicism outlawed cremation until 1963), family and cost.