average cost of funeral?

moggins

My Mum's already paid for her funeral and looking at how the prices have risen since I am so glad she did. It cost her £1800 at the time, and that was for two cars and announcements in the paper, basically an average funeral with a middle priced coffin. It may be worth your mum enquiring at a local funeral directors if they do pre-paid funerals. Mum had a little windfall when she sold a Beatles autograph for over £1000 at auction and decided to make sure we weren't all left to sort everything out afterwards. I hold a copy of the receipt and a card with a direct number on and when Mum goes all I have to do is phone them and they will handle the rest.

VickyA_2

My grandpa died last April and his "low frills" funeral cost £3000. He was buried in the same plot as my grandma, so the plot didn't have to be bought. The trip in the cars was just 1 mile up the road. Oh, but it did include speakers etc as the church wasn't "wired for sound" and being a very rural church it could only hold 80 people, with a further 80 people standing outside.

Cazzdevil

My 21 month old niece died unexpectedly on Christmas morning, and I was absolutely shocked when I found out how much her funeral cost. By the time the headstone is paid for it'll be about £2500, which considering the casket and grave are child size is an astronomical amount of money!

poppy_f1

my mum and dad approx 12 years ago prepaid their funerals with the coop = picked the coffins and everything
tbh it was a godsend when my dad died last year, everything apart from the arrangements had been sorted so it was less for us to deal with and we didnt have to go through the exerpience of picking the coffin etc
obv when my mum dies i will still have to go through it all again although making the arrangements will be less of an ordeal, plus i cant praise the coop enough
its something i'd deffo think about when im more settled

Doozergirl

I spent about £1800 on my mum's funeral. She was cremated, we didn't have any limos for the family as I had a black car at the time. I think I spent another £200 on a woodland burial and plaque.

Shopping around isn't usual but the first place I went to I hated and I didn't like the coffins. They had a bit of an issue with organ donation so they wanted me to speak with the hospital first. I took the opportunity to find a different funeral director and it was £700 cheaper even with a nicer style coffin (I only wanted it simple, not gaudy).

I also organised my own flowers for the coffin because I didn't like the old fashioned arragements which the funeral directors offer. They were just stunning; big, dark green foliage, huge white roses like tennis balls, other more delicate dark purple flowers and trailing ivy. We only had those flowers and asked for donations to a charity instead.

I hate to say, but I do think they take advantage of the fact you don't shop around on occassions like this so perhaps organising your own is a better option.

vippymini

i know its not much help now but when my mum died last year my dad got help in paying for the funreal..

its worth a read of this

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Bfsl1/BenefitsAndFinancialSupport/DG_10018660

achtunglady

Natty68 wrote:

I had to sort out my mums funeral in December of last year and with a really nice send off .. it was a humanist funeral, as in not religious, and we went for a package that the funeral directors did. The package itself cost £2,500 and that included a limo, embalming, and the crematorium bits. There was then the payment for the two drs to release the body so that she could be cremated. Plus all extras, flowers, paper announcement etc were paid.. The total came to about £3,200. This is coming out of mum's estate when it is all sorted out as basically she didnt have any money put by, but had dictated in her will that the funeral was to be paid for out of her house sale.

Condolences on the loss of your mother. My other half wants a humanist funeral, where did you have the funeral service?

sticher

Cazzdevil, how terrible for you and your family, my thoughts are with you.

With regard to funeral costs, it depends on what you want - burials are quite a bit more expensive than cremations.

When my lovely Mum died last May, we had a horse drawn hearse, two cars and a fantastic Minister who was quite happy to go with as much or as little religion in the service as we wanted. He did a lovely talk about Mums life (he came round to see us before the service and had a chat about her). We went for a plainer coffin as we liked it best and it was covered in flower anyway (and as someone has said it only gets destroyed). I think all this was around £1800.

We bought our flowers from a local florist which were very reasonable, although we had quite a few different things. Although people do say that the flowers are a waste of money, we took comfort from the amount of flowers Mum received - very heartwarming to know so many would miss her.

Hope your Mum gets to enjoy some of her money.