Funerals

sassyblue

On the other hand you can do it yourself and save thousands.... A man l work with has recently had his mum cremated (don't worry she was dead first ) he bought a wicker coffin online for £100, collected and delivered all relavant documentation from the hospital to crematorium etc, and l'm sure it came to less than £500

The crematorium was the main payment but l'm sure it was only around £300?? There was an additional payment for 'Pollution fees' or something, you'd have thought they'd have hidden that. :cool:

They went and had a word with the mortuary department of the hospital where she died and they dressed her and put her in the coffin, he and his friends took the coffin in a transit van to the crematorium and carried it in themselves.

It's not for everyone of course! but his mum (and dad) were very against he and his sister paying funeral costs and wanted it that way.

big5

Mojisola wrote: »

When my uncle was given a terminal diagnosis, he shopped around the local undertakers and found the one he liked best. He chose the Co-op and my aunt got the membership points when she paid.

He said that a few were a bit disconcerted when he said he was organising his own funeral. They were used to healthy people buying pre-paid funerals or dealing with the relatives of the deceased but hadn't dealt with a terminally-ill individual before.

One of my neighbours was terminally ill and organised her own funeral (& I have to say it was one of the nicest funerals I've ever been to). Morbid as it sounds, she was told she had a matter of days to live so she went ahead and booked it for the following week. Her husband told me she got a discount for booking in advance! :eek:

juliep123

I'm thinking of leaving my body to medical science - how much more money saving can you get:T
Jules

londonsurrey

There was a coffin on the Grabbit Now forum, £100 delivered. I was so very tempted to get it for myself, but I'm trying to declutter, and had to resist. Lol.

Mojisola

juliep123 wrote: »

I'm thinking of leaving my body to medical science - how much more money saving can you get:T
Jules

You can offer it but it may be refused so you do need to have a back-up plan.

Corelli

Scary amounts of money here, I'm now quite worried about my mother and MIL dying - apart from the grief of course.

I've got a book called the Natural Death Handbook which is probably very out of date now with contacts for non rip off undertakers and suppiers of coffins etc. Its about all aspects of death, a bit like the natural/home birth movement for the other end of life.

One moment, I'll google and see if their website is still there ...

ah yes, here is a link to the most obviously MS page http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/index.php?page=keeping-funeral-costs-down

When my son dies as a baby we were very well supported by a local independant firm of undertakers and I suspect if I could afford it I would stay with them although my family has also had good service from the Co-op. We actually had to pay nothing for the coffin even though we did not like the standard crib type baby coffins and they made us a 'proper' coffin with a name plate. It cost very little in comparison with what is being talked about here for adults but it was a long time ago and a stressful time and I can remember very little about all the costs.

Hermia

duchy wrote: »

The thought of prepaying mine to remove that pressure from my family is definitely something I'm now seriously considering. I wouldn't want anyone feeling they needed to pay for an expensive coffin for example -so if I've already made those decisions and taken care of the payment I think it would be far easier on them

My mum has pre-arranged her funeral partly because of the money aspect, but also because I am not religious and would have no idea what hymns/readings she would like. When my dad died we had trouble with probate despite my mum and him having joint accounts, he having the simplest will and there not being a huge amount of money. You just can't assume your next of kin will be able to get their hands on the money straight away.

When my dad died we went for the cheaper end of the market (he would have spun in his grave if we had spent a fortune on his funeral!). We chose the second-cheapest coffin as we couldn't see the point of paying a fortune for something that was going to go up in flames. I couldn't believe the prices of the most expensive coffins. The undertakers we used were really lovely and never tried to push us into anything.

PasturesNew

If you've got a CoOp card there's a discount on the bill too - about 3%. But I think that only applies if you settle the bill quickly.

What they don't tell you is that if there's a will/estate then you don't have to pay the bill at all - all you do is tell them to forward the bill to the solicitor that's dealing with all of that and the funeral cost is settled out of the estate when all the other financial matters are sorted out.

pearl123

juliep123 wrote: »

I'm thinking of leaving my body to medical science - how much more money saving can you get:T
Jules

If you do decided to do this then don't just state so in your will that you wish to leave you body to medical science but also do the donkey work so that your grieving relatives don't have to look into how it is done once your are gone.
We were told that we could'nt leave a relative as requested to medical science as they'd picked up MRSA from hospital and they did not want to touch the body.

peachyprice

londonsurrey wrote: »

There was a coffin on the Grabbit Now forum, £100 delivered. I was so very tempted to get it for myself, but I'm trying to declutter, and had to resist. Lol.

Ah, but you could have used it as a coffee table for the time being and put all your clutter that you just couldn't part with in it