What we do not do
What paying in advance does not lock in
It secures money. Whether it secures a price is a separate question with a written answer.
Planning ahead
Planning ahead
Two quite different things get called pre-planning, and they cost very different amounts: writing down what you want, and paying for it in advance.
The two halves, kept apart
They are usually sold together and they are not the same decision. One is a conversation and a file. The other is a financial arrangement with a trust account behind it. You can do the first without ever doing the second, and most people should.
Writing it down
Free, here and at any funeral home worth the name.
We sit down, go through the same questions we would ask your family, and keep the answers on file. Nothing is paid, nothing is committed, and you can change it whenever you like. It removes about eighty per cent of what makes the arrangement meeting hard, which is a family guessing.
- Records what you want and, just as usefully, what you do not want
- Names who you would like to make the decisions
- Collects the certificate information while somebody still remembers it
- Can be changed, or torn up, by you at any time
Paying in advance
A separate decision, and it is a financial one rather than a funeral one.
Money paid in advance to a funeral home in New York does not stay with the funeral home. It goes into a trust account in your name and it earns interest, and until you make it irrevocable it remains yours: you can take it back, and you can move it to a different funeral home if you move away or change your mind.
- Puts the money out of reach of a family arguing about it later
- Can be made irrevocable, which is usually done because of a Medicaid assessment and should be discussed with somebody qualified to advise on that
- Follows you if you move, because the money is yours and not ours
And what it does not do
- Freeze a price by itself. What is guaranteed and what is not has to be written into the agreement item by item — see the page on what pre-planning does not lock in.
- Cover the cemetery, the crematory or anything else bought from somebody who is not us
The honest version
What we would say if you rang and asked
One of these is worth doing at any age. The other is not for everybody.
Writing it down is worth doing at any age and costs nothing. Paying in advance suits some people and not others, and anyone who presses you towards it in a first conversation is selling rather than helping.
Nobody has to decide the second half today, and nobody should decide it in a first conversation. If a funeral home moves you towards paying before it has written down what you want, that is a sales meeting wearing the clothes of a planning meeting.
And if you are going to pay in advance, read what a pre-payment does not lock in before you sign anything. Money in a trust is not the same as a price held for fifteen years, and which lines are guaranteed has to be written down item by item.
What the conversation is actually like
An ordinary appointment with nothing at stake in it. People are usually surprised by how unremarkable it turns out to be.
About an hour, at a table, in daylight
Here, or at your own kitchen table if that is easier. Bring somebody with you or come alone. There is no part of it you have to prepare for and nothing you can get wrong.
The same questions your family would be asked
Where you were born, your parents' names, what you did for a living, what you want and what you do not. Most of it is what a death certificate asks for, collected while somebody still remembers it.
No money changes hands
Not a deposit, not a fee, not a charge for the appointment. Writing it down costs nothing here and at any funeral home worth the name.
Nothing is signed and nothing is committed
Having the conversation does not choose a funeral home. If you move away, change your mind, or decide against the whole idea, there is nothing to undo.
You take a copy away
Yours to keep, to change, and to give to whoever will be making the telephone call. The copy in your own drawer is the one that matters, because it is the one your family will find.
The part that surprises people is how much of the value sits in the second column: what you do not want. A family guessing errs towards more, out of love and out of fear of getting it wrong. Writing down that you would have hated a fuss is worth more than most of the choices you could make in the other direction.
It is also worth doing a long time before anybody would call it relevant. The people who find it most useful are rarely the oldest ones. They are the ones who have just watched a family argue over somebody else's funeral and decided not to leave that behind them.
If you do one of the two things on this page, do this one
Writing it down costs nothing, can be undone in a sentence, and removes most of what makes an arrangement meeting hard — which is a family guessing at what somebody would have wanted, on the day they are least able to guess well.
What goes in the record, and what to write down this evening
Nothing on this page is urgent
A pre-arrangement conversation takes about an hour, costs nothing and commits nothing. Ring when it suits you, or read what paying in advance does not lock in first.