Cost of funeral/plot

[Anonymous]

Do all your parents/in-laws have it figured out? This came up because of recent deaths in dh's family. Dh's parents have no plots, no money. What happens then? Is a plot not tens of thousands?

[Anonymous]

If they don't care and/or selfish enough to make it their kid's problem. They get cremated and ashes spread somewhere.

If they do care and are not selfish, and they want to be buried, they can make the arrangements now. Now. There is a good second market for plots. Like timeshares people can't get rid of them. Google for it or look at the classifieds in the town's local paper.

[Anonymous]

I just did this, so here are the numbers for my parents. We just paid $1200 for my parents single plot (my dad had been cremated during the pandemic). It will be another $1800 to open the grave and put in the concrete footer for the headstone. So the fees to the cemetery are $3000. They don’t have a yearly maintenance fee. The town requires a vault, which the funeral home adds and that is another $2500. We paid $1200 for a coffin from Costco. The funeral home fees on top of that begin at $7000. The funeral fees for my mom are about $15,000 (which included transporting my mom from VA to NJ, embalming, use of Hearse, funeral director, the fee to the cantor, organist and church, and a dozen other things that have charges associated with it). Flowers are another $500, reception at a restaurant $2000, mass cards $100, etc.

[Anonymous]

Sone states and counties offer help. If you go further out it’s cheaper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they don't care and/or selfish enough to make it their kid's problem. They get cremated and ashes spread somewhere.

If they do care and are not selfish, and they want to be buried, they can make the arrangements now. Now. There is a good second market for plots. Like timeshares people can't get rid of them. Google for it or look at the classifieds in the town's local paper.

It’s not selfish if there is no money.

[Anonymous]

My parents and in laws don’t care. Half of them are already dead and we scattered their ashes in meaningful places.

[Anonymous]

PP again, I should add costs varies widely, it’s worth shopping around. Ours it’s at the more expensive end because I didn’t. When we had my dad cremated the prices varied by 1000s of dollars. For the same exact thing. I had more time than to pull that together.

[Anonymous]

My parents bought burial plots in Aspen, CO in the 1980’s because they always wanted real estate there. My dad never wanted to be cremated and when he was dying we did the research and it would have cost around $15k just to have his body transported from MD to CO. He died in the winter and they weren’t doing internments so it would have been more for storage fees. This was in addition to coffin, funeral, etc. He decided cremation was a more logical choice. It was under $1k and we brought him as a carry on when we flew there. Cremation is the way. If you want to house your loved on there are super cheap urns online.

[Anonymous]

No money means you get cremated. Both of my surviving parents have plots and have prepaid their funerals. Only because the other one died first and they were forced to though.

[Anonymous]

Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

I agree with what you say theoretically. I don’t like my in laws at all but their wishes are to be buried in an actual cemetery. So wdyd then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

I learned recently that a lot of non-Jewish cemeteries require an expensive scammy coffin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

I agree with what you say theoretically. I don’t like my in laws at all but their wishes are to be buried in an actual cemetery. So wdyd then?

I can buy it for themselves, or the surviving one can buy it for the one who dies first, and you can do whatever you think is right for The one who dies second. Dead people don't get a vote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

I agree with what you say theoretically. I don’t like my in laws at all but their wishes are to be buried in an actual cemetery. So wdyd then?

Keep your nose out of your in-laws' business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why spend the money on a burial and a plot, whether or not they have the money? You might as well set that money on fire. Between the embalming, the coffin, and the concrete vault it's an environmental nightmare. And to do what? Preserve a body for *slightly* longer so we don't have to face the squick factor of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all bodies decompose? And forget about flying a body across the country.

Cremation is a step up both cost-wise and environmentally, but it's still pretty impactful given the fuel use and the greenhouse gases, not to mention the mercury in any fillings that might get aerosolized.

There are cheaper and greener ways to go, such as a burial plot in a green cemetary (no embalming, you're buried in a simple wooden box or a shroud).

But overall, money should be spent on the living, not the dead. And I'm not talking about maximizing an inheritance -- with my mom, who doesn't have a whole lot of money so I'm never inheriting, she and I would both rather if money that might have been spent on a burial etc. went to a charity instead. Leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.

I agree with what you say theoretically. I don’t like my in laws at all but their wishes are to be buried in an actual cemetery. So wdyd then?

Keep your nose out of your in-laws' business.

They are entirely broke so it is my business. Why would I care otherwise?