Money. It’s that simple. You’ve probably been there yourself – when a loved one dies, emotions are high, guilts and old “I’m sorry’s” never said come rushing to the surface, and the family stumbles into the funeral director’s office and ends up spending a lot of money on a very nice funeral.
If you instead plan your funeral now, you give your family several gifts: first, they don’t recklessly spend on an event that lasts just a few days and instead will have more money to use for support, education, and other important parts of living. Second, you spare them the raw emotions involved in choosing a funeral – guilt, regrets, arguments among family members, and more. Instead, they will have more space and time to begin grieving you, which is a necessary process for emotional health.
Additionally, you have made your wishes known, so you are reducing the chances of your family doing something other than what you would want.
Finally, a prepaid funeral can be part of a prudent MassHealth planning process. If an individual is entering a nursing home and asking MassHealth to foot the bill, the individual can have only $2000 to her name and the spouse only about $115,000. If a couple has more than this, then in order to help come down to the requisite monetary limits, it financially makes sense to use some of the excess funds to pay for a funeral, since there is no doubt that this is something that would inevitably have to be paid for. The same logic applies for a single person.