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Death, what an ugly word but we all know it is a realty that everyone meets at some point in their life. A prearranged funeral plan can take a lot of stress off a family during their time of grief. Why you should buy a pre-need funeral plan can be a puzzling question to answer without some deep thought in the process.

Have you ever worried about how your family will afford your burial expenses? With a pre-need funeral plan the stress of planning a funeral is taken care of for them. You can arrange everything before hand right down to the place of burial, grave liner, headstone or memorial and even the casket. The pre-need funeral plan also is paid for in advance and is normally locked in at the price you agreed to and never goes up. Your pre-need funeral plan can not only save your family in the future but takes away the stress of planning a funeral on the harshest days of their lives.

Pre-need funerals also known as prearranged funerals can also include cremations. Choosing the urn, memorial garden and service can all be part of your pre-need funeral. Again you can take out a pre-need funeral arrangement and lock in to the prices you agreed to and even if the prices go up in the mean time you are assured that you arrangements are secure. All the details will be handled according to what you chose as your pre-need funeral plan.

Many pre-need funeral plans are available that not only cover the casket, grave liner, or urn but they can include the funeral service, transportation of loved ones in another state, flowers, memorial cards, cremation costs and many other services depending on your pre-need funeral plan contract. Various pre-need funeral plans are available in different prices depending on what kind of service you might require from traditional to cremation plans.

Pre-need funeral plans work well for everyone and are actually a good investment for your family’s future. An unexpected death in the family can cause a financial burden when least expected. Having a pre-need funeral plan already purchased can ease the financial situation for your family and ease the the stress facing the family letting them focus on other matters that need to be dealt with. They also work well for someone who has no family members to take care of their burial when the time comes and can leave the situation well in hand with a funeral home that offers pre-need funeral plans. Another aspect to a pre-need funeral plan is that you can control how you want your burial to take place. You could control if the burial was traditional or a cremation, if you had a church service or a graveside, the design of flowers to where you last resting place would be.

A pre-need funeral plan shouldn’t be considered a horrible thing to do or think about but as a great gift to your family and your future. You can have one planned at various costs that are affordable and never have to think of it again and they are secure for when you do need it. Buying a pre-need funeral is a smart decision and can even be made on a monthly payment plan so anyone can afford to invest in securing the resting place of their choice while easing a burden for their loved ones.

Grab a copy of our guide to funerals

Merrill Lynch & Co. has agreed to pay $18 million to end a state investigation into its investment services to a troubled trust fund managed by the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, the state insurance division said Wednesday.

The money will be used to help offset potential losses that funeral homes face in providing services to consumers who pre-paid for their funerals. More than 40,000 Illinois consumers own so-called pre-need contracts. But the trust fund that is supposed to pay for their funerals had a shortfall of more than $50 million last year.
State regulators have focused on Merrill Lynch’s role in the trust fund’s losses. Edward Schainker, a Merrill Lynch broker in Springfield, was the IFDA’s investment adviser starting in 1980 when the trade group created the trust to manage the consumer deposits.

The insurance division on Wednesday also revoked Schainker’s insurance license and ordered him to pay a $100,000 penalty, the maximum fine allowed under Illinois law. The secretary of state’s office also has suspended his broker’s license.

Schainker allegedly advised the IFDA to buy more than 300 life insurance policies because they offered investment returns that would be tax exempt, according to a complaint filed by the secretary of state’s office. A life-insurance division of Merrill Lynch issued 129 policies and has received more than $32 million in premiums, the complaint said.

Ha!

funeral scams

I don’t do the day to day stuff of a funeral director anymore, I spend most of my time writing and promoting ways for people to get the funerals they want and doing battle with the funeral industry.

However, I do like to keep my finger in and so I decided to catch up on some reading. I’m glad I did and I have to tell you I’m furious.

I take it for granted that funeral homes around the country are ripping people off left, right and centre but to have these practises backed up by the government has knocked the wind out of me.

The Federal Trade Commissions (FTC’s) “Funerals: A Consumer Guide” and the General Services Administartion (GSA’s) “2008 Consumer Action Handbook” tell families that a funeral, casket and vault will cost $6,000 – a RIP-OFF price promoted by the industry to deceive families to think that this is a fair price and be ready to by robbed by this much.

PRICE TRUTH: A FAIR price is about $3,000. The FTC and the GSA should have said that a fair price would be about $3,000. The false price has helped mortuaries throughout the U.S. to rob families of more than $3,000 each. $1,950 to $2,400 is a fair price for a complete funeral and beautiful casket.

All funeral homes claim “good reputation and honesty.”

However, nearly all funeral homes, including the best-known and those near you, overcharge (rip-off) most families $2,000 to $8,000 for huge profit. This rip-off totals $8-9 billion a year from 2 million families having funerals, causing serious financial and emotional harm.

Don’t let it happen to you! Get knowledgable and nip these guys in the bud. Our free guide to funerals will tell you all you need to know. As for the government…I’ll write Obama an email and let you know.

Funeral directors are turning down their thermostats, doing their own laundry and not buying new hearses, according to a new National Funeral Directors Association survey.

The reason: Funeral home revenues are weakening as more consumers opt for cremations, cheaper caskets, shorter viewing periods and cheaper wakes. Also suffering are trusts and stock funds in which funeral homes invest money from clients who prepay for their funeral arrangements.

New hearses often are the first cutback. They cost about $80,000, according to the association. The trade-in market for them is small and they get poor fuel economy.

Sheets and towels used to move bodies are increasingly laundered in-house, according to the new informal survey.

Consumers are spending less on funerals, too, mainly by switching from caskets to cremations.

Cremations rose 46 percent nationwide from 1997 to 2007, according to association figures. The switch to cremation, which represents from 24 percent to 35 percent of all funerals, has undercut the market in metal caskets. Funeral homes sell them for an average of around $2,250, according to the directors association.

Total U.S. funeral costs averaged $7,323 in 2006, according to the association’s latest figures, not counting cemetery and monument costs.

Fancy ornamental hardware sales are off, too, funeral directors say. Sheet metal urns are outselling copper and bronze ones. Mahogany-stained coffins are supplanting solid mahogany ones.

Still, funeral home directors can anticipate rising demand. The current U.S. death rate of 8 per 1,000 per year is projected to rise to 9.3 by 2020 and 10.9 by 2040.

With the funeral homes tightening their belts please take a copy of our free funeral guide to make sure you know all the pitfalls and tricks to look out for.

The Internet site laptopsdirect.co.uk has come up with a rather novel way of advertising, laptopsdirect.co.uk will actually now help you with the cost of funerals, just by letting them advertise at the funeral.

With all the economic problems the world is having at the moment the unexpected cost of a funeral could be crippling, for some people who are not prepared for such a eventuality. The average cost of a basic funeral is about £5000 and that’s if you’re lucky! Laptopsdirect.co.uk are trying to help people by sponsoring funerals, by allowing laptopsdirect.co.uk to put their logo on certain elements of a funeral, they will pay the cash for it. So for example if you were to have a coffin drape with the laptopsdirect.co.uk logo on it, that would intern earn you £100, if however there are 100 or more people at the funeral then, you could earn £200 the list of options is rather extensive.

The idea is certainly novel, other companies have been thinking of similar advertising campaigns, recently Durex have decided to become a sponsor for Christenings up and down the UK!

Personally I’d advice you to cut the cost of any funeral by getting our free guide to funerals