Dr. Wayne Pernell walks through funeral options beyond traditional burial: cremation, human composting, memorial stones, open pyres, and home funerals. The average U.S. funeral costs $10,000 through a funeral home, but cheaper alternatives exist. The Funeral Consumers Alliance offers guidance on planning ahead.
What are a few of the next things that people should be thinking about and or taking action on?
They should actually think of how they want to dispose of their body. That's I mean, it seems like this simple thing like, well, I'll just call the funeral home and we'll be buried. I'm like, no, there's cremation now we know there's compost. There's turning yourself into stones. That's something that's fairly new as well. There's the open funeral pyre. Then there's the home funeral, which that requires so much planning. And for people that think that all funerals are very expensive too, and on average in the United States they are about $10,000, I'd say, if you use a traditional funeral home. But they don't have to.
Be.
I'd say one of the smartest things I learned from interviewing the executive director of the Funeral Consumers alliance is that people should budget first.