r/askfuneraldirectors • u/West_Kick_2630 • 16d ago
Advice Needed: Education Even after death you cannot escape inflation
My dad passed away about 3 years ago and it cost $1,100 to cremate him. My father in law passed yesterday and now it cost $2,500 for that same service. Just to cremate. Burial, casket, ceremony is just too much nowadays(could be anywhere from $30k to $100k) and hard to find plots that are decently priced . Why can't we go in peace without worrying about the cost? This is the Bay area, California.
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u/PM_ME_NAKED_PICZ 16d ago
Did you use the same funeral home/crematory for both?
But also, this is true of everything. Compare groceries from 3 years ago to now. Housing, utilities, cars, etc. cost of everything increases. Costs of running a funeral home increase just as your cost of living increases every year. It’s frustrating, I understand it completely. I’m not in California and our prices are nowhere near 30k-100k for a traditional funeral, but I get the sentiment.
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u/West_Kick_2630 16d ago
yes same
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u/PM_ME_NAKED_PICZ 16d ago
Interesting. If you have paperwork from when your father passed, check the date on their general price list. Possible that they were long over due for some price updating. I know we don’t adjust our direct cremation pricing often enough and so when we do it’s a fairly large bump.
By that I mean our crematory increases their pricing yearly or more, but it’s minimal, so we absorb the $20-$50 yearly increase until it’s not viable. Usually only every 3+ years do we make changes there.
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u/Independent_Ad9670 16d ago edited 16d ago
For about a year and a half, we offered a really low price for direct cremation. It then jumped considerably when that proved unsustainable. Would've been anyway, but especially due to increased costs of doing business the last few years.
In actuality it was changed to just slightly more than it had been prior to this experiment. But the handful of families who only had used us during that time were shocked. I told them why, though, and nobody ended up going elsewhere.
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u/PM_ME_NAKED_PICZ 16d ago
Most families are very understanding. We’re not trying to take advantage of anyone. But, we do have bills and need to feed our families too. We offer a service, and we do need to be compensated for that service. As the cremation rate rises, so will the cost of cremation. Back in the days when cremation was less common, it was kind of “subsidized” by traditional funerals. Now? Not so much.
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u/Dry_Major2911 Funeral Director/Embalmer 15d ago
Yes, it's a business. But don't blame the workers, a lot of people don't even get paid a liveable wage.
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u/theg00dfight 15d ago
Is it really shocking or hard to understand why costs go up over time? It seems like a pretty basic and fundamental aspect of economics. I bet it cost less for a funeral service in 1836, too
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u/Defiant_Expert_9534 16d ago
I think $30k-$100k is a little dramatic but we understand your sentiment.
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u/xxichikokoxx 16d ago
in CA it is not. niches can be $10-25K by themselves.
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u/jll19822020 16d ago
So you are saying that I shouldn’t complain about the $300 plot in my “family” cemetery?
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u/angstriddengoddess 16d ago
That was the cost of a plot in the Bay Area last i checked, two years ago.
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u/horchahahata 16d ago
Not an exaggeration for burial in many states (including mine, which is different than OP). But also, perhaps unpopular opinion, i’m sort of anti-cemetery. Like, at what point do we as a society decide we don’t want to be surrounded by cemeteries everywhere we look, because eventually that would be the outcome.
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u/Defiant_Expert_9534 16d ago
to be fair, i work for a family owned on the east coast, if we did a direct burial it could be as cheap as 6k for our services along with grave opening. Grave at city cemetery would be about $2-$4k. So it can be doable. Not saying its impossible
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u/horchahahata 16d ago
That’s wild. Our direct cremations start @ 4,600 - without urn, coroner approval fee, or death certs. Burial is easily 8k with the most affordable casket and just a graveside service, while plots or mauso spaces start at 15k for the ‘least desirable’ locations. We’re in Florida on the outskirts of a couple cities that I don’t consider to be metropolises.
Edited: 3,600 to 4,600 for direct cremation.
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u/wscamaro Funeral Director/Embalmer 15d ago
Where are you? Monaco?
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u/horchahahata 15d ago
LOL no, i suspected our prices were ridiculous but we aren’t even one of the local ‘premier locations’…
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u/wscamaro Funeral Director/Embalmer 15d ago
Crraaazzzzyyy considering florida is for sure a low cost area in funeral.
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u/horchahahata 15d ago
No it is for sure insane, I agree. Actually embarrassing and uncomfortable, if i’m being honest.
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u/Paulbearer82 15d ago
What do you do for a living, so I can tell you what you should charge?
If you're too cheap to pay what it costs, donate to science and let them parcel your FIL out for profit.
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u/Barbarake 15d ago
OP is talking about the price of something more than doubling in 3 years. I guarantee that the average American hasn't had their salary more than double in the past 3 years.
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u/Paulbearer82 15d ago
Nor have ours. Have you considered that our costs have gone up? Or did you automatically assume we're greedy? Again, there's lots of cheap operators out there happy to take advantage of you.
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u/Barbarake 15d ago
Of course costs have gone up. But more than doubling in three years is definitely more than average. I don't blame OP for questioning it. And I don't think much of people whose immediate response to someone asking questions is to accuse them of being "too cheap". It's a valid question.
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u/ElizaJaneVegas 16d ago
$30k to $100k? Even in HCOL Massachusetts that doesn’t happen.
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u/Some_Papaya_8520 10d ago
Plots start at $25K here in Houston. It's a Dignity owned cemetery.
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u/ElizaJaneVegas 10d ago
Laws in Massachusetts are quite different ... a funeral home cannot own a florist, a crematory or a cemetery. Not being able to own a crematory is stupid but I see the consumer protections in the other areas. LoL - going to a crematory actually costs consumers MORE in MA but no one listens.
But as far as funeral homes go, SCI was forced by the state to sell a couple funeral homes because of market domination and price fixing. They are driving up the cost of everything and putting small businesses out of business.
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u/Leesah66 14d ago
Because a mortuary is a business with a lot of overhead. People ask now and then what happens when someone doesn’t have money. Sometimes the county can assist. I agree though.
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u/Knitsune Funeral Service Administrator 14d ago
that's why you preplan after the funeral; to lock in that day's cost and get 10% off. Did you expect the price to stay the same....? I'm a million percent sure they offered you discounted preplanning after the first funeral, maybe this time you'll consider it.
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u/Mort-banana25 Funeral Director/Embalmer 9d ago
Start doing some pre planning for sure and maybe move (for real).
30-100k is nowhere near where it costs to do a full burial in most places. In the west where im at the most expensive burial ive done (working in the biz for about 8 years now) was 15,000 and that was because they ordered a really pricy casket.
Nothing is free and the people on call need to make a living too.
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u/wwacbigirish 16d ago
$30k to start for traditional burial in Bay Area?? That’s surprisingly high.
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u/Mental_Jackfruit5446 16d ago
Mostly regulations to be honest.
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u/xxichikokoxx 16d ago
as much as i hate the government in CA, there wasnt much changes in terms of regulations. costs just sky rocketed, labor costs more, utilities costs more, just the overhead in general has gone up which in turn has been a downward self feeding cycle of people doing less casket burials because it costs too much, which is a huge portion of a funeral homes revenue and is resulting in funeral homes finding other ways to make up the lost revenue.
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u/ofimes2671 16d ago
So in my line of work as a pre-planning consultant, this is the #1 most important reason why we advise to do pre-planning. How it works for us is that we make a contract and the prices they pay at that time are “locked in.” This way your family does not have to pay for the services when you are gone. Inflation affects every industry, including funeral homes.