Posts Tagged ‘funeral plans’

The Funeral Planning Timeline: What Happens (and When) after a Death Occurs

Although every death is different, most people can expect a fairly standard series of events to follow the passing of a loved one. There are decisions to be made, a funeral to be planned, and finances to arrange. Friends and relatives must be notified, and you’ll need an opportunity to say your final goodbyes. (more…)

What is an End-of-Life Doula, and Do I Need One?

Most people associate the word and profession doula with the birthing process. Traditionally, a doula is a non-medical holistic professional who assists women in labor and delivery—providing emotional support, training and education, physical assistance, and services to the family. Not every woman who gives birth uses a doula, but many women who want a more natural birth process prefer to have these professionals at their side rather than more formal (and seemingly impersonal) medical professionals. (more…)

Breaking “Alternative” Funeral Plans to Your Family

You have gone through your funeral planning options. You have started a funeral pre-payment plan that makes sense for your lifestyle. Regardless of your age, health, or financial situation, you have removed a huge burden from your family by coming up with your own funeral arrangements—and putting them into action long before you leave this world. (more…)

Maintaining the Right Funeral Planning Expectations

Because funeral planning is your final farewell to a loved one who helped shaped your life, you may have high expectations when it comes to the service. It makes sense that you’d expect perfection—after all, you are paying thousands of dollars in funeral costs for a one-day event. You have family members and friends flying in from far away to attend. And you have a funeral director to oversee the details to ensure that nothing goes wrong. (more…)

Funeral Insurance for the Elderly

The time of life when most people take care of funeral planning—in their eighties—is the one time when things like life insurance and retirement packages are hard to come by. There is no question that the best time to set funds aside for a funeral is when you are still working and doing your regular estate planning. Your health is good enough to get better premiums on life insurance, you still earn enough income to put a little extra aside, and you are in a great position to know what kind of farewell you will eventually get. (more…)

Funeral Flower Colors and Their Meanings

Although there tend to be rules regarding the color of your funeral attire (dark is best, with black, gray, and navy blue taking the lead), funeral flowers are more relaxed in terms of color choice. As long as you keep the arrangement tactful, you can send any other combination of colors you choose—and to put more thoughtfulness in your sympathy gift, you can even consider these popular flower colors and their meanings. (more…)

Why Do Funeral Homes Close?

If you have ever shopped for a funeral home, you probably noticed that many of them make some mention of how long they have been in the business (and in the community). There is something about an establishment that has been serving the same area for 20, 50, or even 100 years that makes us feel good about giving them our business—especially when it comes to pre-planning a funeral. After all, we want some kind of guarantee that the funeral home will continue to be there when we need their services. (more…)

The Best Age to Pre-Plan a Funeral

By now, we have all heard the advice from funeral directors and financial experts: making advance arrangements for your funeral is a smart move that will save your family money, heartache, and the stress that so often accompanies an unexpected death. (more…)

Is Winter the Best Time to Pre-Plan a Funeral?

Like most industries, there is a busy season and a non-busy season for funeral homes. Although no one can predict their time of death, funeral homes tend to see more traffic during the summer months. More families choose this time to make pre-arrangements, purchase cemetery plots, and inter ashes they may have been holding onto since the winter. Because it can be difficult to open up the ground under piles of snow (and because gathering funeral guests around the holidays is almost impossible), people may also put off traditional burial until the warmer months. (more…)

How to Have a Funeral in Space

There is something about setting a funeral in space that makes us feel immortal. Maybe it is the vast size of it, spreading out over billions of galaxies. Maybe it is the timelessness, the idea that anything jettisoned out into space will keep moving forever. It could even be the beauty of it—the twinkling of a thousand starry nights is something humans have been admiring for centuries. (more…)