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THE COST OF DEATH
Why families should shop for funeral services
With expenses averaging $6,500, funerals can be among most expensive purchases
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Six months after Aron Beverly died in a car crash, the heartache that afflicts his mother seems as indelible as his tattooed image on her upper left arm.
Debbie Beverly carries an added burden that feels almost as permanent: the left-over debt from 20-year-old Aron's nearly $13,000 funeral in December.
Debbie Beverly of Tipp City holds a bill for nearly $13,000 for son Aron Beverly's December funeral while looking at a picture of him that friends signed at his service. Aron, 20, died in a December car crash."I wasn't aware you had to pay them before (the funeral) happened," Beverly said from her Tipp City home. "They want their money first. My ex-husband wound up maxing out his credit cards to pay for it."
The average price for a funeral in America is $6,500, not including burial and headstone expenses, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, which represents the $11 billion-a-year industry. That makes a funeral the third most expensive purchase many will make in a lifetime, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
It doesn't have to be so expensive, consumer advocates say. That's why it's wise to shop around, because death can come suddenly and emotions can overtake financial sense.
"It's hard enough to grieve over the death of a child, but then to be staring at interest rates of 16 or 18 percent on a credit card and worrying about paying your bills, you're just giving yourself misery for years," said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit watchdog group based in South Burlington, Vt. "This is why funeral planning ahead of time must be considered a normal part of family life for everybody."
Beverly said she's confident she and her ex-husband, William Beverly, made wise decisions when arranging Aron's funeral with the Hale-Sarver Funeral Home in West Milton, and that funeral director Jim Sarver "was just wonderful at taking care of this."
While paying for a funeral at the time of service is standard procedure in the industry, Beverly, a science teacher at Wayne High School, wasn't prepared for it. The bill covered services locally and for another funeral home in Aron's birthplace of Waco, Texas, where he was buried.
"I was shocked," the 49-year-old mother recalled in a voice strained with emotion. "But he was worth it."
