How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
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How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
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Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#2I temped in a sales office for a cremation company a number of years ago and it was a very interesting experience.
You can pre-buy cremations and issued a legally binding document which states that you are to be cremated. This can save your family the trouble and heartache of shopping around for a good deal as well as debate/drama over what to do with your remains. From what I understand, it is also easy to be upsold on burial packages when you're grieving so pre-buying basically locks in the price and helps prevent guilty feelings for not buying the top of the line casket.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#3I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#4I temped in a sales office for a cremation company a number of years ago and it was a very interesting experience. You can pre-buy cremations and issued a legally binding document which states that you are to be cremated. This can save your family the trouble and heartache of shopping around for a good deal as well as debate/drama over what to do with your remains. From what I understand, it is also easy to be upsold…
Pre-buying (or at least pre-committing) to your wishes is important. Some religions even have religious-legal protections against some coffin upsells.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#5I temped in a sales office for a cremation company a number of years ago and it was a very interesting experience. You can pre-buy cremations and issued a legally binding document which states that you are to be cremated. This can save your family the trouble and heartache of shopping around for a good deal as well as debate/drama over what to do with your remains. From what I understand, it is also easy to be upsold…
>>> pre-buying basically locks in the price and helps prevent guilty feelings for not buying the top of the line casket.
It's also a great time for old people to commit their families to expensive and unnecessarily elaborate funerals. I know of one woman who was sold a "storage" plan because she wanted her funeral to happen "in the summer". It took a lawsuit to void that illegal contract. These deals also cause difficulties when people die while travelling. Rather than cremating them locally and transporting ashes, I've seen ridiculous clauses for the funeral home to send people to collect and return the body. Whenever a business targets old people, assume shady dealing.
Free advice: Never make a funeral home a beneficiary to a will. Pre-buy only for fixed costs. Do not commit to anything without an absolute fixed price. Never give a funeral home any access to your accounts no matter how often they claim doing so will make things "simpler" after your death. And talk to your kids about the finances. Funerals are not fun. Fancy flowers cannot change that. Nobody who cares will remember them.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#6I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?
Compared to the energy you will use throughout your life, the energy used for a cremation is trivial (about a 5,000 mile drive).
The alternative (burial) impacts the environment considerably as well. There is plenty of land devoted to cemeteries. Trees or metal are used (once) for the casket. In many places, you also need a concrete vault, which would add to the impact.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#7I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?
If you don't want to be cremated or buried, there are these "natural death"[0] places that will perform woodland burials for you. It's pretty cool. You are buried out on a meadow somewhere in a biodegradable coffin without being embalmed and with a tree over you.
Not advocating banning cremations or anything. Just found that cool.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#8I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?
Compared to the energy you will use throughout your life, the energy used for a cremation is trivial (about a 5,000 mile drive). The alternative (burial) impacts the environment considerably as well. There is plenty of land devoted to cemeteries. Trees or metal are used (once) for the casket. In many places, you also need a concrete vault, which would add to the impact.
But the resulting ash isn't biodegradable. Cemetery land can be reused after full decomposition and after enough time has passed.
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#9I comparison shopped for my grandmother's cremation a decade ago. I think she would have appreciated the effort.
She had already purchased a cemetery slot, so the only question was how to transport her ashes there. The low bidder sent a hearse about 100 miles to get her body, and was easy to deal with on the phone (and took credit cards).
Re: How Much Does a Cremation Cost? Depends Who You Call
#10I understand that the choice/decision to cremate the self is personal. But I think it stops where the personal starts affecting us all. Is cremation that negligible of an issue for the environment?
If you don't want to be cremated or buried, there are these "natural death"[0] places that will perform woodland burials for you. It's pretty cool. You are buried out on a meadow somewhere in a biodegradable coffin without being embalmed and with a tree over you. Not advocating banning cremations or anything. Just found that cool. 0: http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/
I heard in a TED talk that you can now buy a "mushroom suit" that acts as a substrate and is laced with nutrient so that you grow mushrooms when buried.