Preplanning Your Funeral at Any Age
When you are making plans for the future, planning your funeral may not be on your list. People are not often eager to think about their deaths, particularly when they are still relatively young. However, after a person dies, family members are faced with myriad decisions during a time of overwhelming grief. Preplanning your funeral, just like financial preplanning or purchasing life insurance, is something you can do to help your loved ones after you are gone. You can give yourself peace of mind while making things easier for the people you hold dear.
Benefits of Funeral Preplanning
In addition to providing you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing you have already handled decisions that may otherwise be difficult for your loved ones, preplanning your funeral offers many different advantages.
• When you preplan your funeral, it gives you control over your funeral arrangements
Preplanning allows you to decide on the type of service you want, the location, and all of the other details. You can decide on readings, music, and even your headstone. You can plan your funeral to be a meaningful expression of your personality and life.
• Preplanning ensures respect for your wishes
Particularly if you have specific ideas about how you want your funeral to be conducted, it may be important to you for people to carry out your wishes. When you preplan, there is no question of what you would have wanted.
• You can save money by pre-planning a funeral
Prepaid funeral plans are priced in today’s dollars, which means your arrangements can be handled ahead of years of inflation. What’s more, your family won’t have to make decisions at a high-pressure moment, which could end up resulting in higher costs.
• Funeral preplanning provides emotional support
As you preplan, you can talk to your family and friends about your plans, share your memories, and express yourself to them. This can be a wonderful opportunity to express your feelings and say things that you need to say.
The biggest emotional benefit of preplanning, though, is the stress it saves your family after you are gone. Often, making funeral arrangements can be difficult and cause family conflict. When you preplan, you relieve your family of these decisions and let them spend their time grieving and honoring your memory, rather than arguing over the specifics of your funeral.
How to Preplan a Funeral at Any Age
Are you too young to plan your funeral? You can make your arrangements at any age. There is no need to wait until you get sick or old, and being prepared won’t hasten your death. Let’s look at some steps you can take at any age.
• In your 20s and 30s, think about a funeral plot
If you plan to be buried, look at the plot as real estate- it is an investment in your funeral planning. When you are young, you are probably not thinking very much about your legacy, but it is not a bad time to start. You can begin thinking about songs, scriptures, advice, and quotes that are meaningful to you, and thinking about the photos and other memorabilia that could be used to tell your story in a way that you would like to be remembered.
• In your 40s, make funeral plans part of your overall financial planning
This is the time in life when you are busy with your family and career, and your primary focus may be retirement planning, rather than funeral planning. However, it is the perfect time to start researching things like funeral packages and burial insurance. It is also a good time to start preparing your end-of-life documents like life insurance and your will.
• Funeral planning becomes more of a priority after age 50
When people begin to experience the deaths of their aging parents, and their children grow up and leave the house, the end of life begins to seem like a more relevant topic than it did in years past. As they say goodbye to their parents and perhaps experience some of the stress of funeral planning after a loss, people start thinking more about their arrangements. This is the perfect time to visit a funeral home and begin to finalize your funeral plans.
Funeral Planning Guide: Misconceptions About Preplanning
With all of the benefits it offers, why wouldn’t someone preplan a funeral? Often, people hold misconceptions about the process. Dispelling these myths can help you understand the need to plan more clearly.
• Misconception 1: “I’m too young to preplan.”
Fact: It’s never too early to think about the future.
• Misconception 2: “It’s too expensive.”
Fact: Preplanning is less expensive than paying for a funeral after a death occurs.
• Misconception 3: “It’s grim to plan funerals early.”
Fact: There is no downside to preplanning, and it prevents distress for your family after you die.
Getting Started: How Do You Plan Your Funeral?
The first step in funeral planning is to research your options. Partnering with a funeral home can help you streamline the process, and so can working with a preplanning checklist. Document your wishes in detail, considering whether you would like a traditional burial, cremation, a green burial, donation to science, or some other option. Think about where you want to be buried, or how you want your ashes to be handled.
Decide on the type of service you prefer, whether a traditional funeral, a graveside service, a memorial, or a celebration of life, and whether you want your service to be religious or secular. Don’t neglect details like the officiant and how you want to personalize your service. Talk over the details, not just with the funeral home, but also with your family members. Put your choices in writing and designate a family member to oversee the details when the time comes.
Let John F. Pfleger Funeral Home Help You Preplan Your Funeral
When you need help planning a funeral, trust all of the details to John F. Pfleger Funeral Home. Since 1956, we have served members of the Monmouth County community with compassion and integrity. Located in the heart of Middletown, NJ, our family-owned-and-operated funeral home has provided funeral, burial, cremation, and funeral pre-planning services across three generations. The goal has always been to treat every family we serve in the way we would like to be treated, helping them through this difficult time, and we are thankful to have a legacy of care in our community.
Whether you are looking for a public or private memorial or funeral, a large or small service, religious or secular, somber or festive, we can accommodate you. Please contact us when you are going through the process of making funeral arrangements, knowing that we will offer you the utmost support, treat you with dignity, and act with integrity.
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