Why Do We Neglect Planning for Our Funeral?

When daily life is full of worries, planning our own funeral stays at the bottom of the to-do list (if it’s even on the list). However, by spending a little time thinking over how you’d like your loved ones to celebrate your life, you have the opportunity to save family and friends a lot of confusion and stress during an emotional moment in their lives.

Like writing a will, you can choose what you want to happen when it’s time. Here are a few reasons why we might decide to put off funeral planning.

No one enjoys mulling over their own death. Especially when you’re in good health, this might seem morbid and unnecessary. Even when your funeral is a probably a long way off, making preparations early can ease the burden on both you and your family and alleviate stress when the day comes. And as difficult it is to imagine, no one can predict when their last day will be.

By taking the initiative to work out details now, you don’t have to worry over it down the road, and your family won’t have a monumental task dropped in their lap unexpectedly. One less thing to worry about, especially when it will make such an impact on your family, can be well worth the effort. Preplanning your funeral requires time and thought—it’s best to do it when you’re of sound mind and body.

While funerals can be expensive, ultimately a funeral’s cost varies greatly from person to person. The type of funeral you plan should be as lavish or as simple as you like. Horan & McConaty strives to make each burial or cremation ceremony special so that it truly reflects your life and how you want to be remembered.

Many people don’t realize that preplanning your funeral is also financially practical. Just like most things, funeral expenses become more expensive over the years due to inflation. By taking care of the financial responsibility early, the cost of your funeral is locked in. Horan & McConaty also makes things a little easier by offering funeral funding through your life insurance policy to help you pay for your funeral.

It’s difficult to picture the impact your death will have on the people closest to you. When it happens, those who love you will feel the pain of your absence. Placing the responsibility of funeral preparations on family members who are grieving can cause even more hardship.

Even when everyone has the best intentions, your family may disagree about how you would want your life to be celebrated, putting added strain on top of heartache. The best way to remove any confusion over preparations for your funeral and to give your family the space and time to grieve is to make them yourself.

When thinking about a funeral is generally far from our minds, most of us don’t know where we should begin when planning a funeral. Do I want to be buried or cremated? Where should I have the ceremony? Do I need to pick music or write my obituary?

We can help you with these things and many other questions people don’t necessarily think to ask when funeral planning. Your funeral can and should be tailored to how you want your loved ones to celebrate your life. Sitting down with a funeral director who can offer guidance removes the burden of having to make these decisions on your own.

Even if you don’t care, your family, friends and neighbors will. Loved ones often travel hundreds and even thousands of miles to say goodbye one last time. These are people who mattered to you in your life. When you’re gone, you will still matter to them.

Coming together to say goodbye helps your family and community share their grief, accept the reality of their loss, and begin the healing process. Preplanning your funeral allows all the people who connected with you throughout your life to celebrate who you were, and in the way you want them to. As the saying goes, funerals truly are for the living.

Avoiding funeral planning ahead of time is completely understandable. But doing so can lift the responsibility of sifting through and deciding every detail from our loved ones so they can have time to mourn.

Over decades of working with families, we have seen generations of families benefit from the foresight of preplanning funerals. By setting aside a few minutes to speak with a funeral director and go over the options you have in preplanning your funeral, you can rest easy knowing the people you love will have the opportunity to say goodbye in the best way possible.