Funeral Poverty

Funeral poverty is where the price of a funeral is beyond a person’s ability to pay. This problem is getting a lot worse because funerals are getting much more expensive at the same time as support from central government is drying up. Funeral poverty has increased by 50% in just three years.

The impact of funeral poverty can be financial, in the form of unmanageable debt, but it can also be emotional in the form of the distress, shame and the perceived stigma of not being able to provide a decent send off for someone we love.

The cost of a funeral which makes up 44% of the total cost of dying, has risen by 5.5% from £3,696 in 2015 to £3,897 in 2016. This figure produced by the Sunlife report is calculated by taking the combined average cost of cremations and burials; the average cost of a burial in 2016 was £4,356, which is almost £1,000 more than the average cost of cremation at £3,437. The cost of burial has risen by 6.1% in the past year and by 106% since 2004. If funeral costs continue to rise at the same rate we have seen over the past decade, in five years’ time the average funeral will cost £4,779.

The main cost of a funeral is the hiring of a funeral director. Funeral directors arrange the funeral, store the body of the deceased, deal with paperwork and arrange the coffin and hearse.  Funeral directors are not essential to funerals, but they certainly remove much of the inevitable stress of doing it yourself.

These costs are placing an unbearable burden on the already stretched finances of bereaved families, many of whom are getting into serious, unmanageable debt when they lose someone they love.

When we are grieving we don’t act like savvy consumers, we don’t shop around, saving money is not normally a priority. This is a big problem in an industry where there are such huge differences in what funeral directors charge for the same services.   

To help you at such an emotional time, we at Orbitas are able to offer you the Orbitas Funeral Service, which is handled by a professional funeral director in Cheshire East, and you can be confident in the knowledge that this service will be deliver to exacting standards. The Orbitas Funeral Service can be provided for £2,295 inclusive of all associated crematorium charges, which is considerably less than the national average, and we believe offers excellent value for money.

Without knowing what your options are, you can end up buying funerals that you cannot afford and get into debt.