Crowdfunding, risky move when paying for funerals
From Kickstarter, to GoFundMe, Indiegogo, and Crowdrise…families in mourning are using the crowd-funding sites to try and raise money to pay for the funeral costs of their loved ones.
Just a simple search on GoFundMe using the word *funeral* yields more than 53,000 results.
According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a funeral in the United States is just over seven thousand dollars.”
John is a fourth generation Holloway running the Holloway funeral home in Salisbury. Although he admits he understands how crowd funding may help raise much needed money. He says raising money after a death can be difficult.
He continues, “It could take weeks to get those funds together and you’re not going to probably ever get them all together from that source. In the meantime, your loved one is somewhere while you try to go through that process.”
The tried and true way of preparing for end of life services is life insurance. However, Holloway says you should be mindful of who you put down as a beneficiary.
He goes on, “They can choose to pay for your funeral or not. Even if those are your wishes, sometimes families don’t always get along and the beneficiary decides to use the money for something else.”
Holloway says the best way to avoid this kind of pain for your loved ones is pre-planning. He says it can be done through any funeral home. You yourself can pay into an account, and one hundred percent of it remains there until you pass.
Holloway continues, “It becomes much more stressful for the family who doesn’t have those funds set aside. Number one, they were not expecting to have to come up with that much money; and as credit tightens, it’s harder for families to get credit either through a bank or a loan. Most funeral homes are really not set up to have payments made over a long period of time.”
Not every death can be planned for. In those cases, Holloway says lots of funeral homes try to help and provide some services for free. For example, his funeral home does not charge for services for infants.
