What Happens if You Can’t Afford Your Funeral?

Funerals can be expensive, adding stress to an already difficult time of grieving the loss of a loved one. It can be overwhelming if you cannot afford the cost of a funeral. However, there are options for a more simple and cost-effective funeral that can help ease your financial burden while still honoring the memory of your loved one.

When you don’t have the money to cover the cost of a funeral, you struggle with how to fund it while focusing on mourning. You don’t need to go through this, however.

While grief isn’t a good time to think about sourcing funds, you have options. Some of them are:

• Raising money online: Lately, crowdfunding has become popular. You can raise money online to cover the costs of your loved one’s funeral.
• Asking family: You can reach out to your family members and have everyone pool in for the funeral costs. Asking for help might be what you need.
• Taking out a loan: There are loans you can take out specifically for funerals. For example, you can have a funeral house like Newrest Funerals work out a plan for you.
• Working on a budget: If things are tight, you can look into less expensive services that are still memorable for your loved one.

No one wants to leave the world only to become a burden to their families. However, with the current funeral costs, if your family is ill-equipped, this could happen. This is true not only for those of Christian faith, but also for Muslim families who may face similar challenges. Luckily, there are ways to avoid this, such as:

• Green burials: A green burial skips the embalming process and puts the body in the ground to naturally decompose and be recycled. The body may be wrapped in a shroud and laid directly into the soil.

• Cremation: If you choose cremation, you can skip out on gravesite fees, caskets, headstones, and cemetery fees.
• Donating your body to science: Although in this case your family doesn’t get a keepsake or a place to visit and mourn, it does take care of what happens to your body afterwards.

If all else fails and you can’t afford any type of funeral, you can just sign a form at the county coroner to give permission for your body to be handed over to the state or county to be buried or cremated. If you’re buried, your family can visit your gravestone. If you’re cremated, your ashes can be recovered and given to your family if they want to keep it.

Oftentimes, the pressure for a funeral is high as it’s the final goodbye to a deceased loved one. However, when funds are tight, keep in mind that the funeral type you choose doesn’t mean you love your loved one any less.

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