Planning Ahead - Laurie Powsner

Laurie Powsner represents The Funeral Consumers Alliance of Princeton (FCAP) It  is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization that is not associated with the funeral industry. They provide objective support, education and advocacy. They offer tools to empower us to make informed, thoughtful decisions about funeral and memorial arrangements before they are needed.

Laurie spoke to us about planning our funerals and referenced funeral homes and NJ laws in our area.

Funeral arrangenments are something that most people leave to their survivers. The survivors are then under the pressure to make decisions at a very streeful time. FCAP can help, if we plan ahead.

Some points that Laurie made:

• Prices vary enormously from one funeral home to the next. Even for the same thing!
  • Direct cremation ranges from $550—$5,065!
  • A plain cardboard cremation box can cost you $20—$671! 
  • Driving the body from the place of death to the funeral home? $175—$785! 
  • A graveside service? $100—$1,295!
• You shop online for almost everything, but good luck here because only 6% of NJ funeral homes post their prices online.
• We recently asked every funeral home in NJ for their price list. 28% sent them right out (yay you!). 14% needed two asks and another 14% needed three to seven asks! A whopping 30% didn’t respond or outright refused! What? Aren’t they trying to sell something? Can you imagine calling a restaurant and asking them to send you a menu and being told “The menu is really too complicated for the layperson to understand” or “we don’t give out the menu unless you come in person to get it.” Yikes! What are they thinking?

For more information and to donate to FCAP, got to their website, shown below.

https://fcaprinceton.org/