What a scummy thing to do. My understanding is that the caskets are where they make most of their margin (so if you buy a cheap casket they make relatively minor profit margin, if you buy an expensive one they make bank) so he had strong incentives to push for the expensive casket. My in-laws think I’m weird that I’d be happy to just be buried in the ground like a rabbit or something, maybe plant a tree over me. Burying a pile of money in a hole to prolong the inevitable seems kinda silly to me.
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I also talked to my wife about the whole pre-arrangement thing where you pay money now and then in 10 years when prices have risen does her mom come back looking for more money (thus ignoring time value of money).
She said her mom won’t take any money early because of concerns around having to manage it, instead advising the customer to save it on their end until ready. I made it pretty clear I think it would be nothing less than a scam to allow a customer to buy a service today only to then ask for additional money due to inflation in a decade. Although I can sympathize if the customer is looking to just contribute a portion of the cost of the service it would be more complicated than it’s worth to have to track how much your PV $1,000 is worth in 10 years when the service is rendered.
I think that would be nice. It acknowledges a string of important human relationships.
I think that’s a somewhat common way to deal with “don’t have the body”. It doesn’t seem weird to me. Honestly, shared headstones seem weirder.
I missed that you were getting a free tombstone from the DOD. I’m not surprised they have a bunch of non-negotiable rules. That one strikes me as creepy, but hey, it’s the DOD.
One thing that is sad with pre engraved stones and everything… my grandfather died a little young, in his 60s, and he and his (third) wife got a gravestone with a blank spot to engrave his wife’s details when she died.
It’s now 21 years later and she is ~10 years married to a new person and doesn’t intend to be buried there so there will always be this blank spot.
No, the ones for my stepfather and mother. You’d said maybe it was a regional thing whether they put the name of the surviving spouse on the first tombstone or not. And I very much doubt that’s the case for DOD-supplied tombstones.
The DOD probably supplies a substantial fraction of all tombstones in the US, since they are free for all veterans and extremely inexpensive for their non-veteran spouses, and perfectly nice. And among the folks that are dying these days, an awful dang lot are veterans or spouses of veterans.
Not all veterans opt for the free tombstones from the DOD, of course. My grandmother was a veteran so she & my grandfather could’ve gotten the free/discounted ones and they bought those tombstones instead.
I’m not sure anyone realized it was an option when my grandfather died though, since he was NOT a veteran. Not too many WWII era female veterans married non-veterans and my grandfather died first so it probably just never occurred to anyone. His tombstone is very plain, so I can’t think it would’ve mattered to get a slightly different but similar one.
I went to a graveside service recently (it was the anniversary of the death, when Jews traditionally unveil the tombstone) where the rabbi talked about the deceased’s relationship to his wife, whom he was buried next to, and to his partner, who was among the mourners.
Yeah, I’m not sure what the point of burying a casket even is. Is there some health issue with burying recently deceased bodies straight in the dirt?
I mean, before the person is in the ground if you need a place to keep them in between the visitation and the funeral or whatever, sure. But why bury it? I don’t get it.
Yeah if I give the benefit of the doubt it’s probably related to that?
But it’s crazy, not only are they burying this metal casket they’re then putting that casket in a stone vault. So you’ve got the deceased in a mini bed inside a metal box inside a stone box in the ground. So we can all pretend that he isn’t going to decompose.
Heck, when my husband’s uncle died, we got the whole burial courtesy of the DOD. They provided the grave, the coffin (I think), a flag (which we returned), a guy who played “taps” and an officiant, along with a shovel and a pile of dirt so we could each throw some dirt onto his coffin. He’s buried in the middle of no-where, not near family or anything. But it was a completely honorable and appropriate service, and the price couldn’t be beaten. And none of his mourners is into visiting graves anyway.
Do you mean on the tombstone? You can still put her date of death on the tombstone even if she’s not buried there.
If you mean an empty cemetery plot, you can always sell that.
Yeah I mean on the stone. I suppose you could put the dates, although she might have an opinion about that.
She’ll be dead. And you’re not doing it for her benefit; you’re doing it for the benefit of the people she left behind.
touche
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I thought there were, but this suggests that most states don’t require anything:
https://www.romemonuments.com/home-burials
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They didn’t do this for my stepdad… we asked. At least, not the cremains box that you buried. And it seems unlikely that they’d supply a coffin but not a (much cheaper) cremains box.
They do if you’re active duty when you pass though. And conceivably the rules are different for retirees than for veterans??? My stepdad was not a retiree. He was drafted, did basic training, served his one-year tour in Vietnam, and got out.
The Navy did send a color guard to the graveside service with taps and the flag and everything. They asked if we wanted the 21 gun salute, but mom said “no” to that.
When I went to the funeral of the guy younger than me (that I referenced when I temporarily abandoned the 20 questions game) they had folks there from the American Legion who did the 21 gun salute… except it was 7 people with 7 guns and they fired 3 times. I didn’t know they did it that way. Then they handed out the shells to the family and anyone else who wanted one. Which I declined because what would I do with that? But I guess it’s a nice keepsake for the parents & siblings of the deceased.
No clue why they got the American Legion while my stepdad had active duty sailors. The funeral director arranged the color guard in my stepdad’s case.
fwiw, I watched the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan, and he was buried in a white cloth, and nothing else. That’s apparently the standard for Muslim burials, at least in the middle east. Jews in the US typically use a plain pine box. It might have a star of David engraved on the top, but that’s about as fancy as they get.
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I wasn’t certain about the coffin. But they definitely provided the plot of land.
Yeah, I think we could have gotten a free plot at the local national cemetery. I assume that the reason we didn’t is because then my mom couldn’t have been buried with him. I’m not actually certain of that, but pretty much everything was dictated by “nah, we don’t need to spend extra money on that” except for the two cremains plots instead of one standard plot so as to avoid having to put my mother’s name on the tombstone. And I can’t think of any other reason we would’ve turned down a free plot other than her not being able to also be buried there.
And it was important that he be buried somewhere so that if/when his one son ever decides to make peace with him, there’s a place he can go.
And it was important to have a full Catholic funeral mass and have the color guard at the graveside service as those things would have been important to him.
the grim reality - all the investing Klayman does will lead to a retirement, but ultimately he needs to figure out funeral expenses and wrestle with when to engrave the headstone for everyone who will be memorialized at that location? damn, I used to think $1M would be more uplifting. instead, it’s a huge downer.
@Lucy - Could you split this conversation off into another thread? I’m very interested in retirement savings topics, but I don’t give a flip about burial/gravestones. I’m disappointed every time I click on the thread now. TIA!