Sun Life Direct are to be congratulated on their annual Cost of Dying Report. It’s a comprehensive and helpful piece of research.
They have just published the ninth which shows that the basic cost of a funeral has risen by 6.2 per cent from £3091 in 2011 to £3284 in 2012; a 71 per cent increase since 2004.
Burial costs represent the largest increase (9.6 per cent) while cremation costs (6.6 per cent) and funeral directors’ costs (5.3 per cent) also rose significantly.
Eddie Harris, jazz sax player, wrote a song entitled I Need Some Money in which he said: ‘With the cost of living today, you can’t afford to die.’ The report bares this out: 17 per cent struggled with funeral costs and had to resort to serious measures to meet the shortfall with 20 per cent paying by credit card, 10 per cent borrowing the money, and nine per cent selling belongings.
Despite this, people are spending seven per cent more on memorials, flowers, and limousines.
The financial problems caused by the rising costs and growing inability to pay means the government’s Social Fund Funeral Payment Scheme, designed to contribute to the cost of funerals for the most vulnerable in society, is struggling to meet demand.
And yet, according to the report, 27 per cent have not thought about how they will pay for their funeral.
Little wonder then that Simon Cox of Sun Life Direct commented, “We must encourage people to look ahead and start planning in advance. There are suitable options for people to take financial responsibility for their own funerals.”
Those options, not surprisingly, are Sun Life financial products, and why not as Sun Life is a reputable company with a good reputation for services such as pre-paid funeral plans.  Cox’s foreword to the report should be read carefully as it is a most considered and well argued piece.
My Last Song has run a survey over the past few months asking visitors if they would consider planning their own funeral or leave it to loved ones. Out of the 500 or so who have replied, 84 per cent said they would consider it, not surprising as they were visitors to a site that encourages and assists them to plan their or their loved ones’ funerals.
If they looked at some of the advice we give, they could find significant ways of reducing the funeral costs.
These include buying the coffin direct from the manufacturer; reducing the amount of service and time provided by the funeral director; cutting back on flowers; refusing to be embalmed and planning more diligently things like transport and the catering at the gathering.
To help people be better informed and therefore more likely to save money, and indeed get a better funeral, we have provided a funeral planning checklist of decisions that need to be taken (or not) with the funeral director.
Costs will only come down if a radical new approach to funerals is adopted, starting with addressing one’s mortality and ending with a detailed plan for the send off that gives the best value for money and the best farewell ceremony.
There are signs that things are changing…the recent Joy Of Death weekend was well attended; the BBC2 programme Dead Good Job features the funeral industry and the Dying Matters coalition continues to grow and give excellent advice.
However, we are unlikely to see major changes for some time yet…a funeral is still a panic purchase for most people, and too many funeral directors know that such customers are unlikely to say no to the expensive options put before them.
There are honourable exceptions, those driven more by principle and tradition than bottom line targets. My Last Song would like to hear from them so we can bring them to the attention of our visitors.

People will be rightly shocked and worried by Channel 4’s Dispatches Undercover Undertaker (Monday, 25 June) exposure of Co-operative Funeralcare’s impersonal, dishonest and overtly commercial handling of funerals.

The production line ‘hub’ for the treatment of bodies is the inevitable result of rationalising (making more profitable) the most time consuming part of the process. The advice to embalm – damaging to the environment, expensive and usually unnecessary – and the reluctance to make customers aware of cheaper coffins, are also the results of profit being more important than service.

Given the nature of TV exposures, I’m pretty sure that the majority of Co-operative Funeralcare staff give a better service and are more sympathetic to the wishes of their customers than portrayed in the programme. But since when has good news or good behaviour been highlighted by the media?

Charles Cowling, publisher of the Good Funeral Guide, made the very good point during the programme that most customers make their funeral decisions without any knowledge…a funeral is normally a panic purchase.

Death, our own and that of loved ones, is inevitable so there is really no excuse not to plan for it. It is also depressing, awkward and difficult to address. So go one of two ways. Ignore or plan.

Ignore and you risk the treatment exposed by Dispatches…and the more likely the profit motive will prevail over ethical service within the funeral industry.

Plan and you’ll get the send off you or your loved one deserve, pay a lot less and help move the funeral industry forward. For businesses are only as good as their customers want them to be.

My Last Song was established because we believed a ‘good life deserves a good ending’. Another catch phrase that sums up our philosophy is the encouragement to visitors to ‘plan their exit strategies’.

To this end we have many articles on funeral planning, but to make matters easier…and to get the best service possible from the funeral director, go to the funeral planning checklist article and print out the checklist. Use it to plan the funeral, and get the best deal.

If you think your demise, or that of loved ones, is some time away, store it in your Lifebox.

Far better than ignoring the funeral planning until it’s too late, because then it really is too late.

“If you live on in the hearts and minds of those who love you, you haven’t really died at all,” was a powerful if somewhat sentimental quote I came across the other day.

When I read it I thought it summed up the emotional reasons to have a Lifebox, available via My Last Song.

The Lifebox can make someone  ‘live on’ by storing photographs, specially recorded videos and audio messages, scanned documents and uniquely drafted personal information such as life history, details of friends and family, achievements, interests, hobbies and favourite activities including most enjoyed films, plays, holidays, cars, music…the list is as long or short as befits the individual life that is being memorised online.

The ‘saved’ life is not open for all to see if stored in the Lifebox as it can only be opened by the people who have been given the access details by the Lifebox owner. Those granted permission to access the content of the Lifebox would be close family members who, when wanting to remember more clearly their departed loved one, can then play the specially recorded messages and read the letters and share the thoughts that will remind them of the life, personality and unique qualities of their loved one.

Those close relatives will, hopefully, feel less sad, the loss being easier to bear if this information is left for them to access when needed.

They will also admire the foresight of the relative for using the Lifebox not just to store such wonderfully unique memories and personal information to hand on to future generations, but the vital information required by close family members and executors to deal with the probate issues and funeral arrangements.

This type of memorisation, using a safe secure online storage space, adds so much more to the ‘family tree’ information usually limited to dates of birth, marriage and death, names of partner(s) and children, with a few other details added if someone has the time to do the research on the life of the family member thus recorded.

All these are compelling reasons to get a Lifebox, but none as much as the fact that it gives you digital immortality in the hearts and minds of your loved ones.

In the middle of the winter I researched an article for My Last Song on the different things people can do with their ashes, or more accurately ask their loved ones to do with them.

One of the more interesting, more spiritual, options is called ‘Beaching’, which if my memory serves me properly is more popular on the west coast of the US and in Australia than in the UK.  But I can see it catching on here.

‘Beaching’ is creating shallow furrows in the hard sand on the beach when the tide is out.  You then sprinkle the ashes in these furrows which can spell the name of the person whose ashes are going to fill them.

As the ‘cremains’ (short for cremated remains) of an average size adult weigh between three and nine pounds and take up a volume of approximately 200 cubic inches, you can make a lot of letters in the sand into which the ashes are sprinkled,  and messages can be created.

As the tide comes in,  friends and family watch the remains of their loved one  slowly disappearing, to be gradually merged with the sand and stones of the advancing sea upon their favourite beach.

Cremains, it should be noted, are more similar in colour and appearance to crushed sea shells than they are to ashes, so ‘Beaching’ has a sort of natural appeal.

Anyway, now that summer is here, in an attempt to get publicity for My Last Song I wrote a press release with the angle that people enjoying a day at the seaside might be in for a shock knowing that little Johnny was being buried up to his head in a mixture of sand and the remains of a recently deceased human.

The release, which also mentioned some of the other more eccentric ways of dealing with ashes, appealed to a few journalists who have asked me for the names of people whose burnt and crushed remains might be between the toes of toddlers in Torquay as I tap this out.

I can’t supply names of people who are now a mixture of sand and charred bone as I don’t know, and it’s not the sort of thing people make public. So, the story might get spiked, but for those who find it interesting, it is now on this blog and on My Last Song.

I was taken aback when the participants of an informal focus group looking at My Last Song said they felt a reluctance to visit the Vault because it made them feel uncomfortable.

The Vault is the space within My Last Song where people can put the information required by their close family and executor when they die or when they feel it wise to allow the second key holder to access their funeral wishes, will, Letter of wishes etc.

It’s also where, I hope, people will store their personal details – obituary, achievements, secrets, photos, family history – that will give future members of their families an accurate insight into their lives and times…a sort of digital immortality.

The arguments against calling this area the Vault were:

• Not sure what a Vault was;
• It’s a place in a church where bodies were put;
• It’s a large safe which only rich people can afford to store their gold nuggets etc.

The alternative word that participants liked was Lifebox.  The case for Lifebox seems to me sound.

• It says ‘life’ and not death;
• It accurately describes the space in My Last Song – a virtual a storage box with various sections.

As the focus group was so small, I have tweeted and emailed several followers of My Last Song to ask if they have a preference: Vault or Lifebox? Early votes cast indicate Lifebox will win.

So it seems that we will now have to change all references to the Vault to Lifebox, and see if this title welcomes people in, rather than scaring them away.

Of course, there’s nothing scary or unpleasant in the My Life Song Vault – just useful sections to help you put your affairs in order and store your memories.

But names are important.  Would the Mars Bar have been successful if it was called the Uranus Bar? And there was a good reason why Lever Brothers ditched the washing powder called Omo.