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Can You Afford To Die In America? An Infographic
While few want to think about their death, its becoming increasingly popular for folks to prepare for the inevitable by pre-planning their own funerals (we assume a little like England's soccer team yesterday). While cremation is rapidly gaining on straight-up-burial, funeral costs remain high; and despite non-traditional options like 'Angels Flight Inc.' which launches your ashes in fireworks or 'Space Services Inc.' which sends you posthumously into orbit around the moon, the following infographic is a guide to budget-busting your own 'happy-ending'.
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The last thing on my mind is worrying about what it cost to die.
Nature can look after me, I have faith I can be recycled back to where I came from.
All of that presupposes that you are still playing their game when you check out.
So, since we all know Americans can't afford to live, it's time to ask if they can even afford to die. Turns out, they can't. Let's hope some of them can still afford to pay attention, because the shit is getting real deap, and the current economic circumstances are sure to unleash a swarm of fans (technically known as black swans) very soon.
Someday in old age, I will lie in a Redwood forest and pass out one last time and go back to the land from whence I came. That's if the nukes don't get us first. =P
No you won't, fun to think about, but it never happens that way. Prepare to be intraveniously fed while your should-be-dead-body is kept alive as long as financially possible. And since you likely have insurance, that will be as long as humanly possible.
Just feed me to the dogs!
just put me out on tues eve...use a contractor bag....and remember the party not the dead flesh...but honestly i am donating to anyone who wants me or grill me up well done...but as much as i hate this society if an individual can use some parts...enjoy... glad to help...
time to invest in some funeral homes.
greedy boomers will spend every dime of their children's inheritance on themselves.
customer supply is guaranteed.
Nah, dead-end business.
Soylent Green, we pay top dollar for your corpse, no casket needed!
And not-greedy boomers like me will continue to stack as long as possible to give my children the hope of a decent life after I am gone. But everyone else can go fuck themselves. I'll take care of my kids, no one else's.
Do you think it's a fundamental human right to be able to choose to leave? I am a pretty fucken solid scientist - can design a spaceship that will just let me explore the cosmos for as long as my body lasts. If I am to produce my spaceship, have I earned my place to fly?
DMT is easier.
Easier doesn't necessarily mean better. I think 40 light years worth of travel may pay off in personal rewards...
+1 <DMT>
Hahahahah!
Terrance McKenna approves of this message.
"stewmint", your post shows how clueless you are. If someone is kept alive as long as possible, it is because it's in accordance with family or patient wishes. Or it might be the case that it's unknown (the patient is comatose, demented, etc.) whether they want life sustaining measures. I have seen countless situations where someone's life is prolonged because they are unable to accept the reality that they are going to die soon despite what treatment consists of. I recall a recent patient who had a nodular melanoma with metastasis to bone, liver, lung, colon and brain. At best, a terrible prognosis. After a cardio workup (at her insistence) for a heart rate in the 30's, a pacemaker was placed (her decision) the following day. The procedure and device cost are in the neighborhood of $20K-$25K. People with, and without insurance receive this kind of intervention. No one is going to say to her "Mrs Smith, you can't have a pacemaker. Most likely, you'll die in a few months. It would be a waste of resources". How long do you think it would be before a lawsuit was filed by the family? One other issue involves the uninsured patient who thought it was a good idea to get drunk and take a spin in/on their car, atv, boat, scooter, and/or pogo stick, and end up with brain injuries, broken bones, etc. It turns out, uninsured people who do dumb shit and get hurt, are not good at paying for their care. Those of us with insurance help pay for those who don't. That's the reality.
There is another side though...
My mother is fighting against being forced into a 5k a month nursing home. She saw how they drained every last penny out of her mother, and how she "inexplicably" died right when her money ran out.
She can still fire her .38 at 75 years old. Ain't NOBODY locking her up and draining her accounts!
Sad but true. Active in care for the "actively dying" /Hospice, has you learn real quick that the postponement game played under the guise of Christianity is nothing more than one insidious wealth transfer mechanism, albeit the final one - oops, I forgot estate lawyers.
"I would request that my body, in death, be buried, not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna throughout my whole life."
Neil degrasse tyson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afGkv0IT4dU
Uh... yeah... something like that hahaha.... just throw my fucking piece of trash dead body into a hole in the ground.
Mine will be carved up, such that all available organs are donated, with the remainder going to science in some fashion. There will be nothing left.
I SHOULD be able to pre-sell my remains, as the contents of my body are worth something like $100,000. But I can't, because morality.
My wife and I were at our lawyer's office doing our wills. Do not recessitate, yada, yada, yada.
She starts going on and on with plans for what will no doubt be a very expensive funeral.
When she's done they ask me what I want. "Just throw my body in a ditch with note taped on it that says 'DO NOT RAPE'"
It was one of the few times I saw a lawyer laugh.
Cremation? Burial alongside a bunch of other stiffs?
Just leave your body to science.
I hope to die like my grandpa, peacefully in my sleep, unlike his passengers who were screaming in terror.
Put your life on a spread sheet ….. your whole life on a 8.5 x 11.0 – yeah, I know, only one sheet. If you are 45 now and you live to 65 [you die when you retire by the way] you only have 20 more Christmases, 20 more thanksgivings, 20 more 4th of Julys….. etc, etc.
Every time I tell someone this they give me the “Deer in the headlight” look and tell me to “F” off.
This should give me some down arrows LOL I hope to give MDB a run for his money – See you in Hell ...
Actually, your statement is quite a sensible revelation of just how much time in relation to special events we have left. Some people will feel insulted at first, but they will definitely ponder on its meaning. I am well aware of exactly how much time I have left. I simply exist for the moment, my only directive is to be cremated, and layed where I fell.
Sensible people spend their golden years actively funding research on life extension. Telomerase could probably add 20 years onto the life of most people, but you can't buy it--I've looked. Can't even get animal telomerase, much less human.
When I hit 60, you can bet that I will be working on making that shit, if someone else isn't supplying it already. A dose of that, intraveinously, every five years or so, should keep you going until you die of disease or cancer, which I expect will be paper tigers within the next 20 years, and totally gone in the next 40 (due in no small part to my own company's research).
japan many elderly in their 110s basically comitting suicide because they are just bored.
live while you can then die painlessly. don't drag that shit out.
long book is not necessarily a good book.
I like the idea of "rapid decline." Stay in great health for as long as possible, and then go quickly from something that can't be stopped.
I recommend Affordable Cremation in North Fort Myers, FL, next to the Bob Evans.
I got that one beat, just have your remains sent to the Smokin' Pit on Old 41, they will smother you in their secret recipe sauce, put you over the pit, then carve you up, much like what the politicans are allready doing to us!
Burial at sea for this fish slaughterer....the fish deserve vengeance.
Have your body submerged in the same spot where you accidentally lost your PM stash.
Don't forget the open bar and the biggest fish pool, 1oz au would be nice.
A quick bake and a 1/2 day charter gets you done. Funerals should be fun.
I want my ashes dumped in the bulk plastic vat at a dildo factory.
Taint Boil"I want my ashes dumped in the bulk plastic vat at a dildo factory."
...B-B-But, you might end up as a butt plug!
Eeeewwww, Damn it, you ruined it ......... it was the 1 thing that kept me going. Ok, just throw me in an ink vat ...... that always goes on forever.
Biscuits be free at Bob Evans!
"You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
Don't worry, we're headed back to open pit, make it up on volume type burials soon.
Good enough for Mozart is good enough for me.
Speaking of bulk, Costco now has death covered.
The Gardner Casketby Universal
Standard Shipping 18 Ga. Steel
Questions about order confirmation?
Please call Universal at
866-458-2800 Item # 532684 Rated (out of 2 reviews)
Share this Product:
$949.99
Wonder what Walmart charges for a chinese made casket.
Its not like it can kill you or anything ;-)
lead caskets are the red chinese specialty.
The bottom would prolly fall out of it...lol.
I can see my wife rolling her eyes now...he always does this kind of shit ;-)
Get made into pencils and donate yourself to schools. Kids will make you in to art and ninja pencil you into the cieling. You will be a million super heroes, hearts with names in them, tic tac toe games.
http://drawn.ca/archive/pencils-made-from-cremated-humans/
It's how I'm dealing with my remaining carbon.
The Gardner Casket
by Universal
Standard Shipping 18 Ga. Steel
Questions about order confirmation?
Please call Universal at
866-458-2800 Item # 532684 Rated (out of 2 reviews)
Share this Product:
$949.99
---
I'm interested in the "Share this Product" feature. How many can I fit? My thought here is to buy the product and then rent time shares to support myself in my old age. Once I kick the can I would coddle up with my varied tenants. I cannot see them raising any objection. Can you get back to me soonest?
I've already told my wife I demand a funeral pyre. We compromised...I get the pyre, she doesn't have to be tied to it when it's lit.
DIY Vahalla.
Hilarious. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349416/
I don't really agree, but you get the prize for a comment in keeping with the ZH spirit.
Carousel bitchez!
Logan's Run (trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WUUnc1M0TA (2:53)
Rodney king couldnt afoord to die.
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/06/25/rodney-kings-family-asking-for...
I'm pretty sure FEMA has purchased plastic coffin liners for each and every zero-hedger ... free of charge!
Well, that's a load off my mind. I was pretty sure my FEMA-determined fate was getting shot in the back of the skull execution-style and being tossed in a big lime-lined pit with a hundred other anonymous corpses.
If, by some odd quirk of fate, I don't get the FEMA treatment, my woman has her marching orders: I am to be buried in the ground with my ass crack sticking out so she can use it as a bike rack.
you big 'ole sentimental lug, you ...
Just throw me in here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bingham_Canyon_April_2005.jpg
and to add insult to injury -> your life insurance payout is included in your estate for estate tax calculations.
Fuck the politicians
Was there a recent tax law change on that? Major planning fail to have the policy payable to the deceased's estate rather than to intended beneficiaries.
to avoid it being included in estate tax someone else has to own the policy (person or trust)
its just fucked up that if you own a policy and kick the bucket than it can be taxed depending on the estate value.
http://www.elderlawanswers.com/resources/article.asp?id=8296&Section=4&state=
and pretty soon any estate value above $1 will be taxable with these ass clowns in charge
Only if you are the Owner of the Policy. If someone else owns the policy it is not included in your Estate.
Just call Alex Trebeck and all these problems magically go away.
I'll take Massive Stroke for $500.
Dont worry, God is an AWESOME God!
Yeah, it's just gonna take a little more moolah to get tucked in before meeting your maker now.
God is a lie, just like Santa
Which god?
Are mass graves full of lime caked gas chamber victims no longer fashionable?
gee, thanks for brightening my day ZH
Thanks to the Fed, it's also getting too expensive to LIVE.
Cremation is wasteful and makes no sense unless you're an observant Viking or Hindu.
Conventional burial costs so much because of the standard US requirement for burial plots the size of a Manhattan studio and ridiculous gaudy coffins that are probably nicer than any furniture in the immediate prior home of 1/4 of their inhabitants. Green burial is worth a look.
Coffin Credits.
Put my body on a big bonfire and burn me like heathen kings of old = $50 for wood and gas.
Perhaps an old dirty coal fired electric plant could be converted to burn the 99%? or the Soylent Green conversion could take place there?
I live next door to a family of wolves. I have instructed my wife to toss my corpse over the fence upon my untimely end...
Make sure to ask for and recover any precious metal teeth/tooth inlays immediately, funeral homes will tell you that "they were buried/burned with the deceased", while they make a nice (income tax free) side business out of selling it.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/colorado...
colorado embalmer charged with stealing gold teeth!
My Dad had some gold in his mouth so I requested it at the funeral company doing the cremation. However, the cremation contract did not allow that. One problem is that there was not time to go shopping for another place that did cremations assuming they don't use a standard contract. Another, was that as a griveing first of kin, I had too many things to do to get into rewriting contracts. Sounds like a good idea but, like travellers, survivors are on someone else's territory and don't make the rules.
In a semi-related incident, when I had a tooth removed when I was 13, I asked for the gold filling and got into an argument with the dentist who wouldn't give it to me. Half of his refusal was probably that he didn't like arguing with an impudent kid. The other half, of course, was that collecting gold amagam was a profitable sideline.
To die, To be really dead. That must be glorious
Universal's Dracula.. 1931
Actually that was recently overhead at a banker convention...
Tylers, say what you will about our women, but ridiculing our football is downright un-gentlemanly.
yes we must all die, but thank the lord jesus christ and his father for the resurrection!!!!!!!!
And Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin too.
You watch.......the next thing the gov't will come up with to stimulate the economy besides your 'affordable' mandated monthly health insurance premium of $700 will be mandated "pre-death" expenses and a $10,000.00 fine and 5 years in prison if you don't comply. Think you're gonna check out of here and leave us the tab? Not anymore pilgrim.
Even Fight Club makes you bring $300 personal burial money....
So if I don't comply, they will hold my corpse in a cell? Great, that cuts the vault/plot expense.
No, it will be a yearly tax and you'll have it paid by the time you die. So in other words the $ won't be there and you'll just be thrown in a hole with 10,000 other people. In the event you die young before it's paid you're immediate relatives or offspring will be taxed extra.
Go to Honduras where funerals are free
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17870673
http://www.suicidevestsforseniors.org
Help needy seniors to go out in style!
Mr Miffed and I have made a pact when we are too decrepit, diseased ridden to face this world any longer we'd strap a few pounds of C-4 on our waists and take out a few banksters/ politicians, whatever is most needed at the time. Voilà, no funeral expenses and a nice little bonus besides. Beats rotting away at the FEMA camp.
Miffed:-)
Mr. Jena (that just doesn't sound right) and I decided long ago that we'll do it the old-fashioned way. We'll take a BIG pitcher of martinis, go sit on a rock and wait for the tide to come in.
I guess that won't take out any banksters but it'll be less noisy. Not to mention less messy.
Cheers
Well, I have to admit your way is much classier. I should have thought of what housekeeping would face! :-)
Miffed:-)
But yours does make a more thorough statement. We made our plan a couple of decades ago; if we'd been more aware of the mess growing under our noses, the plan may have been different. :)
What ever happened to plain wood and some nails?
This graphic doesn't cover the cost of constructing a 1000 foot statue dedicated to my ego or the astronomical costs of building my cyborg body with kung fu grip...
Shove a bone up my ass and let the dogs bury me in the back yard.
Getting eaten will cost u no more than a packet of bath salts
told my wife I'll try to die on trash day, then just cinch me up. Hefty hefty hefty...
"Alas, I am dying beyond my means."
Last year my best friend's (since i was ten) mother died after battling cancer.
My friend was devasted so I went to the funeral home with her dad to help with the arrangements and pick out the "urn" (she choose cremination and wanted her her ashes scattered on Mt. Assiniboine - a cherished and personally significant location).
Now, my friends dad (now retired) is an old fashioned accountant. He is what one would term "upper middle to upper class", but acquired this wealth through a lifetime of working, investing and being frugal. This funeral joint was a full service (cough rip off) joint. The take us into the "urn" room to choose a "final resting spot" for the deceased. I was stunned....some of these Urns were the most hideous things i had ever seen and as Bff's dad said "cost more than our first house (not downpayment the whole house)". So he said the the funeral director "look, my wife wants to rest on Mt. Assiniboine, I am happy to take her their in a tupperware container. Find me something for under $300 or tupperware it is". Sure enough they had a "cheap room" - it just wasn't where we were initially taken.
Even in death, they are going to try and bleed you dry. ;)
I highly recommend this black comedy send up of the funeral industry with Jonathan Winters...
The Loved One (1965)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059410/
two words - pink slime. sarc
after all the money & help i've wasted on my adult children, i'm going to surprise them ... mom will be broke when i die & i don't give a damn; for the first time in their lives, the kids can figure this one out.
take my ashes and put them in a pepper shaker at pizza hut!
please garlic up before you spring forth from this mortal coil...
Cremation is stupid. Wasting all that energy so people can "rest easier" that the worms won't consume their body.
3/4" pywood casket in the ground where you live. A family ceremony with friends.
America is so stupid. No one even knows how to die right.
If that is not bad enough losers like "let them eat rand" will pick your pockets and empty your bank accounts after death because you were too successful and why should your kids get anything, damn vultures pushing for death taxes.. Before you start I am talking about mom & Pop businesses not tbtf's.. They should just lose their governmental protection the market will handle the rest.
This is free:
http://www.georgiahealth.edu/medicine/cba/bodydonation/
They even come pick you up!
(No really, my late wife was a college professor who wanted to keep teaching after she died, no joke, they came that night, picked her up from home.)
Oh come on! Who negd me for that. It was seven years ago.
She was born, died, and ashes spread on her birthday. May 1. I spread the ashes where she showed me to.
I pay respect; she was and is my other half.
In any case, she DID in fact keep teaching.
Governments should get into funeral home service industry and finally put folks back to work. Forgot to mention first give them free GMO-Corn-Fed White Meat first via EBT cards.
I want to get sprayed with gypcrete and become a lawn jockey.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_m6BE08s5Fkc/SGm-7R5GS-I/AAAAAAAAAMc/pF8S9nLSI9...
A personal menhir or runestone is the only way to go.
Ignorant Q - Don't Jews get buried in wooden caskets? Those have to be tons cheaper than metal, and they don't do embalming either, right? Probably no concrete sarcophagus underground as well?
Time to go gold and diamond prospecting??
I thought "Happy Endings" were from Oriental Massage Parlors....
If the collapse takes place maybe everyone will go poof all at the same time. Then someone in another galaxy can look back through a telescope and wonder what the hell those creatures were thinking. Creatures doesn't it give you the creeps.
Re: THE POSTER WHO POSTED THIS ONE (EXCELLENT):
The Gardner Casket
by Universal
Standard Shipping 18 Ga. Steel
$949.99
Hurry and order - just checked it today: Price has gone up to $1299 (shipping included)
I am not kidding. Great...when my time comes, Costco's price will probably triple.
Me? I'm going into the Gulf of Mexico...its where I enjoy spending time the most so a fine place for eternity.
I could not care less how people treat my body once I'm dead.
It's a fucking piece of trash at that point.
since i do not plan my life, just living, i won't plan my death. Obviously.
Great.. zombie banks that can't afford to die, now zombie citizens getting the same treatment. Our fearless leaders need... bbbrrraaaiiiinsssss...
Definitely a Viking Funeral............
go out in a giant blaze exactly how I have lived my life, fast and hot without dull moments.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20968_peter-bakolia-s-viking-funeral_people
If the hospital gets a hold of you while dying, that will cost $300K. Other costs insignificant.
Do your level best not to let that happen. If you get hit by a train (or something similarly traumatic) you'll be rushed to a trauma center. But if you (or someone you care about) are slowly dying you have options. The best one for most is hospice, where you go at home and as pain-free as possible.
Unfortunately... they don't pass the savings on to you... f'n terrible.
"Pentagon admits it dumped some 9/11 remains in a landfill"
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10531237-pentagon-admits-it-dumped-some-911-remains-in-a-landfill?lite
"More than 100 bodies found as US crematorium gives up grisly secret"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/18/matthewengel
pa im gunna burry u in the back
John Prine - my favorite;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfBdMXhpQnU&feature=related
I don't care what they do with my body when I'm done.
I just hope I'm reincarnated as a seat on a woman's bicycle.
Don't get crushed...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMnjF1O4eH0
.
I dunno dying cost nothing. MUch like being insolvent. Having a funeral and your remains cared for, much like bankruptcy cost money. Let's not confuse the two. Its like with the estate tax that's passed off as a death tax. Its a tax on leaving an estate not on dying Bubba. Dying don't cost the dying anything, its the potential heirs that it might cost.
Cremate and mix ½ &½ with massengill.
I wanna go ONE more time..........