How to use this
- The prefilled figures are national medians, not your local price. Replace them.
- Call three funeral homes first. They must quote you by phone under federal law.
- Cemetery costs are separate and are where geography actually bites.
- The output is a target, not a quote. Buy that amount, not a round number.
Your working number
$8,500
The cover to aim for, once what you already have is taken off the bill.
Using the NFDA national median for a funeral with viewing and burial. Replace it with your own quotes above.
See what that costs a month →What to ask on each of the three calls
Under the FTC Funeral Rule a funeral home must give you prices over the telephone, and you do not have to give your name or address first. Ask for these five things and you can fill in this worksheet properly:
- The basic services fee - the one charge you cannot decline
- The total for the service you actually want, itemised
- Whether cemetery property is included - it usually is not
- What the cash advance items typically come to
- Whether they charge to handle a casket bought elsewhere - they may not
Why this asks you to do the work
Most funeral calculators ask for your ZIP code and return a confident local number. There is no dataset behind those numbers. The National Funeral Directors Association publishes national medians and does not break them down by state or city, so anything more specific is an estimate dressed as a fact. We set out the full argument, and the contradictions between the published tables, on our funeral costs by state page.
Three phone calls take about twenty minutes and produce a number that is accurate for your family, in your town, this year. That is worth more than any average, and the spread between those three quotes will usually be wider than the gap between any two states.
Do it before you need it. Nobody negotiates well three days after a death.
Turning the number into a policy
Once you have a target, sizing the cover is arithmetic rather than guesswork. Most families land somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000, which is why final expense policies cluster in that range. What that costs each month depends on your age, health and tobacco use - our burial insurance cost guide and rates by age show the real numbers.
And resist rounding up to be safe. Every extra thousand dollars of cover is a premium you pay every month for the rest of your life. Size it to the bill.
Common questions
How much does a funeral cost?+
The NFDA's 2023 study puts the national median at $8,300 for a funeral with viewing and burial and $6,280 with cremation. Both exclude the cemetery plot, a grave marker and cash advance items, which is why this worksheet asks for those separately.
Why does this calculator not know my local prices?+
Because no credible source publishes them. There is no reliable state-by-state or city-by-city funeral cost dataset, so any tool that claims to know your local average is estimating. This worksheet asks you to enter real quotes instead, which you can get by telephone in an afternoon.
How do I get the three quotes it asks for?+
Call three funeral homes near you and ask for their General Price List. Under the FTC Funeral Rule they must give prices over the telephone, and you do not have to give your name or address first. Ask about cemetery property separately, since it is usually excluded.
Should I round my cover up to be safe?+
No. Every extra thousand dollars of cover is a premium you pay every month for the rest of your life. Size the policy to the bill you calculated, not to a round number.
Sources
- NFDA Funeral Statistics - National Funeral Directors Association, 2023 General Price List Study. Source of the $8,300 and $6,280 national medians used as starting figures.
- FTC Funeral Rule - Federal Trade Commission. Source of the telephone pricing and casket handling provisions.
- FTC Consumer Advice: The Funeral Rule - plain-language summary of your rights.
Free to use and free to link to. If you are writing about funeral costs, please link to this page rather than reproducing the figures - the NFDA updates its study periodically and we revise when it does.