r/AskIreland • u/eire1228 • 13h ago

Personal Finance Typical funeral costs (all in)?

No plans on dying any time soon but trying to do a little forward planning. What's the typical cost of a funeral and burial? I suspect it varies on region. Do you save a lot of money by being cremated? Does everything have to go through a funeral home? Can you have a non-religious wake and be cremated? Don't want to leave my kids with any financial burden. I thought the credit union used to have insurance for funerals but can't seem to find anything other than a once off payment of 1k.

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u/JacksonLambsSocks 13h ago

A Post do some kind of funeral plan. My mum had started it last year thinking she had loads of time (wasn’t terminally ill). Passed suddenly a few months later and they refunded us what little she had paid. Funeral which was a cremation cost close to €8,000 we didn’t do anything fancy or have extra cars or anything like that also that cost didn’t incl food. Basically just the funeral home bill who looked after the crematorium

You still have to buy a coffin which cost over €1000. And an urn which we still haven’t done due to indecision, they’re stupid expensive.

If you plan on being cremated make sure you tell your loved ones what you want done with your ashes. Mum always said cremation but no clue about ashes.

I remember seeing a brochure in the funeral home too at the time about some kind of pre payment thing for a funeral.

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u/amuletdrop 12h ago

The coffin was only €1000? My aunt bought the cheapest coffin for her husband and it was €4k!

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u/JacksonLambsSocks 6h ago

Think it was 1500 possibly. There was a wicker one that none of us wanted and I’m pretty sure we got the cheapest wooden one. Not because it was the cheapest but because we wanted something simple and most importantly no religious regalia on it. She’d always said the cheapest cos it doesn’t matter but the wicker looked desperate. It’s an awful racket really when you don’t have much of a choice. Perhaps your poor aunt had even less choice? You feel so stingy and guilty looking at the cheaper ones