The professions with the most expensive funerals
What difference does your career make to the eventual cost of your funeral?
Perfectchoicefunerals has crunched the numbers and worked out how much funerals tend to cost by your profession in life.
How much will a funeral cost?
According to the Money Advice Service, the average cost of a funeral is £3,600.
However, in a new poll by by perfectchoicefunerals.com, a whopping 61% of those who have organised a funeral in the last five years said it had cost more than that, with an average figure of £4,800.
The professions with the most expensive funerals
The research took a closer look at the jobs of those who were given such a costly send off to delve deeper into the attitudes towards funerals and spending trends.
The breakdown is set out below.
Profession | % of those that had funeral costs above national average |
Legal | 15% |
Health | 13% |
Military | 11% |
Finance | 8% |
Education | 6% |
Media | 6% |
Creative arts/design | 6% |
Marketing/Advertising/PR | 6% |
Public Services | 5% |
IT | 4% |
Source: perfectchoicefunerals.com
According to the survey those working in the legal sector most commonly had a funeral where the costs spiraled above the national average.
Health workers were the second biggest culprits with the survey finding 13% had more costly send offs than normal.
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Special requests
It would appear that leaving instructions behind on how you want your send-off to go may be leading to this additional spending. Just shy of 60% of respondents said there had been a special request ahead of the passing of the deceased, while nearly 30% said the deceased wanted to put a 'personal stamp' on their final farewell.
Evidently those wishes don't come cheap, but families and friends felt obliged to carry them out.
Emma Simpson from perfectchoicefunerals.com commented: "A funeral is often the time where an individual's final impressions are aired to friends and family, so there are those who will want to spend a little more for a particular arrangement, especially the more unusual. However, these unusual or more quirky requests don't have to break the bank and making a final farewell personal can be very simple. It's all about choice and what is right for you and your circumstances."
Paying for a funeral
Getting into debt as a result of paying for a funeral is becoming more common. A recent report for the ILC found that more than 100,000 adults incurred debt as a result of a funeral in 2013, with the average standing at £1,305 per person. And with funeral costs soaring by 80% over the last decade, it's crucial to work out how you can cover the cost without going into the red.
Are your family covered financially if you die? Get a life insurance quote today
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