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How to leave money for your funeral

Written by Ines Pena, Digital Content Executive

By having a plan in place to pay for your own funeral, you can leave your family some peace of mind at a difficult time.

Why you should plan to leave your funeral covered

It can be difficult to think about what will happen when you pass away, but planning for your own funeral and leaving money behind to cover it means there’s one less thing for your family to deal with at an already difficult time.

Planning and paying for your own funeral allows you to make sure you’ll have the sendoff you wanted, without your family having to foot the bill or make any difficult decisions.
One of the things you’ll have to plan for, no matter how small you’d like your funeral to be, is your burial or your cremation. This will have to take place within days of you passing away and, if you don’t leave money behind to cover it, the person organising your funeral will most likely have to pay for it.
If you leave any debt behind when you die those debts will have to be paid off before your family can get any inheritance they’re due. This could mean that, if they were to cover the costs for your funeral, it could be months or even years until they’re reimbursed through their inheritance.

How you can leave money for your funeral

There are different ways you can plan to leave your funeral paid for when you die.

Savings accounts

Leaving money in a savings account to pay for your funeral may seem like a good idea but, unless it’s a joint account, it can take a long time until your relatives can access that money. This means they might not be able to use that money to pay for your funeral.

Some banks and building societies release funds quickly, but others will freeze an account until probate is granted – which can take weeks. Probate is the legal authority to wind up the affairs of someone who has died.

Find out more about probate here: What is probate?

Funeral plans

A good way to make sure the cost of your funeral is covered is by setting up a funeral plan.

With a funeral plan, you pay a set amount into your plan and those funds are paid out, quickly and in full, directly to the funeral home when you die. You can pay into a funeral plan through either a lump sum or regular instalments.

The main benefit of a funeral plan is that the cost of your funeral is covered, regardless of whether or not prices go up between the day you set up your plan and the day you die.

When you set up a funeral plan, however, it’s worth keeping in mind that some funeral costs won’t be covered by a plan, such as a burial plot or flowers.

Life cover

Another way to leave your funeral costs covered is through over 50s life insurance. With most providers, you pay a regular premium until the day you die (or until age 90 with a OneFamily Over 50s Life Cover) and, when the policy pays you, you can have it go towards paying for your funeral.

Over 50s life cover can be a good way to spread the cost, but it’s worth noting that there’s no guarantee your policy will cover the full cost of your funeral when the time comes.

OneFamily Over 50s Life Cover

Our Over 50s Life Cover includes Funeral Funding, which lets the proceeds of your policy be paid out to a funeral provider when you die, with the provider also contributing £300 towards the cost of your funeral.

You stop paying into your policy when you hit age 90, but you’ll continue to be covered for life. Our policy also covers you in the case of a terminal illness diagnosis, with 100% of the policy being paid out if it’s been at least two years since you’ve opened it.