Kim’s Advice on Death Arrangements – Episode 196

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, I have our co-host and bestselling financial author, Kim Butler with us today. And this is a rather personal subject. Kim has really been looking into arranging for her death, if you will. Not that there’s anything sick and we pray that she’s with us for a long time. But she recognizes that the stress that it puts on the family members at a time when they really don’t need that extra stress.

[00:57] So Kim has been researching ways that she can have this all pre-planned and done and people can focus on her life and remembering the good things about her life, not the details of her death. And I certainly have to compliment you for that, Kim. Welcome. Well, thank you. I do apologize if this is a little bit of an odd obsession. And it truly is because we have some older family members that need to get this kind of thing figured out. And I’ll absolutely admit, and I would do it if they were standing right here next to me, that it is for me that I want them to figure it out. Because if they don’t get it figured out, paid for, planned, as I’m okay with the word plan in this instance, then I’m going to end up dealing with it and I don’t want to.

[01:46] And so we, as many people know, we’ve got another podcast on this. So just in case you’re catching part two before part one, our whole family, like six of us, went into a funeral home to ask about prepaid cremation. Like none of us even wanted a service. And I realized there was some personal opinion around that and just set that aside for now and just listen to what we did. It was like $3,500 each. And there’s just no reason for that. And so we left the funeral home, didn’t have anything, finally came back. I might have even done a couple of podcasts on this with a company called MedCure, which does cremations for free. But then you are donating your body for medical science and not everybody’s comfortable with that.

[02:31] So we kept looking, kept looking. And I can’t believe that this didn’t come up on the web the first go around, but it didn’t. I mean, I was even having people that are better at researching things than me, which is pretty much everybody, helped me look for it and we couldn’t find it. But we did finally find one that I want to share with everyone and it’s called Heritage Cremation Provider. So heritage cremation provider dot com. They have cremation packages from six hundred and ninety five dollars up to thirteen ninety five. I think it varies a little bit by state. The one that I was looking at was nine ninety five. And that’s a reasonable price. Like I had hoped to get it done for about a thousand dollars, give or take.

[03:18] And so here we’ve got an environment where you can have it all arranged in advance. You lock in the price so that you’re not affected by inflation. And all your family has to do is call this one eight hundred number. It doesn’t matter where you pass on. So it would be good if you were traveling or what have you. And again, it’s heritage cremation provider dot com. So heritage like H E R I T A G E cremation provider dot com. And I won’t bother listing the phone number. It’s too hard to write down if you’re listening somewhere. But you can go to that website. There’s all kinds of information there. And this will make it so much easier for your loved ones if you have this handled. And I think so much in our society.

[04:08] We just shove this under the rug. We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable. We don’t want to think about, oh, my gosh, if I get a prepaid cremation service handled, then I’m going to die the next day. I mean, there’s really some crazy things that us human beings can come up with in this area. And I just really encourage people to bring it out on the table, address the pink elephant in the room and deal with it. And when that’s done, it’s so much easier for everybody. Nobody has to wonder. Nobody has to feel like, oh, my gosh, you know, what happens? What is my family going to do? What happens if I die out of state? None of those issues are going to be a concern anymore.

[04:57] If you will bite the bullet, cross this off your list, pay your thousand bucks, sign a couple of forms and be done with it. And I cannot emphasize the value of that. Have yourself have that done, your spouse, all of the family members, older, younger, I mean, within reason. I don’t know that a 30-year-old needs to do this, but anybody in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, absolutely, I cannot recommend this enough because of the peace of mind that it will provide you and your family members that this part of life is handled. Kim, I would, I think it’s important just for the podcast. Are you in any way compensated or affiliated with this company? That’s a great question. No, absolutely not. It need none of the med care nor heritage cremation provider.

[05:55] I have no ownership, no compensation, no nothing. I just highly recommend it. Super. And I guess the question that I would have is, is that, I mean, is this an individual question that you should handle on your own, or do you really think this is something, you know, maybe you have a Sunday dinner and you put dinner away and you sit and openly talk about it and seek other people’s opinion than your family. Well, that would be ideal. Absolutely. I think while in the end, it is a very individual decision. It really should be discussed among family members because family members are the ones dealing with it. You’re gone. And so we could even adopt a, well, I don’t care, do whatever you want. And yet that’s not really being responsible.

[06:48] And so I feel strongly that if you have an opinion about it, that you get it handled and there’s certainly some people that want a service and they want to have a Memorial. Okay, great. Then go get that organized, planned, paid for, handled, because frankly, the funeral homes, I think, take advantage of people in that situation. They’re grieving. They’ve got to make decisions quickly. And so things are amazing how expensive they can be. I mean, you can get up into $15,000 services without even trying. And so that’s fine. If somebody wants that, then let’s understand that that’s going to cost money and it’s going to cost money immediately, like well before even death benefits from a life insurance policy get paid.

[07:38] So if somebody wants a service and let’s get it organized, let’s get it prepaid, let’s get it handled. If somebody doesn’t want a service and they can go for the cremation approach, but you can still get it organized prepaid and handled so that your family is not having to deal with it. And yet at the same time, I think the family should know so that there’s not a misunderstanding. Like, you know, dad passes on and brother wanted a service. Sister’s aware that dad didn’t want a service. So now everything’s all in a jumble between brother and sister. That’s no good either. So it really works best if full communication can occur. And no, it’s not fun or easy, but you can make it fun and easy. Literally all six of us, we went out to this funeral.

[08:25] Then we went to dinner afterwards. We had fun with it. We were laughing. It was a joyful time rather than this heavy depressing environment that understandably can get into when somebody has passed on. And if you’ll tackle it as a family, you’ll make everybody aware of your thinking and your plans and whatever you’ve paid for. Then everybody’s on the same page. Great. That leads right into my next question, which is, okay. You’ve accomplished this. You have it all set. You have it all paid for. Who is it that you entrust with that information to make sure that it’s executed properly? Yeah, that’s a great question. And to me, the answer is absolutely more than one person. Like if you’re an adult and you have adult children, you want both

[09:17] or however many adult children that you have to know about these decisions, as well as your spouse, of course. Because if they don’t know about it, then it’s a surprise. Then somebody is expecting a service and somebody else knows, you know, that somebody doesn’t want to or somebody wanted to and somebody else did. And I mean, there’s no reason for that kind of additional anguish to be pressed upon a family at the time of death. Let’s get this out in the open, talk about it, let as many people as possible know, frankly, so that everybody in the family and maybe even extended family is aware of it. And I might even recommend including people in your church, if that’s an important relationship to you,

[10:00] if you have a special pastor or something like that, you know, of course, there’s all of the legal aspects of it to medical powers of attorney and that kind of thing. We’re not talking about that today at all. But you might choose to go ahead and make sure that your attorney has a copy of this, that your doctor has a copy of this. And whoever, you know, is if there’s a logical local hospital or something like that, you could make sure they have a copy of it. But clearly, without a shadow of a doubt, spouses and children should be included. And I’ll again say adult children, you know, you’re probably not going to involve a child that’s under 18 in this kind of discussion. All right. I’m going to put you on the spot here,

[10:42] because this is a question I don’t know the answer to. And that’s after you pass away, if a child or if a spouse wishes their own type of service, even after you’ve set this up ahead of time, who’s in control? Yeah, that’s a good question. I believe that it would revert to really, I mean, you could say that it reverts to a legal document, a will, but nobody would be prohibited from having a service if that’s what they wanted to do. I don’t believe that even a legal document could actually have any teeth in it that prohibited that. You know, you could make your wishes known. But if the family afterwards decided that they wanted to have a service, then the family can have a service. And that’s really up to them.

[11:36] And at that point, especially if you had chosen cremation, they can even still go so far as having a memorial. I think the service is the part that is, like, typically done at the church or the funeral home. And then the memorial is the part that’s typically done out at a cemetery. I mean, you could still have a memorial, even if just your urn with your ashes and it is what’s buried or placed in a vault or, you know, whatever it is that’s important to the family. I don’t believe that you could prohibit that. Like I said, you could make the request. You could even put it in your will that that’s your request. But frankly, the family can probably do what they want to do afterwards. That kind of makes sense to me, too.

[12:19] Any other resources or anything you’d like to share? Well, while we’re on the subject, there is another really helpful website that, again, I’m not connected to at all. And it’s called five wishes dot org like F.I.V.E. five wishes dot org. And you can probably get there with the number five as well. And it’s a nice site. I do believe it has some paid for documents on it. Maybe 30 or 40 dollars. But it helps you think through some of the end of life questions that would be prior to cremation. In other words, if you’re in a hospice, what kind of care you want? Do you want life prolonging care versus let’s just let it go? Care, et cetera, et cetera. And there’s five specific areas and they ask some really good questions,

[13:05] one that ones that the normal person would not think about. And so that’s an additional helpful resource. Five wishes dot org. Super. Well, I think the most encouraging thing that we’ve had during these discussions is the fact that, you know, rather than fear death, because it is inevitable, you’ve not only embraced it, but I hate to use the word enjoyed it. But I think it gave you some type of control by being able to make these decisions, hasn’t it? Absolutely. And I feel like it’s an issue that’s crossed off my list. And for those family members that are older than I am, that are probably going to pass on before I do, which means I’ll be dealing with it. It’s a huge help to have the knowledge

[13:56] that they too have crossed that off their list. Super. Well, this is no BS money guy, Todd Strobel. Once again, we hope that we’re bringing you relevant information. Keep your questions coming. We read every single email that comes through here. And we do our very best to answer those questions that are most important to you. Special thanks to Kim Butler for being such a wonderful co-host and sharing these personal parts of our lives. This is, again, the Prosperity podcast, and we’ll see you all again real soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partners for prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.