{"id":831103,"date":"2026-08-30T18:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T18:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/831103\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T18:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T18:34:17","slug":"funeral-costs-are-soaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/831103\/","title":{"rendered":"Funeral Costs Are Soaring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Dying in America is getting so pricey that families are changing long-held wishes about what happens to their remains. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/business\/personal-finance\/even-death-unaffordable-america-now-rcna591164\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBC News<\/a> reports on families who wanted traditional burials but ended up with cremation instead\u2014not for religious or personal reasons, but because a burial service can easily soar past $10,000 to $15,000, roughly in line with what many Americans have in the bank. Even stripped-down options are straining budgets: A no-frills cremation, sans service or urn, typically runs more than $2,500. NBC traces how rising funeral-home expenses, costlier fuel (hearses need gas), and tariffs on imported caskets have pushed funeral and burial prices up about 77% over two decades.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        The squeeze lands hardest on middle- and lower-income households, who aren&#8217;t as likely to have a huge inheritance fall into their laps and so turn to GoFundMe campaigns, high-interest credit cards marketed for funeral costs, or loans from friends just to reclaim a body from the morgue. Meanwhile, wealthier families tend to focus less on funeral bills and more on estate taxes, with Trump-era changes helping shield multimillion-dollar inheritances. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/insurance-services\/life-insurance\/how-much-does-a-funeral-cost\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MarketWatch<\/a> breaks down funeral, cremation, and burial costs even more and offers advice on how to save. <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/funeral-costs-increasing-how-to-manage-expenses\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Quartz<\/a>, meanwhile, offers some alternative end-of-life options, including water cremations and human composting.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Dying in America is getting so pricey that families are changing long-held wishes about what happens to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29877,28,25081,352008,25079,8609,45477,157727,2596,228242,759],"class_list":["post-831103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-burial","tag-business","tag-caskets","tag-coffins","tag-cremation","tag-death","tag-dying","tag-funeral","tag-gofundme","tag-iran-war","tag-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}