Affordable Online Obituaries

The costs associated with planning a funeral can be quite a shock. The choices are endless. But in all truth, all you really want to do is plan a funeral for your loved one without having to worry about money.

Unfortunately, we are all human and when the planning begins, you are quite set aback with all the fees and planning that is needed to ensure your loved one is memorialized the way you want them to be.

It's not something anyone likes talking about or even realizing until the day comes. There is nothing worse than having to worry about whom to add to your loved one's obituary and whom to leave out - just because of the cost. Adding 3 family members in the obituary can result in the fee for the posting in the newspaper to increase by 40 or 50 dollars. We should never have to worry about this and it is something that Funeral Planning businesses thrive on.

The average funeral nowadays costs about $5000.00. Now when a death is sudden and no plans have been made in the past, this cost can really hurt us and our bank books. The sad thing is, these companies know that this is something that we all require and will need eventually, this is why the costs never decrease - only increase.

One of my dearest friends recently lost his mother. Being an only child of a very small family, he was the 'Next of Kin' as his Father was not part of his life and he only had one Aunt to help him with the planning. Now, I need to advise you that he was only 23 years old and living on a 23 year old budget.

I will never forget the day he called me asking me what he can do. He had very little money and the cost for the funeral that he wanted was around 6000.00. At this point I had asked him if he had any family members that could help him out. He then mentioned his Aunt whom wasn't a very good financial situation either.

I told him that here is different resources out there for him and also had advised him of a low cost Funeral Home, which could then take care of the cremation and urn for about $1200.00. He then decided to rent a community center hall for the 'Celebration of Life' service. Altogether, the cost for the actual funeral was about $3000.00. He was satisfied with that number.

The trigger point for my friend was posting an obituary in the local newspaper. He knew that the obituary was going to be the hardest part for him. The obituary that he wrote was about 400 words and his local newspaper charges $40.00 per inch. Well, once completed it was about 6 inches in length = $240.00. To add his mother's picture to the post was an additional 100.00. Grand Total $340.00!! Now, with most funeral home packages, the obituary is included in the price, but remember the price he was quoted was $6000.00.

Please explain to me how on earth newspapers can actually allow themselves to charge this amount of money to memorialize a loved one? I understand that there are fees associated with printing the obituary and only a certain amount of space in the newspaper is alloted for the obituary section. But honestly, these prices are ridiculous.

In the end, the obituary was about 5 lines long and only mentioned about a tenth of what he wanted to mention about the life of the mother her adored so much. Cost - $140.00!!

While surfing online this week, I came upon a website that I thought was one of the most brilliant ideas anyone has come out with in a long time. The site, missingyouforever.com, has introduced a website where persons can post an obituary of any size. There is no restrictions to the amount of words you can use and there is one flat fee price. At the same time, unlike the local newspapers, the obituary will remain online for one year, not one day.

You can post up to 4 pictures, there is a guest book for anyone to post their condolences, print the obituary, share it on Social Networking sites and email it to anyone you wish to email it to. The cost......$9.99!!! That is a huge difference from the amount my friend had paid for only 5 lines!!

Why couldn't this site be around for when my friend really needed it? Why has this not been an option in the past? He was devastated with the obituary he posted in the newspaper and he will not be able to forget it for the rest of his life.

We should never be objected to have to pick and choose the things that you wish to say about the one you want to memorialize. Writing an obituary is one of the hardest things any of us will ever have to do and with the addition of Missing You Forever in our lives, we can now all say what we want to say without ever having to resort to taking items out of the said obituary because of the robbery costs being thrown our way!!