Funeral Directors want bailout
According to a Washington Post article, National Funeral Directors Association is trying to get a chunk of the federal bailout money. From the same article, I quote:
“We recognized that there may be a situation where a lot of folks who were displaced or unemployed might need some help in paying for their funerals,” John Fitch Jr., lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association, explained yesterday at the group’s annual gathering, at the Mayflower Hotel. “We had some preliminary discussions about providing some stimulus payments to the states” for funerals, he added.
Interesting. Florists know that non-essential items like flowers and jewelry are the first to cut when money is tight. All the florists are having a hard time now, no doubt. But funerals?
I always thought the funeral industry is recession-proof. It’s not like people stop dying in recession. If anything, the death rate would increase, because people can’t afford health care these days.
Apparently, people no longer spend as much money on funerals as they used to. From the same article, I quote:
Lynch, of Michigan, spoke about the “huge bowl of Bazooka bubble gum” displayed at one visitation. “Didn’t cost a lot of money,” he said. “That’s what we see people doing.”
“Instead of feeding everybody dinner or lunch, we’ve been throwing little, for lack of a better word, cocktail-party type things, cheese and crackers,” added James Olson of Wisconsin. “Also,” he said, “my cremation rate has gone up in the last two years. . . . I’m at 42 percent.”
Lynch turned to the “merchandise” of the funeral. “People, rather than selecting a copper or a bronze casket, may choose a 20-gauge steel casket painted in a copper color,” he said.
Fascinating. We florists keep complaining that people no longer spend money on funeral flowers. We thought part of the reason was the ubiquitous use of ‘in lieu of flowers’ phrase in obituary. Many of us have been lobbying funeral directors to change the wording to a more positive phrase such as “The family suggests memorial contributions be sent to….”
Perhaps we were all wrong. The reason we are seeing the decline of funeral flowers is because people just don’t want to spend money on funerals any more.
I don’t know… it’s kind of sad… Instead of spending money on funerals, funeral flowers, where are they spending money on?
In the nearly 20 years I’ve been doing this, we’ve seen funerals go from 3 sets of calling hours down to one. I’m not an expert on funerals and their costs, but I understand that funeral costs were at one time all bundled. State regulators required more consumer protections, which lead to itemized bills, which lead to fewer calling hours.
Why send flowers when they’re barely on view? I can’t even get folks to send flowers to the house if they’ve missed the cutoff time for a funeral delivery…because no one will see them. Sad…
Kenji -
This is a fascinating story. I looked at the original article from the Washington Post, saw the April 1 date and thought at first it might be a joke.
The funeral industry has come under scrutiny over the last couple decades and now strict rules about disclosing itemized price lists are enforced by the FTC. They recently did undercover inspections in our county and found 2 of 18 mortuaries to have ’significant violations’. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/03/funeral2008.shtm
We’ve had funeral homes refuse to accept flowers when families have opted not to purchase flower car services to transport the arrangements from the mortuaries to the cemeteries. It seems when services are unbundled and itemized, more and more consumers are declining to pay for them.
The funeral industry is indeed challenged, but they didn’t seem to garner much sympathy with their bailout pitch.