How I Avoided Getting Ripped Off on My Dad’s Funeral

When I was planning my dad’s funeral, my mind kept flashing back to a scene in The Big Lebowski.

The Dude and Walter have cremated their recently departed friend Donny. They’re discussing the price of urns, which the funeral director explains can range up to $3,000. The Dude asks about renting an urn; Walter, true to form, loses it.

“Just because we’re bereaved doesn’t mean we’re saps!”

This scene is played for laughs, but it says a lot about how the financial side of funeral planning complicates grief.

Mourning takes you out of reality and sends you inward. You’re plunged into a storm of memory and emotion that’s horrible and profound and beautiful. So it feels disorienting, and all kinds of gross, to emerge briefly from this torrent only to realize that death is just another part of life to be monetized.

I didn’t approach my dad’s funeral trying to save money. But decisions I made along the way meant I paid significantly less than what I might have otherwise.

My hope is that by sharing my story, you might find a funeral planning approach that works for you, and doesn’t leave you saddled with debt. The emotional baggage you’ll carry around will be heavy enough.

3 decisions that made the funeral less expensive — and less stressful

Cremation instead of burial

My dad never expressed a preference for being buried or cremated. Since he was the last person in the Jarvis family to still live in Carlyle, Saskatchewan, it didn’t make sense to put him in a grave that so few loved ones could visit.

A burial would have meant dad resting in a plot of land to which he had no connection. Cremating him allowed me to spread his ashes at places I knew were special to him: the hockey rink he became a local hero on, the golf course he spent so many mornings on, the front yard of our first home, the ball diamond where he got a hit off Satchel Paige. The rest I kept.

Cremation meant there was no need for embalming, a plot, a casket or a headstone. Along with funeral director services, the cost of a traditional funeral is estimated to range between $8,000 and $15,000, according to a 2024 survey by Seniors Choice, a life insurance agency based in Ontario.

My dad’s cremation was less than $2,600.

The difference in cost was undeniable, but the real gain was emotional. I got to say goodbye in an intensely intimate way.

Putting your hands in a loved one’s ashes isn’t for everybody, but I found it to be cathartic. It allowed me to focus on the joy my dad experienced rather than the sadness and negativity I had been wallowing in. I recommend it.

Choosing a non-corporate funeral service provider

I was flying blind when it came to choosing someone to coordinate the cremation and provide clarity around next steps. I knew I didn’t want to be pressured or upsold while I was feeling so miserable.

After reading reviews and viewing a few websites, I reached out to a company called Alternatives Funeral and Cremation Services, which promised two things both my dad and I valued: transparency and simplicity.

This may have been the single best decision I made during the funeral planning process.

Alternatives is part of a new wave of independent funeral homes that emphasize service and flexibility over tradition (and sales). I felt like I had a guide whose sole aim was to make things as easy as possible.

I was never given a list of options or products; I was simply asked what I wanted. If I said a service or product didn’t feel like a fit, the response was inevitably, “No problem.”

All of my choices were treated as valid and appropriate, even if it meant no extra money for Alternatives. There were no blowouts about urn prices. I was encouraged to find one myself.

Going with a smaller, less traditional funeral home saved me thousands of dollars. More importantly, it gave me the confidence and support I needed to plan my dad’s funeral.

Delaying the ceremony

I don’t know how people plan and execute a funeral immediately after someone dies. Managing the emotional fallout and logistics? Two nightmares at once.

That’s probably why funeral homes are able to charge so much: their services can be valuable, and their clients are vulnerable.

My dad died on November 15, 2024. I wasn’t going to ask my family to fly to Regina and then drive two hours to Carlyle in late November. It’s bleak and the weather’s too unpredictable. A June funeral gave everyone who wanted to attend time to plan, and would pretty much ensure a warm, green backdrop.

Putting the ceremony off gave me time to contact various caterers, venues and florists. This reduced the pressure I was under and allowed me to compare vendors. I wound up spending:

$100 on the venue, which comfortably fit about 100 people.
$246 on catering, which provided way more food than I needed.
$87 on flowers, which were small, but pretty, and fit perfectly among the keepsakes we spread out across a couple of tables.

Obviously, these are small town prices. Your mileage may vary. But what I spent covered everything I needed and then some.

Still, I wrestled with one question for weeks, and I didn’t get an answer until dad’s ceremony was over.

Did I spend enough?

My worry was that the attendees, many of whom were family members I hadn’t seen for decades, might be expecting more of a to-do — soft-lit chapel, gleaming casket, copious flowers — rather than the simple affair that captured who dad was.

I was confident that the ceremony was the right scale, but I couldn’t stop wondering: Would people think the flowers were too few, or the venue too casual? Would they wonder why I didn’t get fancier food?

Here’s what I learned, and it’s something a funeral director probably isn’t going to tell you: Most people attending a funeral don’t care about any of those things. They’re focused on the deceased, on each other, and on their shared memories.

The items that cost nothing — the eulogy, my cousins’ and aunt’s speeches, the hundreds of photos and mementos we laid out were what got all the attention.

And that’s the way it should be. A funeral isn’t about what’s paid for. It’s about what’s said and what’s shared.

Your job as a funeral planner isn’t to meet expectations or to spend a certain amount of money; it’s to bring people together so they can share a uniquely human experience. There’s no single way to do that, so don’t be afraid to find the one that works for you.