Who pays those high costs? My family certainly didn't.
Both my parents were cremated. Per their wishes, we didn't spend money on funeral services or expensive urns. We spread their ashes in the river where they went fishing on their honeymoon.
Cardboard box for the ashes and the cremation ran $600 each.
My parents nor the rest of our family believe in spending a fortune on expensive coffins and funeral services.
My wife and I own a 30 acre farm in Florida. A half an acre is designated as a family cemetery. We pay no property taxes on it. I will be cremated when I die. The VA will supply a headstone at no cost. My wife or daughter will shovel a hole below where the tombstone will be placed to deposit my ashes.
Total cost: Zero dollars.
$600! That’s cheap!
Around here a bare bones cremation in a cardboard box with nothing else is $3,600.00.
Thats what we paid for my mother last year. I was thinking more like the $600 by my oldest brother made the arrangements. But my point is that its sad they cant scrape enough together to cremate her.
In my area of upstate NY a simple cremation - cardboard box for cremains - over $4000.
Heck, we had to PAY to donate my mothers body to a medical collage, where they would cremate here after they were done with her body. That cost us $400.00, the fee to transport her. They mailed her back in a cardboard type container.
It depends on where you live. In some states there are stupid rules.
In MA, I bought my mom the least expensive funeral possible. Just like you, no urn, no processing...just cremation.
$4,100.
(I did pay to open the grave to lay her next to my dad. And my daughter is making the urn—its really not much more than a sealed tea pot. (My daughter is a professional ceramicist, so it will be a nice tea pot.))
The only “option” was an obituary—which I might skip at this point, there is no one left that she could call a peer.