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I don't know where "around here" is but my parents died in Arizona.

Despite the funeral home trying to upsell the services which they first quoted at $9,000, we told them no. The gal we were dealing with at the funeral home objected strenuously about us buying only a cardboard box for the ashes. She said it was disrespectful to the deceased.

When I asked her why it was offered as one of their urn options, she stopped selling and completed the contract for the cremation to include the cardboard box.

I understand this is how they make their money but they do catch people at their most vulnerable time because a loved one has just died. People can spend $5000 to $25,000 or more for funerals and expensive coffins nowadays.

My parents both specifically mentioned the cardboard box as their choice in their final arrangements before their deaths so there was no question what they wanted. They also declined funeral services. My sister and brother and I had a small, private family service in my home with a few close friends of my parents after each one passed away. No public service.

I was the Trustee of a trust and two family members died. Both expressed their wishes for cremation. I ended up paying over $8000 for each one.

The funeral home charged me $1000 each for a casket rental for the funerals, I have always wondered how much money that casket generated in fees.

I found the thing a total ripoff.

I am seriously considering donating my body to the Body Farm in either Kentucky or Texas.

FL cremations are much less expensive than most other places, maybe high volume?

In VA there’s a law that the body to be cremated has to be placed in a cardboard box that evaporates in the fire (we had to pay $375 for that box; the urn was another couple $hundred). Some of the funeral home expenses are absurd; others not so much.

When my husband died recently the funeral home people could not have been better, no hard sell at all. We told them we wanted the most basic arrangements through them**, a Mass at our church, and burial in an old family cemetery with tombstone made near that cemetery. No frills, just the way he’d want it.

**when they asked if we wanted an obit printed in the WaPo I assured them NO .. he’d die all over again if he thought we’d give them a nickel.