Issue 19Nothing here is sponsored
Useful detail on decisions that are hard to reverse.
10 dispatches in this drawer
A funeral invoice is built from four different kinds of charge, each with its own trigger. Knowing which is mandatory and which is a choice changes the total more than haggling does.
Sylvia Achterberg943 wd
Families assume the design is the decision. In practice, material, cemetery permission and the moment you approve a proof settle far more, and proofs now move faster than they used to.
Sylvia Achterberg1,212 wd
A comparison of buying casket and memorial merchandise through a large funeral provider versus an outside supplier, and the points in the schedule where the choice stops being reversible.
Sylvia Achterberg867 wd
A granite upright ordered after the ground freezes usually waits for the spring pour, but the inscription proof and the stone itself lock long before the crew arrives.
Sylvia Achterberg940 wd
A family arranging through a multi-location funeral provider received three separate documents. Reading them in order showed which charges were fixed and which were choices.
Sylvia Achterberg1,171 wd
Holidays, frozen ground and closed county offices shift the funeral timeline without changing the order of decisions. Here is how a household tells one from the other.
Desmond Falk980 wd
Two defensible memorial choices, the conditions under which each one wins, and the handful of decisions that cannot be revised once the order is cut.
Rosalind Ntuli1,234 wd
Monument setters and cemetery superintendents see the same choices come back years later. Here is how flush markers, upright dies and companion stones actually compare in use.
Rosalind Ntuli1,065 wd
A funeral bill is a stack of separate decisions, most of them optional. What changed in the last decade, and what your state and cemetery decide for you.
Sylvia Achterberg1,094 wd
A comparison of the main memorial types, which choices can still be revised after the order, and how frost depth, mowing policy and state rules narrow the field before you shop.
Sylvia Achterberg1,037 wd