Services | Funeral Directors
A meaningful farewell is your gift to them Covid has taught us many things as it has impacted upon so many areas of our lives however, not all the lessons have been new ones. The classic one is also the line in Jodi Mitchell’s song Big Yellow Taxi, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Covid reminded us of this very starkly when at Level 4 Lockdown, funerals were not allowed. To make matters worse, neither were viewings. In fact, the reality for over 4,000 families was that they were unable to say goodbye to their loved ones in the way they wanted to. They were denied the basic human right of grieving with the deceased, of seeing a loved one laid to rest, of placing a flower on a coffin surrounded by family and friends. From research, we know that to deny a meaningful farewell leads to a poor grieving process and subsequent issues with mental well-being. The New Zealand Influenza Pandemic Plan recognises this, stating that funerals should not be cancelled because of the medium to long-term mental health impact. Yet they were, and only time will tell if the price those families paid was worthwhile. The line of that song rang true for them as much as it has done for other families in recent times. We have all seen the desperation of the Pike River families to be able to farewell their loved ones, something currently denied to them. What do your loved ones need when you are gone? A meaningful farewell is your gift to them. A pre-arrangement allows your loved ones to gather together, support one another, remember and celebrate your life without the responsibility of making difficult choices in very emotional circumstances. What we also need to know is that we don’t have to wait to give that gift, we can do so
David Moger CEO of the Funeral Directors Association.
now. It’s as simple as taking the time to talk to family, friends and your Funeral Directors Association funeral director. Only they are your assurance of a meaningful farewell, and that assurance goes beyond the skills and expertise they have, the professional standards they commit to as a member and the inspection monitoring they go through. That assurance also extents to how it can be paid for. Your Funeral Directors Association member will not only help you to work out the details of your meaningful farewell, but will also be perfectly transparent in telling you what that would cost you today. The question then becomes what do you do about that? For some people, the cost of that meaningful farewell is manageable, usually through the estate but even if that is the case, it is worth putting that aside somewhere, so it is easily identifiable and separate. Currently, the first $10,000 put aside into a pre-paid funeral arrangement plan is deducted from assets for Aged Care Allowance, which may be a helpful side benefit.
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A meaningful farewell is your gift to them. A prearrangement allows your loved ones to gather together, support one another, remember and celebrate your life without the responsibility of making difficult choices in very emotional circumstances. For others, the cost needs careful planning. Insurance is an option as it provides an immediate death benefit if the pre-arrangement is needed early but over time insurance can be a very costly option if you live longer than the insurance actuaries calculate, and premiums exceed the sum insured. The big issue is that if you cancel at that point, you lose the cover and are worse off than you started with no cover and all those premiums wasted. They are not wasted as far as the insurance companies are concerned though. Remembering that insurance companies with shareholders want to make a profit to declare dividends to their shareholders, so they will offer a product that creates that profit. After all, it is why they exist. So where does that leave someone who doesn’t have the full amount of cash sitting in a bank account and wants to provide for their meaningful farewell, but doesn’t want to get caught in the premium trap of insurance contracts? The answer lies in The Funeral Trust: www.thefuneraltrust.co.nz. The Funeral Trust has been set up by the Funeral Directors Association to do two things: • Keep prepaid funeral contributions safe and secure • Over time to maintain the purchasing power of those funeral contributions.
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Your contributions are kept safe by being held under a trust, separate from the funeral director, with a strong governance structure.
Over time, the purchasing power of your funeral contributions is maintained by investing all the funds across a mixture of asset classes, which enables the Trustees each year to apply a Funeral Inflation Adjustment to your contributions, designed to offset the inflation, specifically on funerals. This is not an investment product. There is no interest. There is no tax paid to the IRD on the Funeral Inflation Adjustment and most importantly there are no fees charged to your account. Each year, on the advice of the scheme actuary, the Trustees identify what inflation there has been and make an inflation adjustment to your contribution that over time is intended to maintain its purchasing power. So, for those who don’t have sufficient funds to put aside available right now, The Funeral Trust is shortly going to launch a new option so you can make contributions either via your credit card or via automatic payment for whatever frequency and amounts you want. Taking a little poetic license with the line in Jodi’s song, using The Funeral Trust to gift your meaningful farewell to them now means “you do know what you’re giving when you’re gone”! CT
