A distant relative passed away a few days ago. How the funeral business has changed over the years. Gone are the days of the eerie funeral parlours with joss-stick smoke stained tiled walls. They are now replaced by 5-star hotel like establishments with 5-star services for both the dead and the living.You can also now plan for your death as you do with other worldly things in life. You can protect yourself against inflation by starting to invest in your funeral when you're in your prime age. Thirty years from now, a funeral of the same quality will cost you muliples of the amount today. So is there any wise financial action you can take? Well, this is where the "Plan" comes in! You invest a monthly instalment into one of these super dupa funeral establishment and say, in 5 years, you would have paid up the complete sum of your future funeral. So 30 years later when you finally need to use the service, the financials would have all been taken care of - and you would have paid a much lower price! Of course one can argue whether you could have invested the amount elsewhere and get a higher percentage return than the inflation rate. Then there is the risk of the funeral establishment going bust.
Another financial investment you can make is to start buying burial plots now. Not only can you protect yourself from inflation but if you have an acute business sense you can even make money out of it. You see, burial plots these days can be bought and sold like any other real estate property, though they have not gone into the rental business... yet.
By investing in your own future funeral, you also save your family and friends from having to pay and organize for your funeral. Plus you have the added advantage of having the power to decide on the scale and grandeur of it. I imagine, if you so wish, you can even go down to planning the detailed level of decor and theme of the event.
(the little piece of poetry on Death was something I took from the scrapebook I used to write in my teens and twenties)
3 comments:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-27)
I want Tibetan sky funerals in France: they shall cut my body into little pieces and feed it to the pigeons in Paris! That is how my ex-body will turn into pigeon dung dropped onto some car-windshields all over the French capital. Now, that will be fun, won't it? Still, I wonder how much it will cost me... Better start investing now!
But aren't Parisien pigeons gourmets with more exquisite taste? :P
Post a Comment