Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Funeral Business

I saw an interesting article in the July 2009 In Business Magazine; it is a profile of Bill Cress, president and funeral director at Cress Funeral and Cremation Service. A side bar offers some interesting statistics about the funeral industry:
  • US Industry Revenue in 2006 - $11 billion;
  • No. of US Funeral Homes in 2006 - 21,080;
  • US Death Rate in 2007 - 8 per thousand;
  • Projected US Death Rate in 2020 - 9.3 per thousand
Funerals are an industry, a fact that comes across in the article. Cress is quoted as saying:

"people will always die. It's a matter of how much they'll spend."
The average Wisconsin funeral costs between $8,000 and $9,000, and a cremation costs between $3,600 and $5,000. It is probably wise to give some thought now to what you do and do not want when the time comes, rather than a time of grief.

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