Question 1: cremation or burial?

This one choice moves your coverage need more than any other. Our state-by-state data puts direct cremation at a $1,940 national median — even with an urn, certified copies, and a small gathering, a $5,000 policy clears it everywhere, including the most expensive states. Burial is a different budget: the funeral home's $2,433 median is only the first layer, and the full stack — casket, vault, plot, opening and closing, marker — realistically lands between $8,000 and $15,000 depending on your state and cemetery. If burial matters to you, insure the stack, not the line item.

Question 2: how much ceremony?

A viewing and service add embalming ($785 median), facility and staffing fees, and usually the funeral home's basic services fee ($1,995 median) on top of the disposition itself — the difference between a $1,940 arrangement and the NFDA's $8,300 median traditional funeral. There's no wrong answer; there's only matching the policy to it. A common, honest middle path: direct cremation plus a memorial gathering the family hosts — full ceremony, small bill.

Question 3: is this only about the funeral?

Final expenses rarely arrive alone: last medical bills, a card balance, a lease or utilities to close out, travel for family. If the goal is that your family pays nothing out of pocket for your passing, add $5,000–$10,000 above the funeral figure. That's the honest case for $20,000–$25,000 policies — not funeral inflation, but everything around the funeral. (What that coverage costs monthly at each age is in the $25,000 policy breakdown.)

The worksheet, in one table

Two sizing mistakes to avoid: insuring the myth — buying $2,000–$3,000 of TV-advertised unit coverage against a real bill three times that; and insuring round numbers upward — paying decades of premium for $25,000 when the plan is a cremation. The table is the antidote to both.

What the right-sized policy costs

Burial insurance is whole life: the premium locks at purchase and the benefit never expires. What each coverage tier costs per month at your age — from real purchased policies, not advertised teasers — is on our cost page, with state-specific pages for every state we track — and you can build your own itemized estimate with the funeral cost calculator. Buying a year earlier is the only reliable discount in this market.

Source: 197 General Price Lists published online by U.S. funeral homes — the itemized price disclosure the FTC Funeral Rule requires every funeral home to provide — collected and parsed in July 2026, covering 51 states and Washington, D.C. Figures are medians of listed prices; "n" is the number of price lists behind each number. Small samples are shown as-is, not hidden — treat any figure with n under 3 as indicative only. Prices change; always request the funeral home's current GPL.