Planning ahead · 11 min read

Planning your own funeral in advance

Writing down your wishes takes twenty minutes and spares your family the hardest decisions. Whether to prepay is a separate question — here's how to judge it.

Published 2026-08-02

Last reviewed 2026-08-04

Almost every difficult conversation a funeral director has starts the same way: the family does not know what the person would have wanted. Burial or cremation. Church or not. Hymns or a favourite record. Who to invite. Whether to spend £2,000 or £6,000.

Twenty minutes with a pen removes all of it. Whether you also want to pay in advance is a separate financial decision, and this guide treats the two questions separately — because they are.

Part one: write down your wishes

This costs nothing and is the single most useful thing you can do. Funeral wishes are not legally binding in England and Wales, even in a will, but they are almost always followed — and their real value is removing the burden of guessing.

What to write down

• Burial or cremation — the one decision families find hardest. If you have a view, say it. See burial or cremation.
• Religious, humanist or no ceremony — and if religious, which faith and ideally which place of worship
• Attended or unattended — whether you want mourners present at all, or a direct cremation followed by a gathering
• Where — a particular church, crematorium, cemetery, or an existing family grave (include the grave number if you know it)
• Music, readings and hymns — two or three choices is plenty
• What to do with ashes — scatter, inter, keep, or divide. Name the place if it matters.
• What to wear, and what you want to be dressed in
• Flowers or donations — and if donations, which charity
• Who to tell — a list of names and numbers your family may not have, especially old friends and former colleagues
• Anything you specifically do not want — often more useful than what you do want
• How much you would want spent — giving explicit permission for something modest relieves enormous guilt

Where to keep it

Keep the original somewhere findable — not in a safe deposit box nobody can open. Give a copy to your executor and to at least one other person. Store it with your will rather than inside it, so it can be updated without redrafting the will. Tell your family it exists; a perfect document nobody finds is worthless.

Also leave a note of any life insurance, over-50s plan, pension, prepaid funeral plan, or union benefit. Unclaimed policies are one of the commonest causes of a family struggling to pay for a funeral that was already funded.

Part two: should you prepay?

A prepaid funeral plan is a contract where you pay now — in a lump sum or by instalments — and the provider agrees to deliver a specified funeral whenever you die. The appeal is obvious: your family pays nothing, and you fix the price against future inflation.

It is a genuinely good product for a lot of people, and it has become considerably safer than it used to be. But it is a financial contract, and it needs reading like one.

The regulation change you should know about

Since 29 July 2022, prepaid funeral plans have been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This was a major reform following years of poor practice, aggressive cold-calling and several provider collapses that left families with nothing.

What FCA regulation gives you:

• Providers must be authorised by the FCA — check the FCA register before buying, not just the provider's own claims
• FSCS protection if the provider fails, so your money is not simply lost
• Cold-calling is banned, and commission-based selling by unregulated third parties is prohibited
• Plans must deliver a funeral, not merely a contribution towards one, unless clearly sold as such
• Clear, standardised information before you buy, and a cooling-off period
• Access to the Financial Ombudsman Service if the provider treats you unfairly

What a plan usually includes — and what it usually doesn't

The recurring problem is the capped allowance. If a plan covers the crematorium fee only 'up to' a fixed sum, and crematorium fees rise faster than that cap, your family pays the difference. That undermines the whole point of fixing the price. Ask directly: is the third-party fee guaranteed in full, or capped?

The honest case for a plan

• The funeral is arranged and paid for — your family makes one phone call
• You fix the funeral director's element against inflation, which has been running consistently above general prices
• Your wishes are contractually recorded, not merely hoped for
• Money in a plan is generally disregarded for care-home means testing, unlike savings
• It cannot be spent on anything else, which for some people is precisely the appeal

The honest case against

• You are tied to one provider, possibly for decades. Firms are bought and sold; the family name on the door may not mean the same business by then.
• Cancellation charges can be significant, and early cancellation may return less than you paid
• If you move away from the area, delivery may be transferred to an unfamiliar firm
• Capped third-party allowances can leave a shortfall anyway
• Instalment plans often cost noticeably more in total than a lump sum, and may not be fully covered if you die before completing payments
• A simple savings account gives your family the same money with total flexibility — and if you would choose a direct cremation at around £1,628, the sums involved are modest enough to save

Prepaid plan versus the alternatives

There is no universally right answer. As a rough rule: if fixing the price and removing all decisions matters most to you, a plan from an FCA-authorised provider with guaranteed rather than capped third-party fees is sound. If flexibility matters more, or you may move, write your wishes down and save the money instead.

Questions to ask before you buy a plan

1. Are you authorised by the FCA to provide funeral plans? (Then verify it yourself on the register.)
2. Is the crematorium or cemetery fee guaranteed in full, or covered only up to a capped allowance?
3. Exactly what is excluded? Ask for the exclusions in writing.
4. Which funeral director will actually carry out the funeral, and what happens if they cease trading or are sold?
5. What happens if I move to a different part of the country?
6. What are the cancellation terms, and how much would I get back after one year, five years and ten years?
7. If I pay by instalments and die before finishing, is the funeral still delivered in full?
8. Is the money held in a trust or an insurance-backed arrangement, and who oversees it?
9. Can I change my wishes later — for example from burial to cremation — and does that cost anything?
10. Will my family have to pay anything at all on the day? Ask for a plain yes or no.

A sensible order to do all this in

1. Write your wishes down this week

   It is free and it delivers most of the benefit. One page, signed and dated.

2. Tell your executor and one other person where it is

   And list your policies, pensions and any existing plan alongside it.

3. Work out roughly what your funeral would cost

   Compare published prices from firms in your area — see our directory for the Bexley area.

4. Decide whether you want to fund it or fix it

   Funding it means savings or insurance. Fixing it means a prepaid plan.

5. If prepaying, shop and interrogate

   Get quotes from two or three FCA-authorised providers and put the ten questions above to each.

6. Review every few years

   Providers change hands, families move, and minds change. Ten minutes every few years keeps it accurate.

The short version

Writing your wishes down is free, takes twenty minutes, and is the part that actually helps your family. Prepaying is a financial decision that suits some people well — buy only from an FCA-authorised provider, insist that third-party fees are guaranteed rather than capped, and read the exclusions before the brochure.

If you want to see what a funeral in the Bexley area actually costs before deciding, our directory of funeral directors sets out published prices side by side.