How Much to Set Aside for Your Own Funeral

There is no single figure that answers how much you should put aside to cover your own funeral, because a funeral is not one fixed price. It is a local price, in the year it happens, plus everything the family chooses to add around it. But you can arrive at a sensible amount to set aside, and this page shows how, working from what a funeral actually costs where you live rather than from a national average that is already out of date by the time you read it.

The honest starting point is that most people who plan for their own funeral underestimate it, and they underestimate it in a particular way. They budget for the funeral and forget the send-off. The memorial, the wake, the flowers, the order of service, the travel for family coming from a distance and the extra copies of the death certificate never appear on the crematorium's fee list, yet together they can rival the funeral itself.

The second thing people get wrong is time. Money you set aside for your own funeral may sit untouched for twenty or thirty years, and funeral fees rise most years. A sum that covers everything comfortably today can fall well short by the time it is actually needed, so any plan to leave money for funeral expenses has to allow for the gap between now and then.

Start from a current local quote, not a national average

The averages you see quoted in the press are a poor basis for your own plan for two reasons. They lag behind reality, because they are gathered and published after the fact, and they hide enormous regional variation. Crematorium fees, burial fees and the price of a grave plot are set locally and can differ by hundreds of pounds between neighbouring areas, so a national figure tells you very little about what your own funeral will cost your family.

The better approach is to ask a local funeral director, or a direct cremation provider, for a written quotation now, itemised. That single step turns an abstract worry into a real number you can plan around. It also forces a useful decision: whether you want an attended funeral with cars, a service and a wake, or a simple direct cremation with no service, because the gap between those two is large and it is your choice to make rather than your family's to guess at.

Whatever figure you land on, treat it as this year's price. Because burial and cremation fees are reviewed annually and generally rise, the number you write down today is a floor, not a ceiling, for what the funeral will cost whenever it eventually happens.

The costs a funeral budget usually forgets

The funeral director's core invoice is only part of what a death costs. When you are working out how much money to leave for a funeral, add the parts that arrive separately or later:

• The memorial. A headstone is a separate purchase from a monumental mason, billed months after the funeral once the ground has settled, and it can run well into four figures with its permission fee on top.
• The wake. The venue, the catering and the drinks after the service are entirely up to the family and frequently cost more than expected.
• Flowers, notices and the order of service. Small individually, but they add up, and someone has to pay for them at the time.
• Travel. Family travelling a long way, or the cost of moving the person to be buried elsewhere in the country, is a real expense. Moving a body a distance within the UK has its own rules and cost, which we cover in moving a body more than 50 miles within the UK.
• Certified copies of the death certificate. Each copy is charged, and banks, insurers, pension schemes and the probate registry frequently want to see an original, so a family often needs several.

None of these appears on the crematorium's price list, and together they can add a substantial amount to the headline funeral figure. A realistic sum to set aside covers the send-off, not just the committal.

The money has to be reachable, not just there

Leaving enough money is only half the task. The other half is making sure the family can actually get to it when the funeral director's invoice falls due, which is usually within about a month. This is where a lot of careful saving comes undone.

If your savings sit in a bank account in your sole name, that account is frozen the moment the bank is told you have died. The money is still yours, and it will eventually be released, but it is locked until probate is granted or until the bank agrees to release funds at its own discretion. Whether the account is in your sole name or held jointly changes this completely, and it is worth understanding how a joint or a sole account behaves differently at death before you decide where to keep the money. A joint account passes straight to the survivor and stays usable.

Even the paperwork can trip the family up. Where a death is referred to the coroner, the family may only have an interim certificate at first, and it is worth knowing in advance whether the bank will accept an interim death certificate to release funeral funds. The cleanest way to make money reachable at once is a life policy written in trust, which pays a nominated person directly, outside the estate and without waiting for probate. A funeral is one of the few bills that genuinely cannot wait, so reachability is not a detail.

Allowing for the years the money must keep pace

The hardest part of planning for your own funeral is that you cannot know when it will be needed. It might be next year; it might be in thirty years. Over a long stretch, a fixed cash sum quietly loses ground, because funeral fees rise most years while a sum sitting in a low-interest account does not.

There are only really three answers to this. You can deliberately over-fund, leaving more than today's cost so there is headroom for future rises. You can keep the money somewhere it has a chance to grow rather than in cash that stands still. Or you can fix the price of the funeral itself with a prepaid plan, which locks today's cost for a defined funeral, though it does not cover the wake and the extras. Which of these suits you depends on how far off the need is likely to be, and that is genuinely unknowable for any individual.

What can be said about it comes from population data rather than any personal prediction. The Office for National Statistics publishes the standard UK reference for how long people live and the probability of dying before a given age, and it is the honest source for the range of timescales your money may need to span.

Source: Office for National Statistics, National life tables, UK: 1980–1982 to 2022–2024, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Savings, a funeral plan, or a life policy: how each behaves

The three common ways to leave money for a funeral behave very differently at the moment they are needed, and the differences matter more than the headline sums.

Savings are the most flexible option. They cover the funeral, the wake and everything else, and the family can spend them however the day demands. Their weakness is reachability: in a sole account they are frozen until probate or a discretionary release, exactly when the invoice is due. Kept in a joint account, or clearly earmarked and accessible, they work well.

A prepaid funeral plan fixes a specified funeral, from a named provider, at today's price, and funeral plans have been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority since July 2022. The trade-off is rigidity. The plan buys the funeral it describes and little more, so the wake, the memorial and the extras still have to be funded, and the value depends on the plan's own terms if you die before it is fully paid.

A life policy pays a cash sum the family can spend on anything, from the funeral to the wake to any bills left behind. Written in trust, it pays a nominated person quickly, outside the estate and without probate, which solves the reachability problem in one step. Whether cover is offered, and on what terms, depends on your age and health and on underwriting, so nothing is guaranteed until it is in place. If you want to compare that route against savings, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker set the sum against the real total you have worked out.

One caution applies to any lump sum left for a funeral. If the family would otherwise claim a state funeral grant, money set aside can reduce it, and it is worth reading how a life policy can shrink the DWP funeral grant so the two are not double-counted. A large sum landing in a surviving partner's account can also affect their own means-tested benefits, which is another reason to think about where the money goes, not just how much it is.

Leave the instructions, not just the money

Money without instructions creates its own problems. If nobody knows the savings exist, or where the policy is, or what you actually wanted, the family can end up borrowing to pay for a funeral while your provision sits undiscovered. The fix is unglamorous but effective: tell someone. Write down what you want, where the money is and who is to deal with it, and keep it with your will rather than in your head.

This dovetails with the wider job of getting your affairs in order. Deciding who administers your estate, and who you trust to carry out your wishes, is part of the same task; our notes on whether your executor and guardian should be the same person and, for parents on their own, on the appointments a single parent's will needs to get right both bear on it. The point is that the funeral money is easiest to leave well when it is part of a plan the right people know about, not a secret you take with you.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The core message holds across the UK: work from a current local quote, budget for the whole send-off, and make sure the money is reachable. The machinery around it differs by nation. In Scotland the process that unlocks a deceased person's estate is confirmation rather than probate, but a sole account is still frozen until it is granted, so the reachability point applies just as forcefully. State help differs too: Scotland runs its own Funeral Support Payment through Social Security Scotland, and Northern Ireland has its own scheme through the Department for Communities, each with its own rules on who qualifies and how much is paid.

Wherever you live, the way to leave your family enough is the same in spirit: know the real, current, local total including the send-off, allow for the years it may have to keep pace, and put the money somewhere they can actually reach it in time. Our guide to funeral costs and who pays sets out the fuller picture, and free, impartial help with planning is available from MoneyHelper, which is government-backed and sells nothing.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I put aside for my own funeral?

Work from a current local quotation rather than a national average, then add the parts people forget: the memorial, the wake, flowers, travel for family and extra copies of the death certificate. Add a margin for the years in between, because local burial and cremation fees rise most years, so a figure that covers everything today is likely to fall short by the time it is actually needed.

Is it better to save the money or buy a funeral plan?

Each does a different job. Savings are flexible and cover the wake and everything else, while a prepaid plan fixes the funeral itself at today's price with a named provider. The catch with savings is access: money in a sole account is frozen at death until probate or a discretionary release, unless it sits in a joint account or in a policy written in trust that pays out without waiting.

Will my family be able to reach my savings quickly?

Not if they sit in a sole account. That account is frozen when the bank is told of the death and released only on probate, or earlier at the bank's discretion, which is exactly when the funeral bill falls due. A joint account passes to the survivor and stays usable, and a life policy written in trust pays a nominated person directly, outside the estate and without waiting for probate.