Original research

12,244 measured prices · 44 states

Cost of living indexes do not predict what a funeral costs

Almost every "cost in your city" page multiplies a national median by a regional price index. We tested that against 12,244 funeral prices and the correlation is -0.111, holding at zero in every subset. We were using the method ourselves, so we stopped, and this is what we found.

1,128 cities · 12,242 funeral homes

The same cremation costs twice as much across town

In the typical American city the dearest funeral home charges 1.94 times what the cheapest does for an identical direct cremation, a gap of $1,220. Ringing three of them instead of one is worth a median $489, and federal law already obliges every one to quote you over the telephone.

What people actually complain about in life insurance

Every individual life complaint filed with a state regulator, grouped by what it was about. The largest category is not denied claims, it is how the policy was sold.

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The Funeral Price Index

What funerals actually cost over time, from official BLS data, against everything else in the economy. Funeral prices outran inflation over twenty years and have run behind it for the last ten, and the second of those is not the good news it sounds like.

September 2026 · 50 states and DC

The Funeral Affordability Gap

A typical burial costs $15,395, or 19.8% of a year’s median household income. In 26 states it is a fifth or more, and the states where a funeral costs the most are not the states where it hurts most.