How to keep final expense coverage affordable
Direct Life Advisors is an independent life insurance agency, not an insurance company, and is not affiliated with any insurer mentioned here.
Three decisions control what this costs, and all three are made before any application is submitted: how much coverage you actually need, whether you answer the health questions, and how many carriers get asked.
Get those three right and the same person pays substantially less for the same protection.
Talk it through with a licensed agent.
Fifteen minutes, no charge — we'll tell you which product your answers qualify for and what it costs, across several carriers at once.
(888) 753-8706No cost to you. We're paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.
Decide the amount from the bill, not from a round number
Coverage is priced per dollar of death benefit, so every dollar of coverage you do not need is money leaving your account every month for the rest of your life.
Work from the actual costs rather than a round figure, and subtract what is already set aside or already covered by a policy in force.
What the coverage has to cover
The National Funeral Directors Association's 2023 General Price List Study, released 8 December 2023, put the median funeral with viewing and burial at $8,300 and a cremation with viewing at $6,280. Neither figure includes the cemetery plot, the grave marker, or cash-advance items such as flowers and the obituary, and both are 2023 figures. NFDA news release, 8 December 2023.
A separate NFDA publication, its 2025 Cremation & Burial Report, puts the US cremation rate at 63.4%. That report is sold rather than published in full, so the figure is quoted from it and is not linked here.
Set a death benefit against those two figures and the arithmetic does the arguing. A $10,000 policy covers a cremation with money left over; it covers a burial only until the plot and the marker are added. That is the number worth deciding first, because everything else on this page is priced against it.
Answer the questions
The product that pays from day one asks health questions. The product that asks none costs more and delays the full benefit for two years. Skipping the questions to be safe is the single most expensive decision available in this category.
No exam does not mean automatic approval, and automatic approval does not mean immediate full benefits. Those are three separate things, and the advertising in this category runs them together.
The grids are built around managed conditions and the questions are more specific than people expect. A few minutes of answers is what separates the two prices.
Ask more than one carrier
Health grids are not standardised between companies. The same medication, the same diagnosis, the same number of years since an event — each carrier treats them differently, and the applicant routed to an expensive tier at one company clears the grid at the next.
A captive agent has one grid to offer. An independent agency runs your answers against several at once and takes the best result. No two carriers grade the same health answers the same way, and the term that governs you is the one in your own contract. Where a company is named on this site it is to help you find your own policy, not as a recommendation.
That is a fifteen-minute call and it costs you nothing. We are paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.
Talk to someone independent
Direct Life Advisors is an independent agency with 52 carrier relationships. A licensed agent will look for policies that already exist before selling you anything, and run the health questions with you if nothing turns up. At no charge to you. We're paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.