What does a fixed monthly budget buy in burial insurance?
Direct Life Advisors is an independent life insurance agency, not an insurance company, and is not affiliated with any insurer mentioned here.
There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking your age has given you a number that is wrong.
The same payment buys very different amounts of coverage depending on four things — and this page is about how to work out your own figure rather than about ours.
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.
The four inputs
Age at issue. The dominant factor. The same budget buys substantially more coverage at 55 than at 75, and the gap widens every year.
Which product you qualify for. A level policy bought with health questions buys more coverage per dollar than a guaranteed issue policy bought without them. Same budget, more protection.
Tobacco use. Priced separately by every carrier, and the difference is large.
Which carrier. Pricing is not standardised and neither are the health grids. Two companies quote the same person differently for the same coverage.
We do not publish premium figures here. A rate that is wrong for your age, your state or your health answers is worse than no rate at all, and rates change.
Work from the bill, not from the budget
Starting with a monthly figure is backwards. Start with what the money has to do, then find out what that costs.
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.
Getting your own number
Fifteen minutes on the phone produces the real figure for your age, your state and your health answers, run against several carriers at once. It costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
If the coverage you want costs more than the budget you have, we will say so and show you what the budget does buy. That is a more useful conversation than a number from a chart.
Talk to someone independent
Direct Life Advisors is an independent agency with 52 carrier relationships. A licensed agent will run your answers against several carriers' health grids and give you real figures for your own age, state and health answers. At no charge to you. We're paid a commission by the insurance company only if you later buy through us — never by you.