A: Consultation which currently includes a complimentary will kit and our estate settlement package, is completely free. Our advisors get paid if you decide to use an insurance policy we might recommend to cover the costs involved with final expenses and the advisors are then paid by the insurance company, not by you. However, there is never any obligation to use our service during or after the consultation.  

A: If you have the resources and desire to pay for your funeral and cemetery arrangements in full, then we recommend doing that. It will likely bring you peace of mind if your desire is to do so.  Many people understand the benefits involved with prepaying their last expense services but delay taking action due to the costs involved. The majority of people that do preplan their funerals do so by making monthly payments through a trust option or through a group annuity life insurance plan offered by the funeral home. These are the people that we can help by providing affordable alternative payment options.  

The trust option offered by the funeral home will likely charge you an interest rate to cover the expected rising costs of the funeral arrangements due to inflation.  This interest rate can be high and if you die while making that payment, your family will have to pay the outstanding balance. For this reason, many people choose the Group Annuity Life Insurance option. This policy will generally pay upon death or after a ‘waiting period’ of 2 or 3 years if you have health issues. These policies can be very expensive because they must be paid during a set period of time such as 10, 15 or 20 years as opposed to a policy that would pay for life and have a smaller ‘per month’ commitment. These plans generally do not discount for non-smokers or for people that are in better health. For example, someone who has never had a heart attack, stroke or cancer will pay the same as someone who has one of these issues in the past year.

This is where Final Expense Solutions has an advantage. We can help document your funeral expense wishes for both funeral and cemetery. This saves your family the emotional stress of planning your service at the time of your death.  Final Expense Solutions is a licensed insurance agency, therefore they can provide an insurance tailored to your health, smoking status, age and funeral and/or cemetery wishes that will likely save money on a 'per month' basis.  We incorporate an amount equal to the average rate of inflation or we use an inflation rider on our policies.

A: We believe everyone should call us before they do any preplanning. The primary reason to call us first is because we can you show options that prevent you from spending money you don't need to.  We also have greater flexibility to work within your budget than most funeral homes would.  Another reason to call us is because we can save you time and energy.  People often delay preplanning because they don't know where to start...Do I call the lawyer, the insurance agent, the accountant, the funeral director or the cemetery director?  Final Expense Solutions provides the documentation for preplanning as well as free consultation and Funeral and Cemetery plans.  We believe that by starting with us, you might find that you can get most or everything done to leave a proper plan behind that will make things much easier for your family when you die and save money in the process.  Make your first call to us! 

A: We have great respect for the services provided by both funeral establishments and cemeteries. Our founder is from the funeral and cemetery industry. The service we provide addresses the costs of preplanning these services and provides an alternative option for paying for these services and products before they are needed. The plans we make with you are designed to be given to a funeral director or cemetery director one day when they are needed along with the money to pay for the plans.

A: Yes. The insurance companies we use are Canadian and protected by Assuris which guarantees that you will retain at least 85% of the insurance benefits you were promised in event that the insurance company fails.

 

A: Not for our Harmony Plan. Most of the companies simply ask health and lifestyle questions and the more questions you can answer ‘no’ to, the lower the monthly cost you will pay. There may be additional requirements for policies from our Asset and Income Protection group of plans.

A: Yes, we recommend it. Regular life insurance policies usually require a death certificate from a funeral home before they will pay out a claim. In some instances, related to the cause of death or the length of time the policy was in force, the insurance company may request a form from the deceased’s doctor called an Attending Physician’s Statement. This form can delay the claim for weeks or even months meanwhile there are costs that must be paid within days of someone dying.

Most of the insurance policies Final Expense Solutions use payout within 24 hours of receiving notice of the death. Most do not even require a death certificate, only confirmation from a funeral home that the death has occurred. The policies are designed to be final expense policies and most have specific built-in benefits for this purpose such as a travel benefit which pays money in event that someone dies a specific distance away from home. People can buy a similar type of insurance when they prepay their funerals but they pay approximately $600 for it.

Final Expense Solutions provides an insurance policy designed for final expenses and a plan to go with it. Research tells us that for many people, the stress of having to make decisions on unfamiliar matters the day their loved one died, was more difficult than having to pay the cost of the goods and services involved. Having a life insurance policy and not an itemized list of goods and services requested for the funeral and cemetery is only fixing half a problem.

We recommend keeping your existing insurance policy and using the Harmony Plan for your final expenses. Rarely does a survivor complain that they’ve been left with too much money. Often people fail to consider what expenses or monetary shortfalls they will experience when their loved one dies. Pension benefits are often reduced for a surviving spouse, taxes need to be paid and debts may be incurred because the deceased required a long-term care facility OHIP didn’t cover. 

A: Research tell us that most people using cemetery arrangements today are using cremation interment products and services, fewer people are requesting to be buried next to a specific family member or have a desire to pre-select their final resting place. For those people that have a specific cemetery in mind and they want to pick out their space in advance, we would recommend visiting the cemetery ahead of time to reserve that space.  

In some cases, people will be cremated and interred with a family member who has already died. That would likely require some paperwork to be completed ahead of time and provided to the cemetery such as providing signed copies of wills of the original purchasers showing the named executor(s), then permission would need to be obtained from the executor(s).

Most people today are not as concerned about the location of the space or being ‘next to Aunt Betty’ as they would have been 20 years ago before cremation options became the common choice in cemeteries. Final Expense Solutions advisors have prices from local cemeteries. They have the average prices of goods and services determined by geographic area, advisors also have photos of gardens and information on the local cemeteries and disposition options. Our advisors can even discuss memorial options (otherwise known as monuments, markers or headstones) and provide average price estimates. The advisor will design a rough sketch of the layout of the memorial, with words of comfort, images or pictures so that when the time comes, the family will a have a good idea what their loved one wanted.  Today, often people worry more about the words their loved one would have wanted on the memorial that they do about the location of the actual grave. 

A: No. As long as you keep making your payments and keep your policy in force. 

A: No. The amount you pay for the Harmony Plan will remain the same and cannot be increased.

A: No. A will is a document that allocates where your assets go, who becomes your executor(s) and who will be the guardians of your children. Wills often do not contain specific instructions for funeral and cemetery planning. Even if they did, the will is often read after funeral services have been completed.  Wills do not provide funding for final expenses, they only distribute money that already exists in the deceased’s estate.  

A: Let’s use an analogy to explain: 

Imagine there is a car you want to purchase at a car dealership. You want to buy the car but it costs more money than you have and the payment options offered by the dealership are very expensive. The dealership is only allowing you to make the payments over a 3-year period and the interest is very high. For this reason, you have been postponing buying the vehicle. Then one day, someone says to you “I can offer you the same car, but the monthly payment option will have a lower interest rate and you can pay it off over a much longer term if you wish, thereby now making the monthly commitment affordable and allowing you to purchase the car.

In this analogy, the first car dealership only offering the 3 year plan is a funeral home. The payment is generally higher because funeral homes offer either a trust option or a group annuity insurance option. The trust option can have a high interest rate and if someone dies while making payments, their family has to pay the balance, for this reason most people choose the insurance option. With the group annuity insurance option, the payment terms are limited. Usually payments can be made in 10 or 15 years, some of the companies are now offering 20-year payments if the applicant is young enough. In addition to the payment terms, the group annuity generally does not offer a discount for someone in preferred health or non-smoker status. 

 

Final Expense Solutions has plans that can be paid over longer terms. They can even be paid over someone’s lifetime. Rates are lower based on someone’s health and if they are non-smokers (similar to a lower interest rate, using the same car analogy). Cemeteries provide even fewer options when it comes to payment plans. The are currently no known insurance options offered by any of the significant cemetery chains and if any monthly payment terms are offered at all, they generally stop at 5 years and include significant interest rates. That is how we can offer a lower monthly cost on a 'per month' basis.  The other benefit we have is that there are products we offer at no cost such as estate settlement packages and travel protection that may lower the overall cost of the funeral (or price of the car, using the car analogy).This is the reason why Final Expense Solutions can usually offer a lower ‘per month’ cost for the same products and services prepaid for over time at a funeral home or cemetery.