Final expense and burial insurance
Burial insurance for seniors: will the face amount cover a funeral?
Pick your state and type the face amount of a burial policy. The calculator sets it against the state’s spending per death at your likely age of death.
Independent site, not an insurer or a broker, and not a funeral home or a government agency.
A fixed face amount against a rising funeral bill
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Share of the funeral it pays at age 85
80%
| Spending per death in Ohio by then | $12,547 |
| The face amount, in today’s funeral prices | $6,703 |
| Still to find | $2,547 |
Median age at death from the Ohio life table (NCHS 2022); funeral prices rising 2.6% a year, the BLS trend from 2015 to 2025.
Burial insurance is a small life insurance policy meant to pay for a funeral: a fixed face amount, usually paid to a beneficiary, for a level monthly premium. The face amount is fixed when the policy is bought, while funeral prices keep rising, so the share of the bill it pays falls every year. In Ohio, death-care businesses took in $8,411 per death at September 2026 prices, from Census and BLS data. A woman of 70 in Ohio has even odds of living past 85.6 on the state life table, and at the funeral price trend of 2.6% a year that spending would reach about $12,547 by then. A $10,000 policy would pay 80% of it. Spending per death is an average of all funerals, including burials with a plot and a headstone; a simpler funeral costs less. The calculator does the sum for any state, age and face amount.
Data read and sums checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the figures are worked out
A $10,000 policy bought at 70, state by state
Spending per death today, the median age at death of a woman of 70 in each state, that spending grown at 2.6% a year to that age, and the share of it a $10,000 face amount would pay.
| State | Per death, September 2026 | Median age at death | By then | Share paid by $10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $11,000 | 87.6 | $17,265 | 58% |
| New Jersey | $11,349 | 87.3 | $17,667 | 57% |
| Illinois | $10,014 | 86.6 | $15,297 | 65% |
| Pennsylvania | $8,939 | 86.5 | $13,636 | 73% |
| Ohio | $8,411 | 85.6 | $12,547 | 80% |
| Texas | $8,123 | 86.1 | $12,257 | 82% |
| California | $9,578 | 87.5 | $14,987 | 67% |
| Georgia | $7,324 | 85.7 | $10,945 | 91% |
| North Carolina | $6,917 | 85.9 | $10,380 | 96% |
| Florida | $6,051 | 87.3 | $9,421 | 106% |
| Arizona | $4,458 | 86.7 | $6,841 | 146% |
| Washington | $5,054 | 86.8 | $7,763 | 129% |
Two things move the share: the level of spending in the state, and how long people there live. A state with long lives gives prices more years to rise before the policy pays. All 51 states are in the calculator.
Spending per death is not your funeral
The Census figure counts all the money that funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories take in, divided by all deaths. It includes cremations with no service and burials with a casket, a vault, a plot and a stone, as well as cemetery plots and pre-need contracts sold in advance. A direct cremation can cost a fraction of it; a traditional burial can cost more. Use it as a yardstick, and replace it with a price list total in the main calculator once you have one.
What a fixed face amount loses
At 2.6% a year, a fixed sum loses about half of its funeral buying power in 27 years. Someone who buys at 70 and lives to the median age loses less than that, but a quarter of buyers live well past the median, and for them the policy covers much less of the bill than it did when it was bought. The funeral inflation page shows the index since 1987, and the final expense break-even shows how many years of premiums it takes to pay in the face amount.
Alternatives that keep pace
A prepaid funeral contract fixes the price of the items it lists, so it keeps pace with prices for those items, at the cost of being tied to one provider. Savings keep pace if they earn at least the funeral trend after tax. A policy with an increasing benefit keeps pace if the increase matches the trend. Each has a cost; the right one depends on age, savings and how long the money has to wait.
Before buying a burial policy
Ask three questions. Who receives the money: a person you choose, or a funeral home under a contract? Does the face amount stay fixed, or grow, and by how much each year? How many years of premiums will it take to pay in the face amount? The first decides how flexible the money is, the second how much of a later funeral it covers, and the third how much you pay for that protection if you live a long time.