Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Stupid Insurance for Stupid People



When a relative dies, that relative is DEAD.  That relative doesn't give a flying damn what kind of box you put him in before you drop him into a hole in the ground- in fact, he doesn't even care if you don't do that.

My grandparents were both cremated.  Their ashes sat in matching cardboard boxes in the basement for several years before I accidentally came across them while doing some re-arranging.  We had simply forgotten that they were there.  I took them outside and scattered them.  Then I threw the cardboard boxes away.  Done and done.

There is ZERO reason why "the average funeral costs $7500."  Well, sorry, there is ONE reason- because people are morons with money and feel they need to put on some kind of show to "honor" the corpse (seems to me it would make a lot more sense to throw a $7500 party BEFORE the guy is dead, but that's just me...)

Donate the cadaver to a med school.  Go with cremation (like EVERYONE in my family.)  Skip the morbid party with sad people and sandwiches and this body wearing an expensive suit sitting in an ornate box which will never be seen by anyone ever again after that day.  It's the 21st century, people.  Trust me.  The guy in the box DOESN'T CARE.

If I'm totally wrong and there is a spirit world, I know my parents would be pissed to no end if they looked down from Wherever Spirits Go and saw their children go into debt to dress up their spent remains for display before tossing dirt on them.  So we aren't going to be doing that.  So we don't need this ridiculous "burial insurance."  See how easy that was?

3 comments:

  1. If you think what people traditionally do with corpses when holding a funeral is bad, you won't want to read this article about a hot new trend: posing the body to look as if the person were still alive, sitting up, enjoying a drink and a smoke or whatever:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/us/its-not-the-living-dead-just-a-funeral-with-flair.html

    See? It could always be even worse.

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  2. You think funeral insurance is bad? Try the Gerber Life ads, that are "protecting" the child. How this protects the child is a mystery, it would seem to put him/her in more danger from morally deprived parents who would consider killing their children to collect the insurance. Sadly, we had news in the NY area just last week of parents who did just that.

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    Replies
    1. I've done one of those Gerber College Fund ads- where one set of parents claims they "haven't had time" to look into setting up a college fund, and the other thinks they've done something wonderful by calling Gerber. Never mind that A) every time you walk into a bank you walk past someone who can set up an actual college fund for you in five minutes, B) Every investment company provides this service for a nominal fee, C) "guaranteed safe growth" means slow, insufficient growth, D) the perky "it's a life insurance policy, oh that's different" is downright creepy.

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