Lavish Funerals

Providing a good service to the dead is a thriving industry even amid the economic crisis. According to the New York Times: "A growing willingness to cater to individual tastes is helping the funeral industry hold its own during the recession." An increasing number of people are paying big bucks to keep doing, after death, what they enjoyed while they were alive.


I believe that funerals are expensive, and ridiculous already, so why add more complications with a sense of anachronistic self-indulgence when one is dead. Why succumb to mundane desires to satisfy our spending drive even after we cease to exist?

I want to be cremated when that time comes. That is what I want, but again, I will be dead so, I may not -especially if my catholic mother is around :P. But, I could settle for the most inexpensive and simplistic service available.

I think is offensive to waste so much money on a luxurious funeral. That money will be better used serving those who are left behind. But, again, we all have the right to do what we want with our money, even if it is after we die. Just make sure you make all the necessary arrangements in advance, because, if you are counting on someone like me to carry out your frivolous desires, you may be disappointed -or not :P.

Fortunately for the US economy, this thriving business does not need me to flourish, as Ms. Glaser puts it in her article The Funeral: Your Last Chance to be a Big Spender, "... people in the funeral business have something that executives in many other industries don’t: a guaranteed, and expanding, pool of customers."

Source: The Funeral: Your Last Chance to be a Big Spender
Picture, via The New York Times