At a time when you are coping with tremendous grief and a total upheaval of your life, the high cost of funerals often comes as a shock when a loved one dies.

When your life is being turned upside down, you suddenly learn that you must somehow find many thousands of dollars to pay for even the simplest funeral.

Few people are prepared for this huge expense – especially if their savings are low or non-existent which is often the case.

Even when a carer is working, it may be hard to make ends meet, especially if you need to pay for in-home or respite care, or if you need to pay for special foods, nutritional supplements, herbal remedies or medications for your loved one.

No one likes to talk about death and dying, but sadly, it is something we all will face in our own family circles.

It is better to think about how to cover the inevitable funeral expenses now, when you have a clear head and can make a plan and shop around for the best prices, rather than just after someone you care deeply about dies, and you are so devastated that your planning skills and judgement may be impaired.

One thing to be aware of is that if your loved one dies at home, it is perfectly OK to keep them at home for several hours or even overnight, to say a proper ‘goodbye’ before their body is collected by the funeral home.

In fact, wherever they die, your are perfectly entitled to bring the body home for a short period, to spend time with the person, and have friends and family come over to pay their last respects, if you so wish.  This may be especially important when a child dies and may help the healing process tremendously.

Organising the funeral is an emotionally and financially taxing task. While you might cynically expect to be ripped off by people like used car salesmen, politicians, banks and insurance companies, you probably would not expect to be done over by a funeral director.

However, there are currently about 18 complaints against funeral directors overcharging being investigated in Australia – so don’t be timid about asking lots of questions and shopping around.

A basic funeral will cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000, if done through a regular funeral service which you might find by looking up the Yellow Pages, for example, or it might be the service provided by the local funeral home in your town.

This cost covers many things that all add up, whether a person is buried or cremated.

Being buried is dearer than being cremated. You need to pay for things like the cost of the burial plot (from around $1,000 to $13,000 depending on location); the cost of digging the grave ($500); a basic pine coffin ($2,000, or up to $6,000 for something more elaborate); and a headstone ($1,000 to $3,000).

Being cremated costs around $1,000 (just for the cremation itself), and although you don’t need a burial plot, the expenses still mount up.

Whether you are buried or cremated you still need to pay for things like the coffin; the funeral director’s fees (these can be anything, but generally not less than $3,000), which include the cost of picking up the body, storing the body safely until the funeral, preparing the body for viewing, and taking the body to the funeral; funeral notices, flowers, hearse/s, church fees, celebrant/priest’s fees, releasing balloons or doves, an urn for the ashes and so on. There is also the cost of any wake you might hold after the funeral.

So, as you can see, a funeral is a hugely costly thing and doing research on cheaper alternatives will be well worth your while.

You can get a lot of information about cheaper funerals just by doing a few different searches on the internet using Google. Try the following search words: “cheap funerals”, “budget funerals” and “DIY funerals”.

Apart from searching on the internet, you can also do a search on You Tube, where many people have posted alternative funeral advice.

You can search online for cardboard coffins, some of which are even able to print your own design on them. These start from around $500. There are also online plans for a KLAPS coffin design, made entirely from IKEA furniture components, for about $500.

There is the Natural Earth Burial Society of Australia – which can sell you an unmarked bush plot for about $3,000.  You dig your own hole for the grave which can have no headstone and no markers.

The cheapest funerals (e.g. ‘pauper’s’ funerals paid for by the State, and funerals where no mourners are present and there is no service) do not meet most people’s needs.

Assuming there are funds to pay for the funeral and mourners are present, a private cremation service with a simple ceremony held later, perhaps at home or as a memorial service in the local church, and the cheapest cardboard coffin, is probably the most cost effective form of funeral.

If a burial is required, a simple graveside burial run by the family and the cheapest coffin is likely to be the most cost effective. With burial, finding the cheapest gravesite is an important factor in keeping prices down because the cost of graves or rights of burial varies considerably.

'No Funeral, No Flowers, No Fuss' www.nonono.com.au advertise a basic cremation or burial (not including the burial fees) for $2,600.

Burial at sea has numerous conditions and requires a permit from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts - see their website. Permits are not automatically given and require an application (the form is on their website); the payment of a fee and may take a few days to process.