Funeral Expenses

[swissie]

"Papa died last night". (Verified, no joke!)

Funeral Expenses for a "decent" funeral are projected between 60'000 and 70'000 BHT.

Reasonable? Probably on the upper end of the bracket, since the deceased is no member of the Royal-Family, but was a humble, but honorable Rice-Farmer lliving near Phitsanoluk.

Any Input?

Cheers.

[Khutan]

I would say 15,000 is more like the truth.

The Band music has mostly been replaced by a VCD, the Coffin is not expensive, leaving 5,000 for food and the "Temple" for the service and the cremation.

I would be asking where that amount of money comes from and some details. Also whose responsibility is it to actually pay for the funeral. Don't ask your family, rather ask a Thai what the proper tradition is, and what they would estimate the costs to be.

Also who has the insurance policy ? Many people take out insurance on their family exactly to cover the funeral expenses.

[qualtrough]

If you have to/want to pay, tell whoever is arranging it to get receipts for anything over 1000 B and reimburse them for those. No receipt, no payment, except for petty expenses.

Edited September 11, 2006 by qualtrough

[Kathe]

It's reasonable if the temple is wellknown. First you have to invite monks to share the ceremony, ( you have to pay each monk ). Second you have to hire the place, you have to pay too. The air con hall cost more than open hall. You have to pay for the wood coffin ( not cheap at all ), you have to prepare snack for guests, you have to pay for Wreaht and etc....

Cant believe that 15,000.- shall be enough. We ( Bangkokian ) have to save money if anybody in the family passaway at least 100,000.-

[rcm]

It's reasonable if the temple is wellknown. First you have to invite monks to share the ceremony, ( you have to pay each monk ). Second you have to hire the place, you have to pay too. The air con hall cost more than open hall. You have to pay for the wood coffin ( not cheap at all ), you have to prepare snack for guests, you have to pay for Wreaht and etc....

Cant believe that 15,000.- shall be enough. We ( Bangkokian ) have to save money if anybody in the family passaway at least 100,000.-

It all depends on what kind of Funeral you will do and how well known the Fam is ,as well. For a "7 day" Funeral with loads of Monks and printed Books as presents the Funeral of Dad it was closer to 200000 THB , and that's in Nakhon Sawan Province...

[Rinrada]

Seem to remember talking to one of the Northern charities who quoted something like 3,000 Bt. for the real basic Budist cremation ceremony without any bells and whistles. and if the person was as they say .."without" they would aloso cover the costs.

Death as in life is still of course subject to market forces and depending on the individuals /position/status in society and more important ..assets...will be reflective.

[GracelessFawn]

"Papa died last night". (Verified, no joke!)

Funeral Expenses for a "decent" funeral are projected between 60'000 and 70'000 BHT.

Reasonable? Probably on the upper end of the bracket, since the deceased is no member of the Royal-Family, but was a humble, but honorable Rice-Farmer lliving near Phitsanoluk.

Any Input?

Cheers.

Man, that's a lot! F****king buckets!

I better not die yet!

[Tarragona]

"Papa died last night". (Verified, no joke!)

Funeral Expenses for a "decent" funeral are projected between 60'000 and 70'000 BHT.

Reasonable? Probably on the upper end of the bracket, since the deceased is no member of the Royal-Family, but was a humble, but honorable Rice-Farmer lliving near Phitsanoluk.

Any Input?

Cheers.

I reckon you could do it for less. But, as long as the money's not a big problem for you, why bother? You can try and keep tabs on where it's actually going (and once it's gone no top-ups) but if you and your wife had a decent relationship with him send him off in a little bit of style.

As mentioned below, an insurance policy is often taken out for this eventuality. The wife has one on her Dad (long may he be with us ).

Edited September 11, 2006 by Tarragona

[Khutan]

Cant believe that 15,000.- shall be enough. We ( Bangkokian ) have to save money if anybody in the family passaway at least 100,000.-

All the more reason to have "Up-country" family. Personally, I think 15k is too much. you can do a wedding for less than that, and there is one less person eating and drinking

If you have to/want to pay, tell whoever is arranging it to get receipts for anything over 1000 B and reimburse them for those. No receipt, no payment, except for petty expenses.

1000 Bhat - I would insist on 100B and a tax invoice.

[orlandoiam]

Hello, sorry to here about your wife/girlfriend's loss. I asked my Thai boyfriend about it...as he's from Yossoton. His family are also rice farmers.

In Yossoton terms, he describes his family as comfortable middle class. To give you an idea of comfortable middle class: when we go back to Yosso his family's houses seem cleaner and nicer than alot of his neighbors, and during Song Kran the family gave all of the older neighbors 100b during the ceremonies. Their family has about 6 cows and two of them lived under us, while I was visiting the house. (that was noisy!) I'm describing their financial status to allow you to compare funeral costs of a comfortable middle class family to your girlfriend/wife's family?

His mother died about 10 years ago and he said the 3 day funeral costs came to a bit over 200,000 baht. But, almost all of this was covered by his mother's insurance policy. He also said he believed about 95 % of the elderly had these policies. (Of course, this is coming from his thoughts...rather than any direct facts...so take it with a grain of salt.)

For the 3 day funeral, they killed two cows. A small cow goes for around 5k and a bigger around 8k or more. They also had about 7 monks, they would get paid between 50-100 baht per day. He said the payments depended on 1)how rich you were 2)if the monks were somehow related or friends with the family you would actually pay them more.

If someone dies in an accident they'll be buried. But if they died by disease or old age then they'll be cremated. He said that there were no cremation costs, as his village works together to cremate the body. They put most of the ashes in the forest (although some of them may be taken home with the family). The call this part of the forest Ba Cha... which translates to Slow Forest. (nice huh? in the thai/english dictionary it just means "cemetary )

Anyways, during the 3 day funeral he said that almost all the families in his village sent a person or two to the funeral. He said usually only one person goes to represent the whole family. Close friends and family would stay the night as well. They have a typical Issan house tall, wooden and large. He said the house was full, the downstairs open eating area was full and even the street in front of the house was full of people eating and drinking for 3 days. So, that means whiskey, coke, beer, ice, water, food for a lot of people. In his case, he thinks it was around 100 people per day -- as there's around 100 families in his village.

He also said that some villages and families think it's wrong to hold this type of funeral (although funeral in Thai, translates roughly to "death party") So, I guess you should check out if you need to buy all this stuff before you do it. The way he explained it is, the family gives a "party" for the community, friends (and it seems like there, everybody pretty much knows everybody) the community in turn comes and gives the family support during this time...and helps the family be less fearful of returning ghosts. So, pretty much like a Western funeral, just a little longer and probably with more whiskey.

As I mentioned earlier, most of these funeral costs were reimbursed by the insurance policy. But, my boyfriend (who is not a rich man and gets paid 300 baht a day for between 11-14 hours of work) gave 9,000 baht which was eventually reimbursed. His older sister and brother who have more lucrative careers, being owners of their own Isaan outdoor foodstands in Bangkok both put out 100,000 baht each. They were also almost fully reimbursed. But it appears the more able you are, the more money you'll need to help with.

Also, at the funeral party all of the neighbors and friends contributed some money to the costs as well. According to him, around 50-100 baht each (with a sprinkling of 500 bahts)-- and he thinks the total was around 20,000 baht.

Now, I'm not sure my numbers add up. And obviously this is coming from asking only one person (my boyfriend)...He also said that the costs can fluctuate wildly...he believed perhaps the poorest of the poor could "go" for around 6,000 to 10,000 baht... but he stressed these were very poor people. And, that the funeral his family held was perhaps a little bit more expensive than most funerals; but was pretty similiar to most of the surrounding families.

So...goodluck, making your own decisions and deciding what seems fair and good to you.

[PeaceBlondie]

I just searched for "funeral cost" and came up with this excellent thread. Like a piece of string, or a monthly budget, it varies in length: Khutan says 15K, swissie thinks 65K, Kathe says 100K, and rcm and orloandoiam say 200K.

Boyfriend and I were talking about this lately. I surely wouldn't need a long, fancy funeral which resembles an Irish wake, including all the whiskey. But b/f's mother is well into her seventies, and frail. They spent 200K on Papa's funeral, several years ago. That is one huge amount of money for working class families; they've never been rich. He never mentioned the insurance policy.

The multiple days of mourning - is all that time necessary? Besides, what if the deceased person never was Buddhist? Why would accident victims be buried, and natural deaths be cremated?

I don't want to be cheap, and I can leave enough behind to pay for my own modest non-Buddhist funeral. But if boyfriend's mother dies in the next year or two, I might be expected to pitch in and help with his share (he has four sisters who have salaries).

If it matters, most of his family doesn't drink alcohol, but I assume their friends do. It just seems like a lot of money (but then, funerals in the West aren't cheap).

[November Rain]

My boyfriend died last spring. My Mum & I paid for the overall funeral (no policy, there!), but all of his friends & colleagues chipped in, too. His boss paid for the coffin, so I don't know how much that was. He had a 5 day ceremony and each day was "taken" by a group of his friends (ie they paid for expenses for monks etc & refreshments for that day) apart from the Friday (his birthday, sadly) which I took. The cremation, final day's refreshments, flowers, his "meals" (the deceased is presented with 3 meals a day & snacks), presentations to the monks, etc were Mum's & my responsibility. I think we paid about 25,000 to 30,000 bt. Hard to keep track, though, as you keep being asked for 1,000 bt for this & 500bt for that. So, I'd put the whole thing at about 50,000bt. As mentioned before, attendees of the funeral gave financial donations to us, most of which I kept for his son.

[RamdomChances]

When my father-in-law died it came to about 80-100,000 all the family chipped in, that includes ahveing a "chedi" built for his reamains.

Yea you could probaly do it for 15,000 bhat, you can also just get married for the registration fee at the local ampour something like 500 bhat. It just depends on what people expectations are and how big the family is, expect another party 100 days later, then every year although not on the same scale

[old wanderer]

orlandoiam:

Thanks for writing out all the details.....In each part of Thailand tradion are a bit different. When my father-in-law died last year, it was a bit of a shock to have 400 people show up over 4 days. I never knew he had so many friends and relitives. Certainly the wedding and party my wife and I had a few years ago made the family more visible. But we only had about 200 people there.

I would guess it cost about 200,000 baht for the funeral, and this is for a poor Issan family farming about 40 rai.

I cannot belive how cheap some sound on this board. Me thinks that there is way too much welfare where you come from and let the government be responcible for everything.

[tuky]

We contributed 2000 baht to my Wife's Gandmas funeral, and we are the wealthiest of the family members so I have no idea how much it cost all up but I would suggest not much at all. It was a 3 day show too.

Oh and we paid 500 baht at the local amphur to get married.

Funnily enough it is my wife who is kii neow, I would be more than happy to have contributed 20k baht for her Gandma