The Open Gazette

Reporting for people about to spend real money.

Collected stories

Family

10 stories filed under Family, newest first.

  1. Handed a Funeral Price List? Five Lines Decide the Total, and Three Can Be Struck

    A funeral bill is built from a handful of lines, and most of them are choices. Here is how to read the itemized list and tell the fixed charges from the optional ones.

    Ansel Hargrove4 min read

  2. Buying an Urn? Five Checks to Run Before Anything Gets Engraved

    Sizing, destination, engraving, division and seller: the five urn decisions that are cheap to get right on the first pass and awkward to revisit afterward.

    Ansel Hargrove6 min read

  3. Ordered a Double Headstone While You're Still Living? The Lines You Can Still Change

    A companion monument locks in one spouse's name decades before it is needed. Here is what the proof stage settles for good, and what can still be fixed after the stone is set.

    Delphine Nakamura4 min read

  4. Arranging a Funeral This Week? The Order That Decides What You Can Still Change Later

    A single week of decisions, traced in sequence, showing which choices quietly lock the rest and which ones can still be reopened months later.

    Ansel Hargrove4 min read

  5. Set the Service Date Before the Certificate Was Signed? How to Move the Week Back Into Order

    The death certificate signature, not the funeral home's calendar, sets the pace of the first week. Here is what gates it and how to recover a date set too early.

    Delphine Nakamura4 min read

  6. A Death Out of State? Which Funeral Home Leads Decides Most of the Bill

    When someone dies hundreds of miles from where they will be buried, two funeral homes get involved and the order you call them in changes what you pay.

    Rosa Petrossian5 min read

  7. Two Clocks in One Week, and the Funeral Costs That Are Never on the Urgent One

    Most funeral spending gets decided in one sitting, but only a handful of those choices actually expire. Here is how to tell them apart, and what you can still undo.

    Delphine Nakamura4 min read

  8. Ordering a Stone in a State You Don't Live In? What Changes Besides the Freight

    Buying a monument for a family plot several states away changes the price in ways the catalog never shows: footing depth, setting windows, permits, and who is allowed to do the work.

    Rosa Petrossian5 min read

  9. Died at Home on a Friday? Three Ways Providers Handle the Week, and What Separates Them

    A death at home late on a Friday puts the paperwork ahead of every other decision. Here is how full-service homes, direct providers and cemetery operations each handle that week.

    Rosa Petrossian4 min read

  10. Arranging a Funeral This Week? The Four Decisions That Set the Bill

    Most of a funeral's cost is fixed by four choices made in the first two days, and only one of them is genuinely urgent.

    Ansel Hargrove5 min read