Source : Perth Now news
The average cost of a funeral has ticked up to $14,000 as GoFundMe reports a 70 per cent spike in memorial fundraisers since 2020.
Analysis from the crowd-funding platform shows $28m was donated to Australian memorial causes last year by way of 300,000 individual donations.
From 2020 to 2025, the number of memorial fundraisers on the platform has risen 70 per cent. The number of individual donations made to these campaigns has doubled over the five years.
“Our data shows that while more Aussies are asking for donations in lieu of flowers when mourning the loss of a loved one, their communities are responding with generosity,” GoFundMe spokeswoman Lilia Villela said.
“They are rallying around friends, family members and even strangers to help ease the financial burden of farewelling a loved one and remind grieving families that they’re not alone.”
GoFundMe took its memorial fundraiser numbers and commissioned further research; 57 per cent of Australians have no money set aside for their own funeral, and 81 per cent have nothing saved for the funeral of a family member.
That research was carried out when the average Australian funeral cost sat at $9000, according to the federal government’s financial guidance website Moneysmart. This month, that official average cost ticked up to $14,000.
The GoFundMe analysis found 45 per cent of people would be under financial strain to cover a $9000 funeral. But 34 per cent of people said sending flowers and donations were the best way to support someone grieving.
Funerals Australia national president Asha Dooley said people should plan and prepare with a bond or prepaid funeral.
“If you start early, it can be a very small amount each week that will allow for a funeral service, especially if it is invested in a funeral bond,” she told NewsWire.
Ms Dooley said family and friends typically put up a memorial fundraiser when a young person died suddenly and their family needed time off work.
But cemetery fees “have risen considerably” in recent years, Ms Dooley said.
“Funeral directors don’t have any control over the prices of cemetery fees,” she said.
“Most funeral operators in Australia are small independent businesses; whilst there are large corporate funeral directors, the majority are small.
“In this way, many smaller operators absorb price increases so that client families don’t have to pay.”
The president of the funerals peak body provided NewsWire a 16-point list of mandatory and optional costs for funerals in Australia.
“Unless a person has been through and planned a funeral, there is a good chance that people are unaware of the general costs of funerals,” Ms Dooley said.
The main essential costs are for the funeral director’s work – typically about 40 hours – transferring the body, the coffin, mortuary fees, cemetery or cremation fees, and medical and death certificates. Extras are typically the booklets mourners receive, celebrant fees, flowers, putting on a wake, a plaque or headstone, and lawyers’ fees.
NSW charges a levy of $41 for every cremation, $63 for the ashes to be interned, and $156 for a person to be buried. These taxes fund the state regulator so it can keep a close eye on industry prices and maintain cemeteries.
While the funeral costs come when people are in the depths of grief, death can throw up a frustrating financial limbo for families.
Newcastle woman Natalie Beveridge landed in such a bind after her mother’s death.
“I was completely stuck. I had inherited a valuable property but I couldn’t access any of it,” she said.
“I desperately wanted to do up the house and prepare it for sale so I could achieve a fair price, but without access to money, I feared the property would deteriorate or be rushed onto the market for far less than it was worth.”
Ms Beveridge said the home was worth about $550,000 but had $50,000 of debt tied to it.
Banks would not lend against the equity, she said, leaving her without cash to cover funeral costs, legal fees and the outstanding rates and strata.
Brisbane estate lawyer Zinta Harris said her firm often carried hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid invoices as families inherited a home on paper but had no cash to free up the inheritance.
“Our firm handles hundreds of estate administration files and roughly half involve families who hold valuable property or assets but have very little immediate cash,” she said.
“At any given time we can have up to $100,000 in unpaid legal fees tied up because clients simply cannot afford to pay upfront while waiting for estates to be finalised.
“Around one third of our estate clients cannot pay legal fees upfront.”Fast-growing financier JustFund has expanded from loans to cover divorce lawyers’ fees to lending to grieving families whose cash is tied up.
Since being established in 2022 to pay for people’s marriage breakdowns, co-founder Jack O’Donnell has seen parallels with families grieving a death.
“Families are being forced into impossible situations at the moment they are most vulnerable,” he said.
“We created this service to stop grieving families falling into financial stress while waiting for estates to be settled and to give people breathing room during one of the hardest moments of their lives.”
JustFund says it effectively gives families early access to inheritance money, not charging repayments on its loans until after the estate is finally settled.
