I know you're not supposed to judge how other people spend money, but

The BBQ Pit
1

sometimes…

A family in our town recently had their five year old child die after a long illness, and had a super-elaborate funeral for him. Not just the usual viewing/church service/burial, but all sorts of extras. They flew in some family members from basically across the entire country, they rented several limousines for the procession to the cemetary, they’ve ordered a, do you still call it a headstone? with a marble statue of a cherub on a stand thingy, elaborate floral displays. They even had violinist playing at the graveside while the coffin was lowered and they released a mass of doves.

Now, as I said, you aren’t supposed to judge how people express their grief and all that, but I happen to do volunteer work with another member of the family, a great aunt of the boy who died, and I know how hard hit financially the family has been by this little boy’s illness. The family wasn’t well off to begin with, but the mother stopped working to care for him full time the last two years, and the father is an ordinary working man. As a result, they were on Medicaid, which doesn’t really cover a lot of expenses that are needful/helpful for the child and his family in the circumstances, like commercially prepared meals for example. So increased expenses and decreased income – things were tough, even though other family members helped as they could.

Their church and neighbors have done many fund raisers for them over the past years. They have two other children who have taken on jobs after school to try to help out.

So today the great aunt told me they were setting up a Go Fund Me to raise money to cover the funeral expenses. She said they had spent all the money they had saved as a ‘college fund’ for their other children (ages 16 and 18, the last child was a 'miracle baby) but it wasn’t enough. I said something like, How much do they owe? And she said they’d spent over $35,000 on the funeral.

I stared at her. I’ve paid for the funerals of one brother and my mother in the past ten years, and it came to nothing like that! She said, well, the plane tickets for Aunt X, and Cousins Y and Z. And we had to get suitable clothes for everyone for the funeral. And the cemetary plot, and the violinist and, and, and.

I guess I still looked shocked because she said defensively, “Well, we couldn’t let people think we didn’t love Jimmy (not real name) could we? We had to do it right!”

So I just murnurred something, and said she should tell me when they got the Go Fund Me thing running.

But honestly, I’m appalled. A poor family, pretty much having to scrape by on charity, but they spend thousands and thousands of dollars to, I don’t know, make sure they displayed their grief properly to their community? Like, anyone was going to think, hmm, that’s not a new suit the dad is wearing, they must not have loved the little boy?

And what about their other two children? Is having the violinist and doves really more important than having some money to help them get educations/training to do well in life?

I just don’t understand that way of thinking.

2

They probably don’t understand yours. Ain’t the world a wacky place?

3

I’m with you. That sounds insane and really stupid.

Really have to feel bad for the 2 kids.

4

That’s my take. I don’t think I’d contribute to the GFM either.

5

Was this family part of a culture which has elaborate funerals? If so, that may be part of the reason for the big expenses. They may have felt awkward and risked having people look down on them if they didn’t go all out. Important milestones like births, deaths, and weddings often have a lot of societal pressure to be done in a certain way regardless of expenses. I’m sure many of us have experienced this with weddings, where a couple throws an extravagant wedding which causes them to go massively in debt. And considering that there’s the grief factor from the loss of a child, I’d cut them a lot of slack for not thinking things through rationally from a financial standpoint. Going all out may have alleviated their burden by allowing them to feel like they they gave all they could to their child.

6

…I don’t think you are obliged too.

I’m not appalled. Just sad. Grief sucks. Losing a child sucks. Grieving sucks. Hurt sucks. Sometimes people do things they shouldn’t when grieving because grieving sucks, and losing somebody important to you sucks, and nothing about the process is good, and sometimes you try to fill the emptiness and longing with something, and that something doesn’t work, and that’s just the way life is sometimes.

Either contribute to the go-fund-me, or ignore it and get on with life.

7

…and another thing: I wouldn’t take it as gospel that they “spent over $35,000 on the funeral”. Unless you’ve literally got the receipts, that number just might be “what they owe”.

8

I’m with you, but I can’t fault them for doing what they thought they had to do.It was their decision, and there money after all. However, setting up a gofundme to cover all these costs seems a bit too self-serving. I bet they will get the costs covered and then some because the community will feel sorry for them. While this is something I wouldn’t do, they have the right to do it and perhaps, even profit from. The two other kids may now end up in a better college as a result for all we know.

9

No, you’re right, but… :woman_shrugging:

10

I wonder if they have would spent that much if there was no such thing as GoFundMe and the ilk. My brother got into that mode of thinking, such as sending his two daughters to Oral Roberts U because he was sure that members of his church would do massive contributions. (Of course, neither of the daughters has a career beyond motherhood, not that there’s anything wrong with that). He has said “God will take care of us” but he’s still working fulltime at age 69 in spite of health issues.

11

They’d better hope there are $35,000 worth of people who do understand their way of thinking.

12

I might put something into a Go Fund Me for the kids who had their college fund pulled out from under them, if I was convinced that was really what happened, and provided that it was set up in some way so that the parents couldn’t get at it.

13

I hadn’t thought of that. It could very well be their medical debts plus the funeral cost. I don’t know in their case, but I’ve known other families who have incurred large medical bills even with good insurance, because they wanted desperately to try every possible hope even if the insurance co. refused to pay for some treatment as useless.

That thinking I can actually understand. Chasing a slender hope to save your child? Sure, even if it means somewhat handicapping your other children. It’s the idea of ‘wasting’ money just for appearance’s sake that baffled me.

As for their cultural background, the great aunt’s mother came to the US as a war bride after the Vietnam war, but I don’t think she was actually Vietnamese, some nearby Asian country. So the child was a third generation American born, I don’t know how much influence that heritage has on them. At least to casual glances they live ordinary American life style.

14

Regular funerals are crazy expensive, over the top ones will be much more. I don’t doubt that the family owes over 35 grand for the one that was described.

Considering the horrible health care system in the US and their poor insurance, I’m fairly sure they owe at least a couple hundred grand in medical expenses.

I would agree that they incurred more debt and were hoping that others would help them out…but when you already owe a quarter of a million dollars, what is a couple thousand more?

15

This is exactly what I was thinking.

16

If they were on Medicaid, unless they also had private insurance, the hospital, etc. covered anything the state didn’t pay for. Private insurance should have picked up the rest. I do realize that it usually doesn’t cover things like non-medical travel expenses, child care for siblings, lost time from work by the parents, etc.

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10 posts were split to a new topic: Temp holder of hijacking posts

22

I’m entirely willing to judge people, and call them stupid, for having weddings that they can’t afford. Why should this situation be any different, grief notwithstanding?

23

Nobody’s mentioned the possibility that the grieving family was preyed upon by the funeral home, which, regardless of cultural norms, undoubtedly reinforced the insidious connection between spending money and showing love, and probably took other unscrupulous steps to separate this unfortunate family from their money.

The funeral industry is infamous for taking ruthless advantage of families at their weakest and most susceptible moments. With careful planning, you can minimize the expense of a funeral, but relatively few adults do this, and no one does it for a young child.

24

In the last two weeks, I’ve spent about $400 on Warhammer 40k miniatures. A lot of people would tell you it’s silly for a grown ass man to spend that much on plastic soldiers he intends to paint and send to their death against someone else’s little painted plastic soldiers, and that’s okay, I don’t really care what someone might think. We all spend money on something people think is a waste of funds. It might be fishing gear, makeup, a meal at a nice restaurant, a car, or whatever.

But here’s the thing, that $400 I spent is not a financial burden for me or my family. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have unlimited funds, but for me, all this means is that I can’t spend that $400 on other stupid stuff. I might think it’s a waste for someone to spend $30,000 on a wedding, but if they’ve got the money and it won’t put them in a bad financial situation, well, go ahead and spend it. It’s not what i would do, but you do you.

Generally I won’t judge other people on how they spend their money. But in this particular case, it appears as though the children who are still living are being harmed by this if they need to make money to for the family to make end’s meet and their college funds have been drained. It’s irresponsible to spend money you don’t have.