Educational guide — not insurance advice. We are not a licensed agent. This page states no premium, because we found no independent published source for one.
What this page states, and what it does not
We found no independent published source for final expense premiums as of September 2026. The price tables that do exist are published by companies that sell these policies or are paid to refer customers to them. None is an independent publisher, so none is cited here, and this page carries no premium figure at any age, for any face amount, in any state.
No law sets the price. Each insurer files its own rates with the insurance department of each state it sells in, and decides what it will charge a given applicant. There is no statutory rate, no published schedule, and no regulator-published table of what a policy costs.
What is documented instead
The product’s defining terms are contract terms. They appear in the policy document itself rather than in any statute or published table:
- Whether the policy is level, graded or guaranteed-issue. A level policy pays the full face amount from the first day of coverage. A graded or guaranteed-issue policy does not.
- How long any waiting period runs, and what is paid if death falls inside it. A graded death benefit typically limits the payout during that window to a return of premium plus interest, on the terms the contract states.
- The face amount, the premium mode, and whether the premium is level for life.
- The contestability period, during which the insurer may contest the policy on the basis of what the application disclosed.
Each of those is stated in the policy document the insurer issues. None of them is set by statute, and none is published as a market-wide figure we could source.
One thing is set by federal law: Under IRC §101(a)(1) the death benefit is excluded from the beneficiary’s gross income except as provided in §101(a)(2) and (a)(3), (d), (f) and (j): where the contract was transferred for valuable consideration, §101(a)(2) limits the exclusion to that consideration plus the premiums the transferee later paid; where the insurer pays the proceeds later than death, §101(d) prorates the excluded amount over the payment period and includes the remainder in gross income.
The national funeral medians, as national medians
Final expense policies are commonly bought against funeral costs. Those costs are published, but only nationally:
| Type | National median |
|---|---|
| Funeral with a casket and burial | $8,300 |
| Funeral with a casket, burial and vault | $9,995 |
| Funeral with cremation | $6,280 |
The National Funeral Directors Association, the funeral homes' own trade association, reports in its 2023 Member General Price List Study a median of $8,300 for a funeral with a casket and burial, up from $7,848 two years earlier. The same study reports a median of $6,280 for a funeral with cremation, including an alternative cremation casket and urn, up from $5,810. Both come from a survey NFDA mailed to 5,219 member funeral home owners in July 2023, to which 809 responded, so they record what NFDA's responding member firms charge rather than what any family paid. Neither median includes interment in a cemetery, monument or grave marker costs, or cash advances such as flowers or an obituary. Both are national medians, not the figure for any one state.
These are national medians. They are not a state figure, not a quote, and not a statement of what any policy costs.
Where the price comes from
| Who sets it | What they set |
|---|---|
| The insurer | The rate it files with each state’s insurance department, and what it will charge a given applicant |
| The state insurance department | Whether the filed rate may be used in that state |
| The policy document | The contract terms above — tier, waiting period, face amount, contestability |
| No one | A published, independent, market-wide premium figure. We found none as of September 2026. |
What the record shows
No statute sets what a final expense policy costs. No independent publisher reports a premium we could cite. The figures that circulate come from sellers and from sites paid to refer customers to sellers, so this page states none. What the record does contain is the contract terms the policy document states, the federal tax treatment of the death benefit under IRC §101(a)(1), and the national funeral medians above, which are national medians and nothing else.
Related reading
- Do You Need Final Expense Insurance? What the Policies Say
- How Much Does a Funeral Cost?
- Cremation vs. Burial Cost
- Guaranteed Acceptance Life Insurance: How It Works
- How Much Life Insurance Do You Need? The Standard Formulas
- Is Life Insurance Taxable to the Beneficiary?
Educational information only — not insurance or financial advice. We are not a licensed insurance agent or broker. This page states no premium figure: we found no independent published source for one as of September 2026. Sources: National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), 2023 General Price List Survey (national medians, effective 2023, last verified 2026-09-22); 26 U.S.C. §101.