(gentle music)
- The average funeral cost in the US is about $9,000.
Most Americans have less than $500 in savings.
And so, on one of the worst days of our lives,
many of us are forced into crippling debt
so that we can celebrate the lives of the people we love.
- I still feel like nothing really prepares you...
-You know, 'cause no one wants to talk about death,
especially in this country.
- Ever Loved is a company
that believes it doesn't need to be this way.
- Death is truly one of the only universal experiences
that we all go through.
We should be trying to make it as simple as possible
for people to make decisions,
especially because people are grieving
at the time they're making them.
(dramatic music)
I don't think I'd ever fully thought
about how I wanted to be remembered
before I started Ever loved
and now that seems almost crazy to me.
When I decided to start Ever Loved with Eric,
I was still kind of in the idea phase,
figuring out what to do,
and I had a conversation with a friend
about the company, he was very interested in it
and he mentioned that he would never wanna have
kind of a traditional funeral.
Sadly, actually on the first day,
I found out that he passed away.
And I learned that his parents had decided
instead of having a traditional funeral,
that they were just going to have a big meal
at a restaurant.
I was able to message his mom and say, hey,
I don't know if he ever actually mentioned this to you,
but he actually, essentially told me
that that's what he would've wanted.
And she got a lot of comfort from that.
You know, saying that kind of stuff, it's important,
it matters and people shouldn't shy away
from those conversations.
Yeah, people have a hard time
making educated decisions around funeral care,
because as a society, we don't like to talk about death.
So very few people actually plan it in advance
and then when you're dealing with that extreme grief
of losing someone, people tend to just go along
with basically whatever is recommended to them.
- All right.
- Hi, good morning. - Hi, how are you?
- I wonder if you can talk about what it feels like
to have to make really, really important choices
on those days when you are really suffering
or really hurt.
- This is Diana.
Her father recently passed away.
And before she knew about Ever Loved,
she was faced with finding a funeral home for him
as quickly as possible.
- So, you know, when someone passes away,
you really don't know what to do.
It all happened really, really quickly.
Everything, all the choices,
and I would've wanted a funeral home
with tons of stained glass and doves in windows
and something really beautiful,
and again, we were relegated to who can pick up his body
within, you know, four hours.
It was very, just cold, very blunt.
There were a lot of things I didn't check off in my head,
'cause I didn't have the conversation.
- I think, almost more than any other industry,
our discomfort around death
really necessitates true transparency
in the funeral industry.
The same funeral services at two different funeral homes
or two different cemeteries,
it can be a difference of many thousands of dollars
for the exact same thing.
Originally, we were focused
mainly on how we could help people make the best,
most personalized choices.
That wasn't the biggest challenge for families,
the biggest challenge for over 50% of families,
was figuring out how they were gonna pay for things
in the first place.
- It's kind of awful that someone would potentially go
into debt for this.
Funerals are extremely expensive, especially burials.
- On gofundme.com, we found well over a million campaigns,
just for people trying to raise money for funeral expenses.
- I'd say roughly 50% of people that tell us they need help,
raising funds for a funeral do not have a bank account
which is extremely tricky to deal with.
It's a huge problem.
And generally people who are unbanked,
don't have a lot of money.
So we're allowing the funds to go directly
to the funeral home, which does work quite well.
- People can also use the site as an online obituary,
or as a way to raise funds for charitable causes.
For many, it's simply a resource
for how to get through the death of a loved one.
- I lost my mom on April 3rd, 2020.
I think one of the difficult things about this time,
and not being able to see family
is that we haven't had a space for the grief.
And so a lot of people have had difficulty reaching out,
attempting to really be there for me and my family.
They had a checklist on what to do when someone dies.
Ever Loved also had sort of like an online obituary
or digital platform.
I thought that would be the best way for me
to communicate my mom's passing and obituary
to my family here and California
and also in the Philippines.
- What does that feel like?
Can you kind of complete the mourning process
when this is going on?
- Yeah, I do feel like there's still,
sort of like another thing on my checklist
that I can't check off until the pandemic is over.
I kind of just can't wait to share the joy
and the remembrance of my mom with other people.
(peaceful music)
- People assume that working with people
who have just lost loved ones everyday,
would be incredibly hard and emotionally taxing.
I've certainly had times where I get off the phone
and I need to take 15 minutes and go for a walk,
because something emotionally affected me,
but for the most part, it's actually incredibly uplifting.
I've been exposed to millions of people,
celebrating and recognizing the lives of amazing people.
And the overall emotion is not sad,
it's actually like, wow, people are incredible.
I think a lot of people think that thinking
about their own death should be depressing
and it doesn't have to be,
because it should really be a framework
for how you think about your life.
- Thanks for watching.
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