Wages, credit, inflation. . . . How are those factors coming together to influence revenue per case

October 20, 2026/Business, Preneed, Products/

“Revenue per Case” (RpC) is a very important metric in your funeral home to illustrate how much money comes into the your funeral home for every death call you care for. The goal, over time and including periodic price increases, is to increase that metric year over year.

As you are well aware of, a cremation case usually has a lower Revenue per Case than a traditional burial case. So, as your cremation services increase in percentage of total calls, it becomes more and more difficult to continue increasing that RcP metric even with increasing revenues in the traditional burial market cases.

This past weekend I read a couple of articles that illustrated to me how difficult increasing RpC will be to maintain as we look at some of the positions that the United States and its citizens find ourselves in when looking at the metrics of credit, wages, and inflation. The first of those articles comes from Seeking Alpha news editor Yoel Minkoff and is titled “Fed data reveals one in five Americans are falling behind on debt”.

The article, that you can access here, makes the claim:

“1 in 5 Americans fell behind on a loan or mortgage payment in 2025, according to new data from the Federal Reserve that tracks the metrics every three years. That figure is up from 1 in 8 Americans in 2022 and marks the highest level since 2007. Additionally, more than 8% of them reported being two months late or more, up from 5% in 2022. . . .

Stress was amplified given that interest rates for major types of household debt increased over the period of 2022 to 2025. The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose from 4.2% to 6.7%, and the average new vehicle loan interest rate aTdvanced from 4.9% to 7.7%.

The average credit card interest rate also increased significantly, from 14.6% to 21.4%.”

I also came upon the following two recent articles that indicate inflation is “outpacing wage growth again”. The end result of that phenomena is that consumers will have less to spend on consumer items — of which Death Care services could be one of those consumer categories.

Inflation is outpacing wage growth again, squeezing Americans paychecks. CNBC (September 12, 2026)

Are wages keeping up with inflation? USA Facts (October 14, 2026)

Anecdotally, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Markets Insider have all pointed out certain indicators of this crunch of the American consumer. One indicator that has been pointed out is that consumers are starting to “trade down” from WalMart as even lower priced stores such as Dollar General have seen a 3.5% increase in same store sales and a 2% upbeat in store traffic while WalMart recently had its slowest growth quarter (2.6%) in six years.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: So, what does this apparent “consumer crunch” mean for those in the Death Care business? When I hear of this situation I simply take a “big picture” or “macro view” of the situation. Looking at Death Care services and payments from that position, I believe that the ability to grow “Revenue per Case” in a tight credit and wage environment on those merits alone is difficult. . . . .Then couple that with the opportunity for “at-need” cases, who have made no pre-arranged financial details about a death in the family, to trade-down in services, you see how difficult even holding your “Revenue per Case” at its present level can be.

You don’t operate your business in a vacuum. . . and, right now inflation over wage growth is a reality and growing consumer debt with increasing interest rates is a reality. You have to operate your business within that structure.

Here are some thoughts I have on how I might combat the economic reality of today:

Ramp up sales, seminars, and opportunities for the consumer to purchase preneed. It probably won’t help in the immediate 6-9 month future, but it will help in the future and depending on how your preneed re-imbursement is structured, it may bring in commissions revenue to combat a potential decrease in you Revenues per Case
Price and Package for the Cremation Family. Put packages together that might include visitations without a body present, urns, keepsakes, Parting Stone, and maybe even cemetery markers and urn vaults for those who would like a permanent memorial location. When our funeral home first starting having more and more “immediate cremations” (about 2005) we put a package price together which included an inexpensive wholesale-cost urn and a 2-hour visitation for an extra $500. With quantity purchased $50 wholesale urns the “package upgrade” added $450 in margin to our immediate cremation services and was very well received. . . . . One thing that amazed me in this situation was when an “event” like a visitation or celebration was scheduled families made a real effort to purchase an urn rather than have a cardboard or plastic box for the cremated remains at the event.
Make an “Event” the product. Like the visitation suggestion above, suggesting an event such as visitation or a celebration service can help create opportunites for additional revenue. It may lead to additional revenue such as catering, printing folders, or livestreaming for an additional fee.
Add “Green Products” to your mix. You don’t want to lose revenue from a family who would use your services but then learn you don’t offer what they want. Make sure you have the connections to offer alkaline hydrolysis, natural organic reduction, green burial, and post-cremation options such as Celestis and Parting Stone available even if you don’t do those options in your facility. A partnership with a trade service and vendors who handle those options can also lead to revene generation.
Make sure you have all the credit options available to families who may be need it. Here’s an option started by a funeral service family that may help you out in that regard: Family Shield Credit

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