The topic of yesterday’s sermon at my church was “God’s got it covered”.  While I totally understand that it is not on the same level as the topic at church, I had the same feeling when I received an email from the National Funeral Directors Association last week.

 

If you remember, last Wednesday Funeral Director Daily published this article entitled “Paying for your funeral with your HSA.  Why not?”    That article was a piece on a thought and opinion that I had on giving more use to a retiree’s Health Savings Account (HSA), including being able to use it for preneed accounts and funeral costs.  I made the argument that it may be beneficial for not only the death care profession, but for consumers if legislation was passed that allowed some type of ability to do so.

 

The next day, I received the following email from NFDA’s offices that told me that they are working on that idea. . . .and legislation may be introduced into Congress as early as the next session of such.  Here’s what NFDA sent to me:

 

“Thank you for your excellent piece yesterday exploring the future possibility of using the proceeds of a decedent’s HSA to pay for their funeral. NFDA whole-heartedly agrees with you and is leading the effort to make this a reality!

This is one of many issues our members discussed with their elected members of Congress this past Spring during our Advocacy Summit and we’re excited to report that we expect legislation about to be introduced in Congress in the next couple of months.

. . . Please let us know if you have any questions and keep an eye out for an announcement from NFDA when the legislation is introduced!”

 

You can read more about the issue from the NFDA here.

 

In any regard, it was refreshing for me, and should be comforting and re-assuring for all NFDA members to know that their association is ahead of the curve on the cutting-edge issues that membership is thinking about.  Just like what was discussed at church, “NFDA has it covered”

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  Quite frankly it was humbling for me to receive a personal e-mail from NFDA about an article in Funeral Director Daily.  It allowed me to look back at how I started blogging and how far the little blog is now reaching.

 

Funeral Director Daily started a few years ago on a suggestion and the first day had 4 subscribers — the person who told me I should blog, myself, and my two sons (simply to check out if I reached Twitter).  Today, through only organic growth with no paid marketing, we reach a daily audience of 3,345 subscribers who ask to recieve the articles.

 

Our combination of business related articles and public company reports as well as articles of human interest to the death care profession has proved to attract a wide variety of readers — through e-mail addresses I believe that we land in the inbox daily of over 1,000 funeral home and cemetery owners, virtually all of the death care public company CEO’s and CFO’s as well as the most of North America’s national private funeral/cremation service company executives, many regional consolidator executives, a great number of death care supplier management and employees, those employed in death care member organizations, many funeral home employees, funeral directors and suppliers in other English speaking countries (Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand). . . and, believe it or not, many private equity company partners.

 

As a one-man band at Funeral Director Daily the costs are held down and covered by those fine folks who sponsor the content so subscribers can receive the articles free of charge.  We hope to soon pass the 17,000 monthly page view number and, I’m guessing that makes the cost per impression on Funeral Director Daily as low as it gets in the profession. . especially for a targeted readership.  If you read FDD free of charge, you can thank our sponsors by giving them a chance at your business.

 

So, thanks again. . . I’m humbled (and incredibly gratified) by those that read what this retired funeral director from this little small town in the northwoods of Minnesota has to say about his life-long experiences in Death Care.

 

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,345 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”