Crowdfunded funerals trending up

In the fraught days following Scott Wadham’s wife’s unexpected death, he lay awake at night stressing over how he was going to pay for her funeral.

Simone Wadham, 51, came down with what doctors thought was a simple cold or flu-type bug in July. She died three days later in hospital.

Distraught and shocked after his wife’s unexpected death in Auckland, Wadham soon started stressing about the financial implications.

He later became one of the growing number of Kiwis turning to crowdfunding in order to help pay for loved ones’ funerals.

‘‘I lay awake at night, my brain ticking over thinking about how I was going to afford the funeral, because when twothirds of your income goes, which is what happened with us, we were like: what do we do?’’

When Wadham first contemplated turning to popular crowdfunding site Givealittle, he wondered if it would be seen as needy.

But his wife’s sister volunteered to set up a page and $23,441 was eventually raised through 207 donations.

‘‘We were blown away,’’ Wadham said.

‘‘It really was so helpful during that time. Nobody wants to say: help I need money; so it was a way of sort of quietly getting help,’’ Wadham said.

‘‘There’s only so many flowers you can have delivered to your house or so many casseroles that can be eaten. It’s a polite way of saying: hey instead of spending $50 on a bunch of flowers, put it in a Givealittle page; because that can help for all sorts.’’

The page served a dual purpose, Wadham said, in that it also helped get the word out on social media about Simone’s unexpected death.

As at February 27, there were 37 Givealittle pages open containing the phrase ‘‘funeral costs’’. A further 581 are still searchable on the site that have either closed or reached their target.

Givealittle customer care manager Mel Steel said staff had noticed more pages related to funeral expenses recently but she was unable to give specific details on how much of an increase there had been.

‘‘One reason for an increase in pages could be that crowdfunding for funeral expenses has become more commonplace and is a way of showing support to a family in a difficult time,’’ Steel said.

David Moger, chief executive of the Funeral Directors Association (FDANZ), believed the crowdfunding trend was a response to the rising costs of funerals.