A five-minute read on your own numbers

Is your funeral home ready to change hands?

Someone in your family, someone on your payroll, or a consolidator — that is the whole list. Which one it turns out to be is mostly decided by whether you decided. About 73% of owners have no succession plan, and 46% told the NFDA they intend to retire or sell within five years. This compares the two.

Nothing here is submitted, saved, or emailed anywhere, and you are not asked for an address. The read appears as you answer.

1 · The horizon

In how many years do you intend to step back?

5 years

Your number, not ours. It is measured against a floor of 5 years — the figure named by both of the consultancies the NFDA endorses for succession work.

2 · The route

Who do you expect it goes to?

3 · What is actually in place

The four things the five-year floor exists to make room for. Tick only what is true today — the read is worth nothing if it flatters the inputs.

There is a plan written downWritten well enough that it doesn’t depend on you being in the room to explain it.A professional valuation in the last yearBy someone who values funeral homes, not a rule of thumb.There is a named successorA person, not a category.The plan was reviewed this yearA plan reviewed yearly is a live document. One that isn’t is a drawer.

Your read

Answer anything above and the read appears here. Nothing is submitted, and no email is asked for.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure this read uses is sourced in the piece it comes from — Who gets your funeral home? — including the five-year floor, the share of owners without a plan, what a chosen sale fetches against an estate sale, and the state licensing rules that quietly decide whether a key-employee sale is even available to you.

One caution that piece makes and this read inherits: the familiar claim that only 30% of family businesses reach a second generation is folklore wearing a citation. The funeral-specific numbers are quieter and better sourced, and they are the only ones used here.

This is a reading of what you told us against published figures — not legal, tax, or valuation advice, and no substitute for the professionals who do this work. If it is useful, the next conversation is with one of them.