Lincoln Heritage Rates: How Much Does Funeral Advantage Cost?

Lincoln Heritage Sample Rates by Age and Gender

Lincoln Heritage does not post rates on its website. You cannot get a real quote online — you have to speak with one of their agents by phone or in person first.

Your own price will differ. Rates change by state, and the health answers you give on the application can move you to a different plan entirely.

Rates for $5,000 in coverage

Lincoln Heritage does not publish a rate chart at the $5,000 level, and neither do the major independent review sites. This is not an oversight. Lincoln Heritage prices burial insurance a little differently than most carriers.

Their agents often work backward from your monthly budget instead of forward from a face amount.

So a $5,000 policy is available, but there is no standard published price for it. What you pay depends on your age, gender, state, and health answers — the same as any other amount.

If you want a rough sense of scale, a $5,000 policy would fall somewhere near half the $10,000 figures below. That is an estimate based on how whole life pricing generally scales, not a quoted Lincoln Heritage rate. Ask an agent for the actual number.

Rates for $10,000 in coverage

This is the most common coverage amount seniors buy. It is close to the median cost of a funeral with burial.

Female, non-tobacco, monthly

Male, non-tobacco, monthly

Notice how the price climbs faster after 70. A 75-year-old man pays about three times what a 50-year-old man pays for the same $10,000.

Rates for $20,000 in coverage

This amount covers a funeral plus a cemetery plot, a headstone, and some leftover bills.

Female, non-tobacco, monthly

Male, non-tobacco, monthly

Ages 81 to 85 show “not available” because Lincoln Heritage caps coverage at $15,000 for that age group. Under 81, you can apply for up to $35,000.

These are immediate plan figures. The immediate plan pays the full benefit from day one. If your health answers route you to the modified plan instead, you will pay more than what you see here, and there is a two- to three-year waiting period before the full death benefit is paid.

There is one more wrinkle at this level. Lincoln Heritage requires a phone interview with an underwriter if you want more than $20,000 in coverage.

Lincoln Heritage Rates for Smokers

If you have used tobacco in the last 12 months, you will pay a tobacco rate. Lincoln Heritage does not publish a smoker rate chart, so there are no confirmed numbers to show you here.

What the company does say on its own website is that smoker rates are usually about 30% higher than non-tobacco rates. That is the only figure they put in writing, and they frame it as a general final expense rule rather than a Lincoln Heritage-specific one.

Applying that 30% to the confirmed non-tobacco figures gives a rough idea of the gap. These are estimates, not quotes.

Two things matter more than the percentage itself.

All tobacco counts. Lincoln Heritage charges the tobacco rate no matter what form you use — cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, pipes, or vaping. Some other funeral insurance carriers only penalize cigarettes and will give a cigar or chew user a non-tobacco rate.

The gap compounds with the base price. Because Lincoln Heritage already prices above most competitors, a 30% tobacco uplift on an already-high premium creates a larger dollar gap than the same uplift would elsewhere. A cigar smoker who quotes only Lincoln Heritage may never find out that another carrier would have priced them as a non-smoker.

If you use tobacco, this is the single strongest reason to compare more than one company before you sign anything.

How Much Coverage Do You Actually Need for a Funeral?

Before you shop for a price, figure out the number you are trying to cover. Buying funeral insurance without knowing your target is how people end up under-covered or over-paying.

The National Funeral Directors Association tracks what funerals actually cost. Their most recent price study was published in 2023, and those figures are still the ones the industry uses.

What a funeral costs

Cremation is now the more common choice. About 63% of families chose cremation in 2025, and roughly 32% chose burial. NFDA expects cremation to reach 82% by 2045.

Costs also shift by where you live. A burial funeral runs about $7,390 in Nevada and about $8,985 in Massachusetts.

The costs people forget

Here is the part that catches families off guard. The NFDA median does not include the cemetery. It covers the funeral home only.

These are separate bills:

Plot prices swing more than anything else on the list. A plot might cost $775 in Alaska and over $7,000 in California.

Add it up and a burial funeral with a plot, marker, and interment lands closer to $15,000 than to $8,300.

So how much should you buy?

Work backward from the service you actually want.

Two more things belong in the math.

Government help is small. Social Security pays a one-time death benefit of $255. The VA burial allowance for eligible veterans is up to $2,000. Neither one moves the needle much.

Leftover money is not wasted. A burial insurance death benefit is paid in cash to the person you name, not to a funeral home. If the funeral costs less than the payout, your family keeps the difference and can put it toward medical bills or other debts.

If you already own a plot, you can size down. If you have not bought one, size up. That single decision changes your target by several thousand dollars.

Why Lincoln Heritage Costs More Than Other Final Expense Insurers

Lincoln Heritage is a real company with a long history and strong finances. It has been in business since 1963, holds an A (Excellent) rating from AM Best, and has over a million policies in force.

None of that is in question. The question is why the same $10,000 of final expense insurance costs more here than almost anywhere else. There are four reasons, and they all come out of the same premium.

They accept almost everyone. Lincoln Heritage says it can accept 99% of applicants. It uses no height and weight chart. It will take people with multiple sclerosis, lupus, or who need help bathing and dressing — people many carriers simply decline.

When a company insures a sicker pool of people, more claims get paid sooner. That cost is spread across every policyholder, including the healthy ones. A healthy 60-year-old at Lincoln Heritage is partly paying for that broad acceptance.

Note that broad acceptance is not the same as good pricing. Many applicants with health issues are accepted but routed to the modified plan, which costs more and delays the full benefit.

They advertise heavily. Lincoln Heritage grew through television commercials and direct mail. That spending is real, and it is recovered through premiums. Companies that market this way — Colonial Penn, Globe Life, AARP — tend to price higher for the same reason.

They use captive agents. A Lincoln Heritage agent sells only Lincoln Heritage. They cannot show you a Mutual of Omaha quote even if it would save you money.

That structure costs money to maintain, and it removes the pressure to compete on price. With no competing bid in the room, there is no reason to sharpen the number.

The FCGS membership is built in. Every policy includes free membership in the Funeral Consumer Guardian Society, which helps your family price-shop funeral homes after you die.

Lincoln Heritage builds the cost of that membership into the premium, along with its 24-hour claims infrastructure and its agent network. The service is real. Whether it is worth the price gap is the honest debate — Similar funeral planning forms are available free from many sources.

How Lincoln Heritage rates stack up against competitors

A few numbers make the gap concrete. All three are $10,000, non-tobacco, and come from independent comparisons.

The dollars matter more than the percentage. An extra $22 a month at age 70 is $264 a year, and $2,640 over ten years.

These are three illustrative figures only. See the full carrier-by-carrier comparison table for the complete picture.

What Affects Your Lincoln Heritage Quote

Five things decide your number. You control some of them and not others.

Remember that no burial insurance quote is real until an agent runs it. Lincoln Heritage will not show you a price online, even if their website looks like it will.

Age and gender

Age is the biggest single factor. Every year you wait, the price goes up and never comes back down. Once you buy, your rate is locked for life.

The climb is not steady. It accelerates sharply after 70.

Men pay more than women at every age, because women live longer on average. At 80, the gap is about $38 a month.

Waiting from 70 to 80 more than doubles the price for a woman. That is the strongest argument for buying sooner rather than later.

Tobacco use

Any tobacco in the last 12 months puts you on the tobacco rate. Lincoln Heritage’s own guidance says smoker rates typically run about 30% above non-tobacco.

Lincoln Heritage applies that rate to all forms of tobacco — cigarettes, cigars, chew, pipes, and vaping. Some competing carriers only penalize cigarettes, which means a cigar user could be quoted as a non-smoker elsewhere.

Your health answers — and which plan you’re routed to

There is no medical exam. But you will answer health questions, and those answers decide which plan you get. This is where the price swings hardest.

Read that table twice. The modified plan is not just more expensive — it also caps your coverage at $15,000, less than half of what the immediate plan allows.

A few conditions mean no coverage at all. You will be declined if you are bedridden, hospitalized, in hospice or a nursing facility, incarcerated, have tested positive for HIV or AIDS, or have a terminal diagnosis.

The important point is that being routed to the modified plan at Lincoln Heritage does not mean you would be routed there everywhere. Other carriers accept many conditions at level rates with no waiting period. See the full health question breakdown for what triggers what.

Coverage amount and state

More coverage costs more, roughly in proportion. But there are hard limits.

• Ages 80 and under: up to $35,000
• Ages 81 to 85: capped at $15,000
• Modified plan, any age: capped at $15,000
• Over $20,000 of coverage: you must complete a phone interview with an underwriter

State matters two ways. First, availability — Funeral Advantage is not sold in New York or Washington at all.

Second, price. Rates are filed state by state, so the same person gets a different number depending on where they live. NerdWallet reports that a non-smoking 50-year-old man in California pays about $136 a month for the $35,000 maximum, and a woman about $111.

There is one more state quirk worth knowing. In Florida, Michigan, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, you cannot name a funeral home as your beneficiary. Naming a person you trust is generally the better choice anyway, since any money left over stays with your family.