6 Free Tools to Plan Your Mortician Career — From School to Salary

Switching to a mortician career involves a chain of decisions: Which state should I work in? Which school should I attend? Can I afford the student debt? How long until I break even?

Most career sites give you a single salary number and wish you luck. We built 6 free, data-driven tools that answer every financial question in the decision chain — using real BLS salary data and College Scorecard tuition figures, not estimates.

Here’s the complete toolkit and how to use each one.

The Decision Chain

Every career-change decision follows a logical sequence. Our tools are designed to match it:

Where's the money & demand?     → Market Map
Which states are best overall?  → Best States Ranker
Which school fits my budget?    → School Finder
Can I handle the student debt?  → Debt Payoff Calculator
Is the total investment worth it? → Career ROI Calculator
What will I actually earn?      → Salary Calculator

You can start anywhere, but if you’re exploring from scratch, start with the Market Map and work your way down.

1. Market Map — See the Whole Landscape

Open the Market Map →

Before making any decisions, you need the big picture. The Market Map shows all 49 states as a color-coded heatmap, ranked by 5 different metrics:

• Opportunity Score — a composite of salary, job demand, and traditional funeral market share
• Median Salary — straightforward pay comparison
• Job Demand (LQ) — location quotient measures how many mortician jobs a state has relative to its population. LQ > 1.0 = more jobs per capita than the national average
• Traditional Market — states with lower cremation rates have more demand for full-service funerals (embalming, viewing, casket sales)
• Competition — factors in school count, cremation rate, and demand to estimate how crowded the market is

Click any state tile to see a detailed breakdown: salary range (P10–P90), employment count, funeral service costs, and which ABFSE-accredited schools are located there.

The tool also surfaces four key findings:

Use this when: You’re open to relocating and want to find the highest-opportunity state before choosing a school.

2. Best States Ranker — Data-Driven State Rankings

Open Best States →

While the Market Map gives you a visual overview, the Best States Ranker puts hard numbers in a sortable table. Every state gets a composite score calculated as:

• 35% Median Salary
• 25% Location Quotient (job demand)
• 20% P90 Salary (earning ceiling)
• 20% Market Opportunity Index

You can re-sort the table by any of 6 metrics — just click the column headers or use the dropdown. The table color-codes rows: green for the top 10, red for the bottom 10.

Three insight cards at the bottom highlight:

• Highest Paying — top 5 states by median salary
• Highest Demand — top 5 states by LQ
• Hidden Gems — states scoring above average but with only 0–1 local schools and a cremation rate under 60%. These are the underserved markets where you’ll face the least competition from local graduates.

Use this when: You’ve narrowed your interest to a few states and want to compare them head-to-head on real data.

3. School Finder — Compare 58 ABFSE Programs

Open School Finder →

Once you know your target state (or shortlist), the School Finder helps you pick the right program. It covers all 58 ABFSE-accredited mortuary science programs in the United States — the only schools whose graduates qualify for state licensure.

Filter and sort by:

• State — find programs near you or in your target work state
• Path type — Budget (public CC), Specialized (private mortuary college), or Leadership (4-year university)
• Tuition — set a maximum tuition/year threshold
• Sort — by tuition, graduate debt, 10-year earnings, name, or state

Each school card shows 6 data points pulled directly from the College Scorecard:

The comparison feature: Check the “Compare” box on 2 or more schools, then hit the Compare button. You’ll get a side-by-side table with the best value in each row highlighted in green.

Use this when: You’re choosing between specific schools and want an apples-to-apples comparison on cost and outcomes.

4. Debt Payoff Calculator — Know Before You Borrow

Open Debt Payoff Calculator →

The average mortuary student graduates with $7,000–$21,000 in debt (varies widely by school type). This tool answers the question: how fast can you pay it off on a mortician’s salary?

How it works:

1. Pick your school — the tool auto-fills the median graduate debt from College Scorecard
2. Pick your work state — determines your starting salary from BLS data
3. Set your interest rate — defaults to 5.50% (current federal Direct Loan rate)
4. Choose your repayment intensity — what percentage of income you’ll put toward loans (default: 10%)

The tool then runs a full amortization calculation and shows:

• Monthly payment amount
• Total payoff time (in years)
• Total interest paid
• Debt-to-earnings ratio (how your debt compares to your expected income)

It also compares three strategies side by side:

A visual amortization chart shows your loan balance declining to zero over time.

Use this when: You’ve picked a school and want to understand the real cost of borrowing — and how to minimize it.

5. Career ROI Calculator — The Total Financial Picture

Open ROI Calculator →

This is the flagship tool. It answers the ultimate question: “If I leave my current job to become a mortician, when do I come out ahead?”

The calculator models three career paths over 10 years:

What makes this calculator different:

• Study-state ≠ work-state: Pick a specific school for tuition, and a different state for salary. Study in Arizona ($2,358/yr), work in Illinois ($69k median) — the tool handles it.
• In-state vs out-of-state tuition: One toggle switches the tuition calculation for cross-state students.
• True investment, not just tuition: The “Total Investment” figure includes tuition plus the income you give up during school — which is typically 80–90% of the real cost.
• Monthly granularity: The engine simulates 120 months (10 years), correctly handling 1–3 month job search periods, 12-month apprenticeships, and annual salary growth.
• ROI percentage: A single number that tells you: “For every dollar I invest in this career change, I get X% back over 10 years.”

The results include:

• Tuition/yr (updates dynamically when you pick a school)
• Total Investment (tuition + forgone income, with breakdown)
• Target Salary (based on your work state)
• Breakeven Year
• 10-Year Net Gain
• 10-Year ROI %
• A 4-line SVG chart showing cumulative earnings for your current job vs all 3 paths

Use this when: You’re seriously considering the career switch and need to present a clear financial case — to yourself, a spouse, or a financial advisor.

6. Salary Calculator — Your State, Your Numbers

Open Salary Calculator →

The simplest tool, and often the last one you’ll check. Select your state and instantly see:

• Median and mean salary with comparison to the national figure
• Full percentile breakdown: P10, P25, Median, P75, P90 — in a table alongside national benchmarks
• Visual salary bar showing where the state’s range falls on a $0–$140k scale
• Employment count and Location Quotient — how many jobs exist and how concentrated they are
• Local funeral costs — average burial and cremation prices plus the state’s cremation rate
• Education context — how many ABFSE-accredited schools are in the state
• All-state comparison chart — a horizontal bar chart of all 49 states’ salary ranges, sorted by median, with the national median marked as a dashed reference line

Use this when: You want a quick, reliable answer to “how much do morticians make in [state]?” backed by BLS data, not a job board estimate.

How the Tools Work Together

Here’s a typical workflow for someone planning a career change:

Step 1 — Explore → Open the Market Map. Switch between the 5 metric views to understand which states offer the best combination of pay and demand. Spot a few states that look promising.

Step 2 — Compare states → Open Best States. Sort by composite score or the metric that matters most to you. Confirm your shortlist.

Step 3 — Find schools → Open School Finder. Filter by your target state (or neighboring states if none are available). Compare 2–3 programs side by side on tuition, debt, and outcomes.

Step 4 — Check the debt → Open Debt Payoff Calculator. Select your top school choice and target work state. See how fast you can pay off the loan on different repayment plans.

Step 5 — Run the full ROI → Open ROI Calculator. Enter your current salary, select the school and work state. See the total investment, breakeven year, and 10-year ROI for all 3 paths.

Step 6 — Confirm the salary → Open Salary Calculator. Double-check the salary range in your target state and see how it compares nationally.

Data Sources

All six tools are built on the same verified datasets:

No estimates. No job-board averages. Every number traces back to a federal dataset or industry report.

Start Planning

The tools are free and require no signup. Pick wherever you are in the decision process:

• Just curious? Start with the Market Map
• Comparing schools? Jump to the School Finder
• Need the ROI case? Go straight to the ROI Calculator
• Quick salary check? Open the Salary Calculator