my father is religious, I’m not and I don’t care what happens to my body after I die. Burn me, use me to feed stray cats.
To me, wasting money to buy a plot of land so I may be buried with them when I die is a stupid idea.
It is, however, his money. Who am I to disagree with him?
My grandfather bought a plot with 5 spaces next to each other in a graveyard you can no longer get plots for, thinking him his wife and his 3 boys would be buried there. His did this when the boys were under 10 years old. The ones for him and my grandma are used now, but the three boys are grown, moved away from that small town and with grandkids of their own now and they will not be using the plot.
Let him do what he wants with his money, but he is delusional if he thinks his children will be buried there too.
A family plot really should take into account the fact that families grow and change over time.
In earlier times, when infant and child mortality rates were high, a lot of parents had their children buried in the family plot. But that’s not the current reality in most western countries these days.
“We’ll make sure our kids are buried with us, but their future spouses and our future grandchildren are on their own” is a weird way to go, since obviously your grandparents wanted to be buried together and did not choose to be buried with their respective parents.
Thinking about death is hard, and I think that difficulty causes some people to make irrational decisions.
I wonder how often cemeteries or funeral homes suggest additional plots as a way to increase their profit. (And whether there’s something in the contract that specifies when the ownership of any unused plots reverts back to the cemetery so they can be re-sold.)