My wife is going to outlive me. That’s just maths. The women in her family tend to stretch out long into their nineties, while my genes roughly have the shelf life of a room-temperature chocolate eclair. My mum was in her sixties when she died last year. Her mum barely creeped into her seventies. I never met my grandfathers because they both died before I was born, respectively sputtering out in their fifties and forties.

So that’s my lot. Live slow-to-medium, die youngish, hopefully leave some sort of corpse. That’s fine. That’s life. However, one thing I can do is make it easier for my family after I’ve died. And so that’s what I’ve done. As of last week, I am now the proud owner of my very own funeral.

If you’ve ever lost someone, you’ll know that funeral costs are viciously expensive. An average funeral costs £4,000, and the price is rising ten times faster than inflation. Costs have doubled in the last 15 years, and they’ll have doubled again in another 15 years. If I live as long as my mum, my funeral will set my family back £16,000. If by some miracle I ever make it to 80, it’ll be close to £30,000. That’s obscene. I mean, I’d be happy if they put my body in a brick-filled binbag and slung me into a canal, but apparently there are laws preventing that.

"The week Mum died, I went into town and bought a black boxfile."

But I recently discovered a service that lets you pay for your own funeral upfront, at today’s prices, and the price is fixed no matter when you die. I went for a bare bones package – cremation, embalming, hearse, limo, basic coffin – and it came in at just under £3,000. A few years of monthly instalments and it’ll all be paid off. That’s a hell of saving. When I die I’ll be laughing. Well, you know, I’ll be screaming in agony and terrified about the infinite unknowable void of non-existence, but also laughing.

This basically makes me Superdad. The more shit I can get in order now, the less hassle my kids will have to go through when I die. Experience has taught me the value of this. My mum died of cancer, and she was too ill to properly look after things. All her paperwork was crammed higgledy-piggedly into two cupboards; a disorganised mess of crumpled-up bank statements and insurance letters and pet vaccination invoices. It took a full week for three of us to unpick it. I discovered her last will and testament completely by accident, hidden in a Tesco bag under the stairs along with a couple of toys and my brother’s 50-metre swimming certificate. The palpable, suffocating heartache of her death was plenty. The additional ballache of posthumously jigsaw-puzzling her affairs back in order felt both painful and unnecessary.

"Honestly, I’ve never felt like more of a man."

I will not repeat her mistake. The week Mum died, I went into town and bought a black boxfile. I brought it home, Tippexed a skull and crossbones onto it and now it is my Deathbox. It contains all the documents that anyone will need in order to register my death – my birth certificate, wedding certificate, National Insurance number, passport, a recent council tax bill – along with the will and life insurance policy that I panic-bought last summer. My prepaid funeral plan will go in the Deathbox too, along with a few printed photographs of me palling around with my sons because there’s no point doing all this unless I can absolutely underline the fact that I was a great dad and all-round terrific human being.

Everything is in order. Well, not everything. I haven’t told anyone where I want my ashes scattered, and I don’t know what songs I want played at my funeral (NOTE TO MY CHILDREN: NO ED SHEERAN). But from a financial and administerial perspective, provisions have been made. I’ve done all the legwork, because I love my family and want to take care of them.

And honestly I’ve never felt like more of a man. My working definition of masculinity, flawed as it is, is that I should provide. And not only in a material sense; I should provide love and safety and security and reassurance as well. I should be relied upon. By sorting out all my end-of-life crap while I’m still relatively young and healthy, I’m doing exactly that. I’m minimising the hurt that my family will endure when I’m no longer around. Surely that’s the most important thing that anyone can provide.

Now, if only there was a way to arrange the circumstances of my death. If someone starts a plan that lets you pay upfront to die in a jetpack explosion while rescuing orphans from an erupting volcano, give me a shout.