By the Numbers: Buying for the afterlife

From the March issue: By the time he died in 2013, Mayor Ed Koch had already meticulously planned everything about his burial, right down to what his tombstone at the exclusive Trinity Church graveyard in Washington Heights would read. The cost? $20,000. “The idea of leaving Manhattan permanently irritates me,” the late mayor said in 2008, according to the New York Times. While the sum may have seemed outrageous at the time, today there are New York City cemeteries where no amount of money can buy you a resting place. [more]