Meet the Team
Every page on Cremation Cost Guide carries the name of the person who wrote or researched it and the name of the editor who reviewed it. Four people do that work. This page is where they live.
Daniel Mercer: Editor & Reviewer
Daniel Mercer is the editor of Cremation Cost Guide and the final check on everything the site publishes. He owns the methodology: which sources count as evidence, how estimates are built from them, and when a figure is too weak to publish. Before any page goes live, Daniel reviews every price on it against its source, tests the page against the site keyword assignment so two pages never compete for the same search, and confirms that explanations of consumer rights match the FTC Funeral Rule. If a number cannot be traced to a dated source, it does not ship.
Sarah Linden: Senior Cost Researcher
Sarah Linden builds and maintains the 50-state price dataset that powers this site: the national tables, every state page, and the calculator all read from her research. She works from published sources only: NFDA statistics, FTC Funeral Rule guidance, and the General Price Lists and state price tables that providers and consumer guides publish. For each state she records an average direct cremation price, the lowest all-inclusive price she can find, and a cremation-with-service average, each with its source and the date it was checked. Where a state publishes no usable low price, she builds the conservative estimate described on the methodology page and flags it on the state page itself.
Michael Torres: Staff Writer
Michael Torres writes the cost guides and explainers on Cremation Cost Guide: direct cremation, cremation with and without services, the line-by-line cost breakdown, comparisons with burial, and the guides to finding a lower price. He works from the researched price dataset and the sources listed on the methodology page, and his brief is plain language: every fee named and explained the first time it appears, and every claim tied to a figure the reader can check. His drafts go to the editor with the source for each number marked, and nothing he writes is published until those figures pass review.
Emily Hart: Pet Care Writer
Emily Hart writes the pet cremation silo on Cremation Cost Guide: pet, dog and cat cremation costs, prices by weight, private and communal options, urns, how the process works, and what families can do with the ashes. No national survey of pet cremation prices exists, so her work is built from the typical ranges that pet cremation providers and veterinary sources publish, and her pages say so plainly: figures are framed as ranges that vary by region and provider, never as quotes. She writes the guides the way the subject deserves: clear about money, and careful about the grief that usually comes with the search.
How an article gets published here
The price dataset comes first: it is built from the sources listed on our methodology page, with every figure dated and traceable. The writer or researcher then drafts the page from that dataset. Daniel, as editor, checks every figure against its source, tests the page against the keyword assignment for the site so two pages never compete for the same search, and confirms that legal explanations match the FTC Funeral Rule. Only then does the page go live, carrying its author's name, the reviewer's name, a publication date, and an updated date that changes whenever the content does.
If you believe a page here contains an error, contact us through the contact page and we will check it against the source.