As always we turn to our readers in the middle of every month to find out what articles were the most read in the past 30 days.  Here are those articles as indicated by those readers.

1. National Report:  U.S. death rate to be elevated until 2023.  This article was published over 15 months ago but for some reason it was searched and read more than any other Funeral Director Daily article in the past month.  It deals with a report by the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs.
2. 2023:  The Year of the Ancillary Sale. This article delves into the possibility of lower margins caused by the combination of lower revenues per sale and higher expenses caused by inflation.  It suggests that to avoid getting caught in a financial squeeze funeral homes need to put additional effort into ancillary sale items such as monuments, urns, cremation jewelry and the like.
3. Here’s a look from one perspective on the mergers and acquisitions market for 2023.  This article is a published interview with Foundation Partners Group’s Zach Mayer, head of the company’s Nationwide Merger & Acquisition Business Development.
4. Federal Trade Commission seeks to ban (most) non-compete agreements.   The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a notice in early January that announced that they are contemplating banning almost all non-compete agreements that are not a part of an agreement between buying and selling companies. Read about how that might affect funeral homes in this article.
5. There’s opportunity out there. . . go get the business.  This article relates some of the available data to the idea that there are a lot of people in society who would be willing to listen to a pitch for a pre-arrangement policy if only we would reel them in to listen to our pitch.

I would also like to thank all of you who read the articles put forth on Funeral Director Daily.  We continue to grow our readership and for December 2022 we averaged, on our 30-day rolling average, 16,522 monthly page views.  Our pledge is to continue to refine our content, delivery, and readability to continue as the fastest growing news and commentary source in the death care profession.

Thanks, again for your loyal readership. . . . Pass our existence on to your colleagues.

And, a special thanks to those sponsors who help bring this material to your screen free of charge.  We know that you have a choice in which death care suppliers you use and which companies you affiliate with.  However, if you enjoy Funeral Director Daily, give our sponsors a try the next time you need their type of product or service.

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