Love & Money: Building Financial Compatibility Together – Episode #602

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Jordan Haines from Dentist Advisors joins Matt and Ryan to explore the critical role of involving partners in financial discussions to strengthen relationships and financial compatibility. They dive into the discovery process in financial advising and the unique roles individuals take on when managing finances as a couple. Highlighting the power of education, effective communication, and open dialogue, they offer insights into how couples can successfully navigate challenging financial discussions. Tune in to hear personal stories and actionable strategies that can help you achieve financial harmony and deeper engagement with your partner.

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the dentist money show brought to you by dentist advisors. We have a great show for you today. We have our oldest new member of the team, Jordan Haines, after a six year hiatus away from DA. He is now back with the dentist advisors team. And Jordan joins Ryan and I to talk about money and relationships and how to involve your spouse or partner in the money conversation. We go a lot of different places with this. We share. stories and examples and our experience working with hundreds of dentists all over the country and really sharing experience from our personal lives to help give you some insight and hopefully make you a better communicator with your spouse or partner around money to hopefully create a more fulfilling relationship, and use your money, more wisely and more effectively within your family. As always, we hope you get something out of this and enjoy the show. Okay. So this all came about because a few months ago I had a longtime client who went through our onboarding process. Like, he might be pushing eight plus years ago, but he reached out. He’s like, Hey, I really love the discovery process and onboarding process. you go through and maybe Matt and Jordan, you guys could talk a little bit about some of the nature of those questions, but he had heard it.

Ryan Isaac: Maybe Matt, you’ll remember what podcast you guys talked about it. He had heard a podcast recently sometime last year. About kind of that intake discovery process that we go through with new clients. And he was like, he’s like, Hey man, could we just do a meeting where my wife gets on the call? And we basically go through that discovery with her as if we’re new clients, just so she can be kind of caught up to speed because she’s hasn’t been super involved. And, but it was a really cool experience. That’s how this whole subject came about was that question. And then we can, we’ll dive into it. But the meeting was awesome. It was like 90 minutes and it was. So good.

Matt Mulcock: I love those discussions.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, they were so good, but, that’s what started all of this. would love to hear where you guys would like to take it. And also Matt, you probably remember that episode

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I think it was a two parter.

Ryan Isaac: That’s kind

Jordan Haines: You guys want to know something weird? You want to know something kind of

Matt Mulcock: Always, always.

Jordan Haines: Know exactly when that was. I am probably one of the only people who have listened to every single episode of Dentist Money Show.

Ryan Isaac: If anyone’s listening and can challenge Jordan on that

Matt Mulcock: I was going to say, let’s have a challenge.

Jordan Haines: Am I the only, well here’s the question, am I the only non dentist who has probably listened to every episode?

Ryan Isaac: Got to

Matt Mulcock: Possibly.

Jordan Haines: A good show.

Matt Mulcock: I haven’t listened to everyone, but I, when I got hired at DA seven years ago, I listened to a bunch of the early ones, like pretty much all of them before I got hired, because I wanted to be prepared to impress recent Ryan. since then, since being on it, I certainly don’t, I certainly don’t listen to every episode.

by the way, should we maybe back up and welcome Jordan Haines back

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I was just gonna say two things there one of them I would like to talk about what actually impressed me about you Matt when you came into the office for the first time and had Nothing to do with our company, but welcome Jordan Jordan Haines You’re so good at this stuff,

Matt Mulcock: Welcome. Welcome home is what we

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, what’s the yeah, what’s the the quick 30 second overview of Jordan’s path?

Jordan Haines: Should we give the story arc a little bit?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, let’s go with Arc. Winter Arc.

Jordan Haines: My wife has three uncles who are all dentists. about six years ago, Dentist Money Show. They’ll shout out Kyle and Brad, you guys know, hopefully you listen to this. but they had reached out to me as a young financial advisor and said, Hey, look at this company over here. I listened to their podcasts. They sound pretty cool. Can you vet them for me? Look, you guys up. I was like, this, these guys are awesome. Love Dentist advisors. So I reached out, got a job, became a financial advisor, and then, um,

Matt Mulcock: I remember the day, Jordan. I remember the day, Jordan, you were in office and we hired you. It was a great day.

Jordan Haines: I was the only one in a tie I got

Matt Mulcock: You were, you look, you look

Jordan Haines: Wore a tie. Huh?

Matt Mulcock: Great.

Ryan Isaac: This was six years ago? Yeah, we weren’t wearing

Matt Mulcock: Had to be six years ago. Yeah.

Jordan Haines: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I wore that tie until no one came to the office anymore. It was great. Like, uh, and now I don’t, I’m used to wearing t shirts today. You got me in a polo, but, yeah, so I’ve been hanging out with Reese the last couple of years. he’s been building some cool things for other financial advisors so they can do as great of things as Dentist Advisors is doing. And then a couple months ago, So I had to come back, the prodigal son returned. And, here I am to just talk about money. That’s my role.

Ryan Isaac: That’s cool.

Matt Mulcock: I love this. Well, just really quick from my side. Uh, what, what Jordan won’t say is basically every time we talked, which was once every, at least, you know, once a couple of months, every time we talked for a couple of years, I was like, when are you coming back? When are you coming back? Hey, we’re going to get you back. And we finally did. And it’s, it’s great.

Ryan Isaac: So, Jordan, as you kind of hear the intro to this, topic, and you’ve been in a lot of capacities here, In our client work, our process work on the software side of things in other financial advisory businesses. How do you, what would you add to this as like a setup to, you know, this, the topic of involving a partner, a spouse in your finances?

Jordan Haines: Everyone, when it comes to money or finances or anything in general, there’s always something like a job to be done. and I honestly think that like, you could boil us down into like, there’s a problem to solve where there’s like an opportunity to capture. Right. Like we want to grow or we want to like fix something. And, all of those generally have like a functional side of it, right? Like there’s numbers and you can just put it in a calculator and we can figure it out, right? Like that’s AI driven. Then there’s the emotional side of it, right? Like there’s feelings. You guys talk about this a lot. We talk about this a lot in the show. Feelings are just, they’re everywhere in money. And then there’s a social aspect of it, which is like how it relates to other people. And I think we talk a lot about the emotions, which I think is very strong when it comes to like spousal relationships and partners and things like that. But I think the social part is really valuable. I mean, I can think personally in my life. Like if I’m not doing this, if I’m not rowing in the same direction with my wife, like it’s tough, even if it’s like we don’t, it’s not that we don’t disagree, like we disagree with it. It’s just that we’re not on the same page. So when I think about like the conversations I have with people about money, it’s almost like once the spouse gets in the room or the partner’s there and they kind of understand the same thing, like they’re looking at the same picture and they both get it.

It’s like a breath of fresh air. Like it’s, it’s like clarity is allowed to happen at that point. Whereas up until then, it’s kind of like you’re, I feel like you’re trying to convince the other person. And so that, I don’t know, in my mind, that’s where it really comes in.

Matt Mulcock: It’s such a good point.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I was actually going to ask Matt, if you want to chime in on this, since you have so much experience in this area too, is, do you want to comment on, and maybe just normalize that in most partnerships and couples and marriages that In our experience working with clients, there does usually tend to be one person who’s more involved, interested. They might have more background or training to be involved or just. Have interest in this stuff. And that’s just a normal thing. Do you want to just maybe set up a typical client’s partnership or marriage and how one person usually tends to be more involved in than the other?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, for sure. I mean, to your point, and I think Jordan summarized it really well. there tends to be not always there’s certain situations. I meet with like every meeting I have yet. No, honestly, there’s some meetings I have where it’s like the both of them every time. It’s like, they’re communicating with everything, but I’d say for the most part, it’s like you said, Ryan, one person kind of taking the lead role. In some form or fashion than the other. that could be from lack of interest from the other partner. And by the way, that could either be the dentist. I have clients who it’s like the

Ryan Isaac: Going to say

Matt Mulcock: And I have other clients who it’s like, if not the dentist,

Ryan Isaac: It’s definitely not the dentist.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. And they’re like, don’t even talk to me unless you have to, you

Ryan Isaac: Have those too. Uh

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jordan Haines: How much, how much do you think that actually is real? Like when my random, this makes sense. I promise when my mom turns on a movie, my dad’s like this stupid movie. But then he’s always like lurking in the background and he like gets really interested.

Matt Mulcock: There’s actually some pretty funny like Tik Toks about that.

Jordan Haines: Yeah, I’ve talked to so many people where they’re like, my spouse does not like she or he does not want to be involved at all. And then like you, you have a conversation and you can kind of like feel them lurking. Sometimes I hear their voice in the background and then eventually they get there and they’re on the same page. So it’s like, how many times do they say that? Like, I don’t want to be involved and they maybe are just confused. I don’t know.

Matt Mulcock: So, so Jordan, I’m so glad you brought that up because I was going to go there of like, I think there’s these roles that we take on in our lives in not only like a spousal dynamic, but also like a friend dynamic or a inter family like siblings dynamic that kind of you carry through your whole life. And I, I do think somewhere along the way, in most of these cases, when you see the non Involved spouse say, I don’t want to be involved or just talk to them or whatever. It’s not really the truth. They actually would love to feel empowered and be a part of it. I think in a lot of cases, but it’s just like the role they’ve taken on. It’s just like, this is just what they do. And so to this point, what you were saying earlier, Jordan, the jobs to be done, I think one of our roles as an advisor is to try to uncover that. and you highlighted it perfectly the difference it makes in the relationship between us and them and then also between them, how many times, I mean, Ryan, you’ve seen this. How many times have we had those conversations? The one just story you opened this up with, I’m sure you can go deeper into this and how cool that conversation was when that non involved spouse starts to get involved, it changes everything.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. So such a good setup. It’s almost like we should podcast together every once in a while.

Matt Mulcock: It’s like, we should do this for the last

Ryan Isaac: Um, yeah, so I think it’s the Jordan. It was such a good question. And Matt, you hit it, it’s rolls. Because what happens is the person who gets on the phone in our meetings is usually the person that’s taking on the role of, I talk about investments, or I make the decisions in the business with the debt, or I’m the one buying the building or something. It doesn’t mean the other person, to the movie example, isn’t interested. It’s just, they have a different way of being interested or being involved because when you do get them on the phone with a different set of questions, they might not be the person who actually cares about the investment accounts. They don’t know about mutual funds. They could care less, but they want it. They have a huge amount of interest in the debt or the cashflow or the vacation budget or the kid’s college budget. And so, I do think it’s a matter of. roles and then what areas of interest people have and being able to involve someone a lot more broadly, a partnership or a couple like that it just makes things so much more dynamic because then you get the full picture. Not just the person who’s scheduling the meetings, getting on the phone, talking about investment accounts or insurance, but the other person. Who just has a different perspective. So that was such a good movie story too. That’s it reminds me of the videos I see where it’s like, my dad hates cats. And then fast forward, they got a cat and the dad’s

Matt Mulcock: Wait, what is, is that, that seems really specific,

Jordan Haines: You’re describing

Ryan Isaac: That personal.

Matt Mulcock: That seems really personal, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. That might be me too. Cat dad,

Matt Mulcock: Hey, really, really, really quick Ryan on that. I love that point. I would encourage anyone who’s out there listening, who has this dynamic and the assumption that your, uh, Non involved spouses, non involved because they want to be. Ask yourself, have you ever asked? Have you actually ever, or is this just roles that you took on out of assumption? Out of, just kind of just happened this way? Habit, whatever. have you ever taken the time and stepped back and said, Hey. Do you want to be involved in this? Like, just maybe ask, like, what do you think? Yeah, like, I think maybe you’d there’s a decent chance there’s some false assumptions being made.

Ryan Isaac: Let’s go back really fast into that question. Jordan, you started talking about, you remember the podcast where we talked about this, Matt, it was a two parter that you mentioned. cause what your point is, Matt is asking the right questions. We’ll get the broader, you know, a couple of partnership involved. So do you guys want to speak to that episode where we talked a little bit about that and even just our discovery process, Jordan, you’re involved in that. Matt, you’ve done a million times. What is part of that discovery process? Those questions. That might involve the less active partner in the, in the financial discussion.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, first thing first, a client comes on board with us, we always have what we call internally. And really we just call, we tell the clients this what’s what it’s called as a discovery call. I think this kind of sometimes throws people off because they have an assumption when they hire an advisor, that it’s going to be all just the nuts and bolts, numbers, spreadsheets, and all that ROI, which that’s all part of it. But for us, and I think what makes us somewhat unique and what we think the real value here is what separates. Each individual person we work with is their own individual story and like their concerns, emotions, what they want out of this, their why. So we spend a lot of time on that front end. That’s really the essence of that discovery call, Ryan, to your question is the, qualitative aspect of their life.

Again, what makes them unique. And, we spend that time. Hopefully we, we try, we try, we don’t require, but we encourage both parties to be involved in that because Ryan, you said it earlier, even if the non involved partner. doesn’t want anything to do with the investments or the debt strategy or whatever they want to be involved in that first conversation because it’s about their life, it’s their story, it’s their

Ryan Isaac: Their values,

Matt Mulcock: Their values that which is what we’re talking about in that conversation.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. And which is why I, I thought that episode probably made my client reach out and want to do that because it was so thorough in describing the, the qualitative questioning process we go through to really understand it’s someone’s financial life is so much more than just the technical, quantitative aspects of these things. It’s really, diving into values and goals and, you know, insecurities and worries and fears and. Yeah, it’s just, it’s a very involved process. So

Matt Mulcock: Definitely.

Ryan Isaac: Jordan, what were you going to say on that?

Jordan Haines: Yeah. So I find myself sitting here asking this question. I’ve done this personally between, me and my wife. I’m sure people listening to this are the ones that probably deal with the money. I’m going to, I’m going to go out on a limb and say, people who don’t care about their personal finances probably aren’t listening to the Dentist money show. Yeah. Is that a fair assumption?

Matt Mulcock: Probably pretty fair.

Jordan Haines: Yeah, yeah. So I’m sure there’s people here that are like, well, yeah, raise my hand. I want my partner to be involved in finances. and one of the questions I think you posed Matt was like, okay, well then just ask him, do you want to be involved? But almost like a second question that needs to be asked is how do you want to be involved? That’s like, I don’t, I don’t know if like my wife knows how she wants, like she knows she wants to, I think, but maybe not how, right. What do you guys think about that?

Matt Mulcock: I think that’s a perfect follow up question. And I try on the front end of those, like in that discovery call or just as I’ve started relationships with clients and having their spouse, they’re all ask them individually and as a couple, like, how do you want to be communicated with? How do you want to be involved in this? And I think that’s a great question to be asking each other and checking in with each other. So with that, not only just do you want to be involved, it’s, I love that as getting a little bit, taking it to another level and saying how, like articulate how you want to be involved. I think it’s great.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. And I’ll just use the example from that client call. So You know, my client is the dentist. He’s the practice owner. He’s the one who schedules the meetings and gets on the phone. And, you know, we’re always the ones talking, but when she got involved that day, it was really interesting to go through more of these house sections it turns out that she has some really strong feelings around what they’re doing with debt. and. Wanted some reassurance that it was going to be okay. Like most dentists that carry a lot of debt, this couple’s doing great. They’re cashflow. They have liquidity. They’re very profitable, good practice, like mid career doing really good.

But she was still really wondering about debt. She was wondering a lot about, and I think this is common too. Maybe the person getting on the phone that’s dealing with all these other technical things with us. Maybe that’s not even the person like. Running the household bills every day and every week and every month, you know? So in this case, his wife was the one like running the household. Basically she was buying everything and paying for everything and, you know, taking care of the kids stuff. And she had a lot of questions around, just that, like about their spending. And is it too much? Is it too little? Can they afford to squeeze out another 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, you know, as kids get older and they need more stuff and want to be more active.

And so. The how question is really good and she resonated a ton with kind of just that line of You know, curiosity, what matters to you? What do you deal with? You know, that he’s not, he’s dealing with this stuff. What do you deal with at home with the money? And how, how does it affect you? And it turns out there were some pretty significant ways. Now, when we got to other stuff, she’s like, I don’t really like whatever, I don’t care. You know, that when we got to other subjects, but there were some that were really important to her. And man, that, that call was just so cool to have for that reason, just to get this other person, who’s half of their family, the adults in their family involved in the how, what matters to you? How is it important to you? What do you want to know? Like, are there any goals that you’re not voicing? Are there things that feel important to you? You haven’t been able to speak up cause you don’t know what’s going on or you’re not involved in these discussions. So yeah, that was so good.

Matt Mulcock: Well, and how enlightening, how enlightening for him as well, right?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Uh huh.

Matt Mulcock: That again, maybe assuming she didn’t care about the debt and not even knowing that how many times, Ryan, do we get on calls in these types of scenarios where you hear some form or fashion of. I didn’t know you felt like that. I’ve had multiple situations where people are like, I had no idea

Ryan Isaac: I had no idea. Yeah. No idea that you cared. Oh yeah. Uh

Matt Mulcock: Totally. The other thing you brought up, Ryan, that I think is worth pointing out is that very rarely I have found, I’d love to hear what you guys think, very rarely have I found that it’s all or nothing when it comes to the money rolls. And I love what you just said there. Like, I think the most common is what you highlighted, which is one person is running the day to day stuff, short term day to day stuff. And then. The other person’s handling the big picture strategy. I find that the most common, but also very common is what is missing within those role roles and that connection, which is the communication of it, a routine and scheduled communication pattern.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, well, the person who’s maybe involved in the bigger picture things, they might not have the insight they should have into the day to day operations of their household or business. I mean, there might be a practice owner that doesn’t really understand the month by month expenditures of a business that the office manager does. And vice versa, the person who’s in the weeds, like just paying for family stuff and taking care of things day to day, week to week, might not understand bigger picture things that they need to get at. So Yeah. Combining those just makes for such a broader experience for everybody.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, definitely.

Jordan Haines: Something that I’m speculating on right now is like, what is the thing that the uninterested or the, the person that we think is uninterested, partner in a relationship? What is the thing that causes them to maybe pique their interest a little bit more? And I was thinking about like my experience this year with college football. Guys, I cannot stress enough how I got lots of analogies here, right? I was not raised in a sports family. I knew very little about football. I’ve just had to like learn what it is and stuff, married into a big football family. But you know, it’s kind of like it’s there. And I have like the teams that I grew up around. And this year I was like, you know what? I want to, like, I actually, like, want to follow this on. I want to figure it out. And so before the season started, I did, like, a lot of research. I had to kind of self self teach myself a little bit. And so now I, like, knew the rules and I knew that, like, the nuances of plays and stuff. And so when I’m watching, I’m like, Oh, this is fun. Like, I’m enjoying this. I actually understand it. The reason I share that is because I think in a lot of situations we tend to, like, turn away from things we don’t fully understand and say we don’t care about it. It’s like I don’t actually like understand all this, so like I don’t care about it.

And what’s interesting is like in my personal relationships and with clients that I’ve worked with, it’s like once the other person just understands or can orient themselves to like their life, then it’s like, oh, that’s when the questions start. Right. So I remember I talked to, clients that I had years ago and the, we’ll just say the more involved Uh, partner like was a retired CFO, right? Like they, he knew money so well, I got a spreadsheet, knew their whole retirement plan and all that stuff. And, you know, I’d ask him, he’s like, ah, my spouse doesn’t really want to be involved in all this. And finally I got the both on a conversation and, the sticking point was she really wanted to pay off the debt and wanted it gone at all costs. And both of us looked at their situation and thought, you know, I don’t know if that really needs to happen all that much. And so let’s just have a conversation. And after spending like, it was just like 10 minutes, we went through and I said like, You know, here’s how much liquidity you have and your debt and your spending.

Here’s how they all relate to each other. And it was like a light bulb went off and she was like, Oh, that makes sense. And finally, like it just like now she was asking questions. Oh, well, like if we do that, what happens here? And I remember at the end of the call, he texted me after and he was like, I’ve never. Heard her ask a financial question in my life and it was just from like orienting them to their situation. So my hypothesis here is that maybe one of the best ways to get people interested is just to help them understand as simple as possible.

Ryan Isaac: Okay. Matt, you say you, comment on that and that couldn’t have been a better segue to what I was going to introduce here.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll let you say great, but I just want to piggyback on that. I think it’s such a valid point. And I think you take that out broadly to our business, to Dentist advisors, we have basically built a business on that thesis, which is you make money more approachable. you lead with education. You show people like, Hey, you may not be like exactly what you said, Jordan. You may not be interested in this because, or you’ve always told yourself you’re not interested in this because. You’re quote unquote, not smart with money. I think the education leads to that interest and that competence. And all of a sudden they start to get more confidence and they’re like, Oh yeah, this is actually like kind of cool. You know, how many times do we hear like, I don’t know what I don’t know. I think that’s part of it. They feel stuck. I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t even know what to ask. Hopefully with some education and us piquing their interest with education and putting all this information out there, all of a sudden people start to be like, Oh, now do know to ask, and I understand why I should care about this.

Ryan Isaac: So good. So you guys just, I, what I was going to introduce is there’s an article on a website called very well mind. This came from August 19th, 2024, and it was called financial compatibility. Yes. Decent year. Financial compatibility is an understated relationship. Green flag, that’s the title of this, but there are five points in here in how to improve, financial compatibility. And one of them. So you guys just hit that so well

Matt Mulcock: Out of the park is what we hit

Ryan Isaac: Yeah

Matt Mulcock: We scored a touchdown, right? Jordan, we scored a

Ryan Isaac: Another touchdown metaphor Yeah, another football metaphor It was out of the park

Matt Mulcock: Oh, that shows how interested Ryan is in football right now.

Ryan Isaac: You know, I was actually I was laughing about this I love sports when it’s social And there’s good like food and drinks involved and if someone’s like really emotional about it, I like that. That’s kind of fun to

Matt Mulcock: Wait, are you alluding to the fact that we watched the Super Bowl Eagles Chiefs when we were in Panama together?

Ryan Isaac: I love that. That was so cool.

Matt Mulcock: And it just so happened to be that it just so happened to be that the mother of the person who owned the resort was From Philadelphia.

Ryan Isaac: She was a feisty man. I, that was, that was so, it wasn’t great for Philly, Philadelphia fans, but,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it wasn’t Ryan. Thanks for bringing it up. Oh, yeah, I brought it up

Ryan Isaac: To go on and bring that up again. that actually did remind me that I actually got a lot more interested in football years ago because of Madden.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Would, I would play Madden like long time ago. And then I would. but I would understand what was actually going on because of that video game. Anyway, you’re totally right. You don’t know what you don’t know. And in that example, getting the other person, to ask questions about debt and be just more informed and educated. It’s just, it’s a matter of education. So that was one of the five points. And I was just going to ask if you guys want to, anything else, I think you hit that perfectly, but there’s else you want to see around financial compatibility from education, like educating each other and together.

Jordan Haines: I’ll just say hot tip. Don’t treat your partner like they’re stupid because they don’t understand. even if you’re not trying to, you don’t think they’re stupid, but sometimes you can make it sound like that. I’ve, you know, I have experience here where, I’ve, you know, made

Ryan Isaac: Sat in those calls?

Jordan Haines: Trying to educate and it hasn’t gone well. So, maybe, and honestly, like, I think that’s when having a disinterested third party, whether it’s like an actual human being or a website or something like that, that you’re like, hey, I saw this. You know, here you go.

Ryan Isaac: Unemotionally involved third party. Yeah. You’re interested.

Matt Mulcock: Well, sorry. Really quick. I think that’s interesting, Jordan, that you said that the uninterested third party, because also something I’ve heard in meetings before is, well, I’ve told you that before, but now you hear it from Matt and all of a sudden you’re, you’re down with it. So I, but I think there is some truth to that because when you’re interacting with your spouse or partner, There’s layers and layers of experience, past experiences and hurt, you know, not even like massive hurt, just like,

Ryan Isaac: Patterns

Matt Mulcock: Patterns, there’s insecurities, there’s habits created. And so you’re going to look through the lens in which you’re viewing and receiving the communication from your spouse or partner oftentimes is tilted or slanted, where you come in this third party neutral person that you’re like, I’m just here to help both of you. All of a sudden they take the same advice. I’ve heard this so many times where the other spouse is like, wait, what the heck I’ve told you this for five years.

Ryan Isaac: We’ve been talking about this forever,

Matt Mulcock: And then it makes it awkward. And

Jordan Haines: Well, it’s like teaching. It’s like teaching kids to do something, right? Like I try to teach my kids to do something and then like my brother in law comes over and they like, listen to it and I’m like, come on guys, let’s get with it.

Matt Mulcock: Dad. I’m not, you’re not cool. Dad.

Ryan Isaac: It’s that, it’s that un, it’s that like unemotionally involved third party that is not threatening. So you guys just seamlessly hit point number two, which was open communication. Like, look at what you guys are doing. So it’s education, open communication, and I think that’s really important to just point out. That sometimes it is harder. It’s not impossible, but it’s really hard to do that with your, you know, partner, this could be a business partner too, without a third party. They’re kind of mediating the conversation in a more unemotionally, more detached way. because of, yeah, there’s just, there’s like patterns. There’s history together. I have a friend who talks about. Money behavior in terms of money wounding, like how you were raised negative biases, you have like negative thinking you have around money and finances and, you know, we all bring in different like money history, the things we picked up as a childhood in our childhoods, the things we learned from our parents, hard times, good times.

Like we just bring all these histories together. And sometimes the emotions they do run hot, Matt, to your point, I’ll be, we you’ve sat in meetings too, where like. You’re almost like sitting further back in your chair and you’re like, Oh man, am I qualified to, to be in the middle of this one here? But yeah, open, like just having that communication. It’s so important, but it’s so much easier when there’s a third party that’s not emotionally involved in at all.

Matt Mulcock: Ryan, actually, worst case of this. I had, this was a, like a prospect call, not a client, but I remember this vividly. This was like four years ago, both on the call, long story short, it got to a place. It was so bad. That I literally said, Hey guys, you need a therapist. Like this is not like you, we have stepped outside the bounds of my skillset and I am not comfortable having this conversation and helping you with this.

And she just goes, Oh, we’ve tried that many times. And I was just like, I don’t know what to tell. I am

Ryan Isaac: Talk to the same couple?

Matt Mulcock: Maybe, but I was like, guys, I can’t, I can’t help you with this. one other thing I wanted to highlight that I think Jordan spotted or was spot on with was the communication part of this. There’s, I think there’s two parts when we talk about this point, Ryan, that we just absolutely nailed and had

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, and I’m now curious of what the next

Matt Mulcock: Third one’s going to be.

Ryan Isaac: Blindly walk into so perfectly. It’s gonna

Matt Mulcock: Um, but the open communication I think comes down to like two pieces of this. Uh, Jordan, you hit the one which is like proper intention, like not going into that conversation with the intention of making your partner feel stupid. But the other part of this is like the skillset of it all, like having the actual skills and abilities to communicate the way you structure this and approach these types of situations, which again, why I think that third party Can be very valuable there because they’re not emotionally attached. They hopefully have the skillset to be able to not only the good intention, but also the skillset to be able to like share the news or knowledge or whatever it may advice in a way that is easily, received.

Ryan Isaac: Well, they have data too. That’s the other part of that too. It’s like Jordan’s example of the debt conversation and how quickly that turned in a favorable way because Jordan had data that just added more context. And so yeah, unemotionally involved like, or emotionally detached, um, the skillset. And then we come to the table with data to have these conversations. So it’s not like. You know, it’s not a personal thing. It’s just the numbers. Jordan, are you going to add something else on that?

Jordan Haines: I’m just going to say, also give yourself a little grace. Like this is one of the hardest conversations. It’s like the top four most emotionally charged between this sex politics and religion. It’s like, and you’re expecting it to go perfectly every time. No, have yourself a disinterested third party. It’ll help help work really well.

Ryan Isaac: Well, it is, it is, I still think to this day, the top, the top reason for divorce, I think is money problems or at least top two. So, I mean, you’re right. This is not a, it’s not a light topic, no matter who you’re having it with.

Matt Mulcock: But Ryan, just really quick, you highlighted this wide, right? And, and Jordan said it too earlier, the feelings part of it. It’s because most of the things, most of the problems that have to do with money have nothing to do with money.

Ryan Isaac: No

Matt Mulcock: It’s what money represents. It’s your experience. It’s your childhood, it’s your trauma, it’s your wounds from the past. And so that’s why I think I actually, I tend to think I have a hypothesis of my own. That, that stat is some like the general status true that someone would say like it was money, but I don’t think it is about money.

Ryan Isaac: No, no, no.

Matt Mulcock: I think it’s a way more

Ryan Isaac: That’s the object it gets projected

Matt Mulcock: Exactly easy

Ryan Isaac: Where we ended up. Wow. Look at this conversation. Yeah. Look at us. let’s go to a third one here. I like this. and this was a component to this converse, this client conversation I had, you guys have alluded to this too. And the third point is to, Do some planning ahead together. So what’s kind of nice about planning ahead. You might have one person in the conversation who is an in the weeds person. They like the investments. They like the logistics, the technicalities. You might have the other person who’s bigger picture when you can both zoom out and do some planning ahead. And it can be simple planning ahead. Right. We have a 2, 000 credit card bill. Like when can we get rid of that? We want to get a car next year. Well, the vacation we’ve been talking about for five years. When can we take that? So let’s talk about that for a second. What have you guys seen? in your client experiences where you get two people planning ahead together, a little zoomed out, a little more, you know, overview focus. And how does that help the, the dynamic and the discussion?

Jordan Haines: Matt’s had probably had a lot more experience with this, but let me I’ll throw in an anecdote on this

Ryan Isaac: Please. Yeah.

Jordan Haines: I think that like personally in my own life, I hate planning. I’ll be honest. My wife is way more detail oriented and we get really frustrated. We have to plan together. It’s not the funnest experience. However, however, If it’s early enough that there isn’t that triggering event, which is like triggering isn’t like it’s going to cause an emotional response. Like we’re four months away or we’re a month away. If I can do it like a year before when it’s not like the pressure’s not there, the emotional response isn’t there. I think it just allows both of us to come at this from more of like a rational place where we can have a better conversation when it doesn’t, this is a terrible word, but when it doesn’t matter all that much, right? Like planning when it doesn’t matter all that much. Makes it so much easier to like, avoid all the crap that comes with it.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. So your tip would be avoid the pressure cooker planning set. That’s not planning at that point. That’s like, what’s that called in the battlefield or something? It’s like triage. You know, you’re like, you’re just reacting to an emergency that’s about to blow up in front of your face. So plan without the pressure. Yeah. Do it ahead of time. That’s a good tip. Matt, what do you, what do you

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if I have much more to add than that. was really insightful. I think systematizing as much as you can. So what I’ve seen is the couples who have, again, like the couples that obviously I’m biased because the ones that I’m meeting with regularly, they have a system in place, which is meetings with me and I think

Ryan Isaac: Going to ask that dude,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So like having it systematized.

Ryan Isaac: Schedule, the rotation and the check ins. Yeah, totally. Okay. Keep going. Sorry. I just want to say like, perfect.

Matt Mulcock: No, I just think that, that to me, systematizing, it comes back to what Jordan is saying. I think one of the thing I would add is we’re going through this, that I think pertains to this in particular is it creates by doing this, it creates more intention, which I think leads to more fulfillment with your money by actually like coming together, planning the, even these small things, like you said, Ryan, I think where most people. Have regrets around money is like the mindlessness of it, whether it be a small purchase or a big mistake, I think a lot of it was, I mean, there’s obviously like really bad mistakes that were, they meant to do it and they just screwed up, but I think there’s a lot more mistakes, maybe that like the death by a thousand cut type mistakes that it’s just like, Oh, my spending got out of control and like, I didn’t even like notice it it’s, and I don’t even know what I spent my money on. It’s, I think. These conversations create more intention within the couple, which I actually think what I’ve experienced leads to more connectedness with them. more peace around their money. Like you can see in these meetings, they like take this deep breath. Like,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. It’s going to be all

Matt Mulcock: We’re good. We’re good. So I think there’s a lot of that.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks for saying that. I was literally just thinking I was going to ask you, how do you view having a financial advisor with like a system and a process in place to have regular check ins and have like kind of a, you know, cause we internally have a pretty extensive checklist of items. And like Jordan has said earlier, jobs to be done with people. So thanks for saying that. That’s, that’s super, that’s really

Jordan Haines: I want to give a real life example of this. I like that systems. because I think it helps avoid the like in the past, let’s say like four years ago, right? Like if, if I came to my wife with something money related, it’s usually because I was like, Unconsciously like accusing her of something and she would take it that way and it never ended well. And so we eventually like this was about two or three years ago. we got a new like budget software, just the ability for us to like kind of track things and trend over time. And every Sunday morning I sit down for like 10 minutes on my phone and I categorize things and I just make sure it’s all there. And then on Sunday evening we just sit down and I show her my phone. I say, Hey, look, here’s the state of things as they are because we’re in that regular cadence. It’s not like. Yeah. There’s no like ulterior motive for me doing that and she knows that and so it like it allows us to actually have a rational conversation there where maybe a spending is high. It’s not because I’m accusing you. It’s just because look, this is the state

Ryan Isaac: Is what

Matt Mulcock: Numbers are the numbers.

Jordan Haines: Yeah, and I would do, I would do that whether or not it’s bad or even if it’s good. And it’s that system that allows us to take the emotions out of that. So I mean, yes to like, we have a ton of those at Dentist advisors with our clients, right? Lots of systems, lots of things to help us do that regularly. But I think even in personal life, like there’s a lot of things we can do outside of that to just like keep and maintain something and it can be short. Like my, this process for us is like maybe five minutes. It does not take

Ryan Isaac: Oh, good. you’re hitting number four. You guys are just doing this so well. It’s so good. Number four, was budgeting together. So, and you’re kind of already hitting this right now. Any other, any other tips for, the budgeting conversations, Matt, we talk a lot about budgeting and how, you know, much of a short term thing that is compared to, you know, some what’s sustainable, but let’s talk about that for a second. Budgeting together as a form of financial compatibility and strength, strengthening

Jordan Haines: Change? Can we just change the word budgeting to like

Ryan Isaac: Too

Jordan Haines: Transit, like awareness, awareness together, you

Ryan Isaac: Spending awareness. Yeah. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: That’s I was exactly going to say, Jordan, like, I know budgeting is kind of that term that’s used when it comes to anything to do with spending. we’ve said this so many times, we don’t believe in budgeting as a long term strategy. It’s just not, especially for dentists, it’s just not a long term strategy. Very rarely, if ever, have I seen a dentist throughout their career follow a budget. but with that said, Jordan, to your point, I do think spending awareness, a system for spending awareness is critical to be successful with money. And not only just from the numbers, but also again, this intention we’re talking about this fulfillment, this like being on the same page together. I think it’s, it’s huge. I don’t know if I have much more to add other than what Jordan said. Like, have a system that works for you. Have a system that works for you that removes the emotion from it. It doesn’t have to be weekly. Maybe it’s monthly. Maybe you only talk about spending when you meet with your advisor. That’s okay. Just make sure you’re meeting with your advisor more than once a year.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. A systematized way to approach spending awareness. So no, no budgeting involved

Matt Mulcock: Works for you, right?

Ryan Isaac: That works for you. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: To be, I think this is my only tip for this that what I’d add, it has to be something you’d stick with. Like the best, fanciest, most perfect strategy of all

Ryan Isaac: Every Saturday night.

Matt Mulcock: Does it, well, it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter how perfect it is on paper if you don’t stick with it. So maybe what Jordan highlighted, you’re like, Holy cow, I can’t do that. But could you do once a month? Could you do once a quarter? could you do what I’ve seen before on these like fin influencers things where you make it a date? Like, meaning you’re like, you already have a date night, maybe plan for like once a quarter, once a month, whatever. And then just part of that date around when you’re at dinner. Don’t pull out your app maybe, but just like, be like, we’re going to talk about this at dinner make it fun. May it habit stack as James clear says

Jordan Haines: Next date idea. Go talk about money.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: That people are hearing that. Like you idiot.

Jordan Haines: I’m not

Ryan Isaac: Not, I’m not doing that in a

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. They’re like, I’m listening to the guide to taking advice from the guy that has a Fitbit. Yeah, sure. I’m going to go

Ryan Isaac: Fitbit

Matt Mulcock: Broke. It broke. It already broke. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s

Ryan Isaac: Number five is compromise. We’ll round it out here. That’s the number five tip to improving financial compatibility is compromise. We probably hit this in, all of these discussions and examples. I’ll just add one really fast here and say that. The examples you guys are using in my experience with this recent client meeting is that’s what that becomes when you approach a conversation that’s systematized, it has data, it has a, an unemotionally involved third person, and it’s, kind of a scheduled thing that’s happening regularly. It’s not like an emergency triage blame session. Then compromise becomes way easier because the emotions are down and you’re able to just see and hear the other person’s point of view. And then. Kind of just roll that all into yours and the bigger picture plan. But compromise. What do you guys say about that?

Jordan Haines: I heard the word compromise tangent. My wife has, we have this little manners thing that we do with our kids. They’re young and compromise is the theme of like the month for us. And my daughter yesterday got in a huge fight with her 6-year-old brother. She’s four. And she comes crying into the my office and she’s, she yells at me that Asher’s not compromising. And anyways, so now I, like I heard compromise. I just couldn’t think about anything else. Um,

Ryan Isaac: Triggered. You’re like, yeah,

Matt Mulcock: My kids are very similar. Same ages. Same

Jordan Haines: Yeah. So compromise is good. No, something actually that’s really helped, me personally, and I’ve actually tried this with a, with a couple clients as well, is there’s always do reflective listening, right? So like, you hear something. Say it back. And then if you have like an opinion on something, just start it with the story I’m telling myself is blank. And that sets the stage really well, especially in these emotionally charged conversations. There’s, Hey, the story I’m telling myself is this. What do you think? Right. And they can say the same thing or differently. And then you can say, well, let’s, you know, let’s just settle on something as unemotional as possible. But honestly, sometimes with compromise, you just need again, the disinterested third party to help with that.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, you do. And I’m just going to throw out another quick example of a really, really common one. Both of you guys have said this too, is a debt versus savings and investing. And a lot of times in couples and partnerships, there are different attitudes towards debt and investing for the future. And that becomes an area of compromise. And, but it’s not hard to do because again, with data, the third party, you can, join those conversations as an advisor and say like, okay, here’s your liquidity. Here’s your total term. Here’s your savings rate. Here’s the profitability in your income. Here are the debt levels and per, you know, interest rates and everything. Let’s take this amount of money for savings and this amount of money for debt. And then everyone can go like, let’s tweak it a little bit. But then that that’s a very, very common compromise between partnerships, businesses, couples all the time. And between clients and advisors. How often do you have to do that, Matt? Where you’re like, I really want you saving for your future self. They’re like, I don’t sleep well at night with this debt. Let’s make a compromise.

Jordan Haines: There’s no perfect solution.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, no, no,

Jordan Haines: Like I’m more and more convinced. I used to like early on in my career. I was like, there’s always an optimal financial

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, uh

Jordan Haines: And there never is. And frankly, there doesn’t have to be like, I think most of the time that you tell me what your experience has been. I think most of the time when I’m talking to people about money, we always settle with good enough. They were like, that’s a, that’s good enough for you. Right? Like your life is unique. There’s not like a right or wrong answer here. There’s a good enough answer. And that’s what we’re working towards. So I think a lot of people come into those financial conversations. Like there is a right way. And if we don’t do the right way, we’re screwed. It’s like, nah, I don’t think it’s really that way.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Money might have to do with numbers, but right. There’s numbers involved, but money is not this formulaic money is not physics. There’s no hard, fast rules and laws when you come to like real world scenarios of people’s lives. You don’t live in a spreadsheet. So I think that’s something that I think all of us have evolved over the course of being in this for a long time. Is there are no solutions here. There are only trade offs. And I think to that point, Ryan, this whole point of this final kind of like item here of compromise. I think you have to have that mindset. I’m not right. And you’re wrong or vice versa. It’s, I love that you said this, Jordan. I have a story I’m telling myself. You have a story you’re telling yourself. and we just have to. Understand the trade offs of our decisions. I think one thing I would add to this too, of like an actual tactical, or practical way to approach this from like a communication standpoint is a, remind yourself, go into those conversations that you’re on the same team number one, always you’re attacking the problem, not the person. Like you’re, you’re addressing going to Disneyland or not, which is a problem or, or an item or something. Not the other

Ryan Isaac: For you.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s a problem for me. It’s a problem for me. Yeah. So, but you’re, it’s an isolated event or thing you’re talking about, not like the history of your relationship. I think that’s the big thing. And then, most importantly, I think you always have to start off these conversations, in my opinion, especially if like, You know, it’s going to be emotionally charged with each of you, starting with something you appreciate about the other person, like regarding money, like, what are you grateful for? And that sounds kind of hokey. I think it actually makes a huge difference.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, bring it opens up your awareness what are the invitations from today? Like what are, what would you invite people to do from this discussion? for me, I would say, you know, if you’re a client of ours, have one of those meetings, this year in 2025 with your partner spouse, that maybe hasn’t been as involved, go through kind of a high level, fresh discovery process together and learn something, new and. You know, get a little bit more on the same page, do some high level planning together.

Jordan Haines: I would just start by asking them if they want to be involved. And if they do, how would they? I think that’s a good start.

Ryan Isaac: Cool.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, I have nothing else. What else am I going to add to that?

Ryan Isaac: Well, Matt, is there anything maybe in the summer of 2025 that you would invite people to do that they might, they could bring their partner to

Matt Mulcock: Was actually, that’s a perfect example. Uh,

Ryan Isaac: Your mind? I don’t,

Matt Mulcock: Maybe, maybe

Ryan Isaac: Put you on the spot

Matt Mulcock: Maybe how you start this conversation is saying Hey, do you want to go on a trip? To park city, Utah, June 20th and 21st in the summer. Beautiful park city, Utah. Hang out with the dentist advisors team, learn about money, investing, how to plan for the present and live a meaningful life. I don’t know. That sounds cool to me.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: To you guys.

Ryan Isaac: If, if the, if the partner says yes, Matt, where would they go as a couple to register for such a thing

Matt Mulcock: You know, we have actually solved this. We’ve

Ryan Isaac: We have? Okay. Hold on.

Matt Mulcock: We’ve actually built a whole website, Dentist money summit. com. Check it out. It actually is going to be amazing. We, Ryan and I don’t know how to do these things. We just kind of like really sarcastic. but I will say if you went, if you came last year, it was honestly incredible. I referenced this on a, on a podcast a while back, Ryan, but I had a client out of nowhere, truly unsolicited. We got on a call and he just goes, man, I got to tell you the Dentist money summit, like changed my life. I was honestly blown away because I’m like, yeah, this is cool. But like what I say, it’s life changing. Before that, I probably wouldn’t have said it now. I’m like, it’s life changing. full newsletter speakers, gonna be two full days. It’s going to be incredible.

Ryan Isaac: DentistMoneySummit. com.

Matt Mulcock: DentistMoneySummit.

Jordan Haines: Was the smoothest. That was the smoothest plug I’ve ever seen.

Ryan Isaac: That was so good.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, we are

Ryan Isaac: Till you see my hair transplants. smoothest plug. All right guys, Jordan, Matt, thanks for doing this as always. Thanks for all of you for listening. We’ll catch you next time. Bye bye everybody.

Jordan Haines: See ya.

Keywords: partnership dynamics, financial education, spousal involvement, financial compatibility, communication in finance, emotional aspects of finance, roles in financial discussions, communication, relationships, financial discussions, compromise

Behavioral Finance, Cash Management, Getting Organized