2024 Dentist Financial Benchmarks: How Do You Measure Up? (Part 2)- Episode #617

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Ryan and Matt continue to reflect on the past year’s biggest themes in dentistry and analyze the results from a recent survey sent out to Dentist Advisors’ clients. They analyze key numbers on savings rates, spending habits, and net worth—discussing how dentists are building wealth, why a strong savings rate matters, and which benchmarks are more indicative of financial success. Tune in to hear the valuable takeaways for dentists at any stage of their journey and stay tuned for a part three, where Ryan and Matt will talk about debt, insurance, and real estate!

Related Readings

Dentist Financial Benchmarks: See How You Compare (Part 2)

Are You Saving Enough?

---

Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist money show brought to you by dentist advisors. We have another show from Nicaragua. I am sorry. You are getting inundated with these. when you get Ryan and I together, we record podcasts. So, today we have part two of our wrapped series on the last wrapped. We did a lot of the qualitative, the survey data. Today we do a lot more of the quantitative things like savings rate, spending net worth, getting more into the numbers. We actually end up yapping for so long that we’re actually going to do a part three. We did not get to all the numbers, so you get three versions of wrapped. As always, hope you get something out of the show and hope you enjoy.

Ryan Isaac: Matt, let’s have some fun. We’re

Matt Mulcock: Having fun

Ryan Isaac: Welcome to the dentist money show We’re still in Nicaragua. We’ll end up having maybe like six episodes out of this place, which would be a record for us to actually show up somewhere and then actually do podcasts.

Matt Mulcock: Three years. Every year we come to something like this, like, you know what? We’re going to take our stuff. We’re going

Ryan Isaac: We do, we take our

Matt Mulcock: We take our stuff and then we don’t record.

Ryan Isaac: And

Matt Mulcock: But third time is the charm. This is our third or fourth, fifth, fourth podcast, plus a ton of content from elevation association. And we’re going to use that and we’re going to post that. So it’s going to be a ton of stuff coming out

Ryan Isaac: So good. I’m excited. today this is part two of our wwrapped series. Duh, as they say. Oh my

Matt Mulcock: We’re in Nicaragua. So does, yeah. Como se dice part Ryan

Ryan Isaac: Parte. Yeah, but it’s probably not. Once upon a time I spoke pretty decent Spanish. okay. This is part two of wrapped. Part one of wrapped was recently released. I’m guessing this is you listening to us in the future. And my future self a few weeks from now is saying part one was recently released,

Matt Mulcock: Part one was

Ryan Isaac: But my current right now self, it has not been released yet. Uh, who did it like two days ago?

Matt Mulcock: I think it did. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Questions around a lot around quality of life. Do you like your career meeting expectations? Yeah, I thought it was cool. I hope, I hope people like to see that. And then next year we can do it again with like deeper questions, more

Matt Mulcock: Well, we learned a lot this year. First of all, we got a ton of responses, which is awesome. We just learned, like, we probably need to define some concepts more. Before we post it, but we’ll do it again

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Like the vacation question in the dentist advisors. Yeah. The dentist advisors discussion group. We’d asked this question in that survey. I’m just like, how many vacations do you take a year? And then in the podcast, we’re like, well, what’s a vacation? Are you going there? Are you going to the, the forum right now? Oh no. I was going to say we got some answers in there.

Matt Mulcock: Oh, I can go to it. Let me, let me go to it real quick.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I can get there too. Um, I’m kind of curious now how people answered that. Cause it is pretty cool. Cause so we asked, yeah, like what does it, what does it mean to even have a vacation and you and I kind of said the same thing. Leave the city three days. Let’s see. Greg said four night minimum doing fun stuff in a place I want to be. No business mixed in. Ooh, actually that’s an interesting one, Matt, because how often do you go somewhere and you still do a little work?

Matt Mulcock: Places I go. It’s too easy not

Ryan Isaac: It’s just too easy not to even on like a cell phone standing in a line somewhere at an airport. So no business. That’s it. That’s a good qualification. Zero work.

Matt Mulcock: Do you

Ryan Isaac: You ever travel anywhere and leave your laptop

Matt Mulcock: No, man. I have not, I can’t remember the last time I

Ryan Isaac: That’s

Matt Mulcock: Maybe Lake Powell last summer, mainly because of where it was and the boat and all that, but it’s very rare.

Ryan Isaac: John here in the comments said going to the office every day is vacation. is it work if you work for fun? He asks.

Matt Mulcock: Good for you, John.

Ryan Isaac: John, is that sarcastic John?

Matt Mulcock: I, I don’t think so. I think he’s being dead

Ryan Isaac: I don’t know his life and career. So man, props to you. That’s really cool if that’s true. What did Jordan say? Vacation was going somewhere and not visiting family. Okay. So now we have other qualifications. No, not visiting extended family. Or maybe he means immediate family,

Matt Mulcock: He probably means, no I think he means extended.

Ryan Isaac: No spouse, no

Matt Mulcock: In laws. By himself is what he’s saying.

Ryan Isaac: Gotta be alone.

Matt Mulcock: He’s saying at least two nights not at my house. Uh huh. So he says he’d consider camping in the mountains a vacation.

Ryan Isaac: It’s cool

Matt Mulcock: Which is awesome. I wouldn’t consider that a vacation but, It’s

Ryan Isaac: Camping. You wouldn’t. So if you went on, let’s say you did no work, there was no extended family. You went camping for three days, three nights, four days. Like you

Matt Mulcock: I’m just owning how bougie I am.

Ryan Isaac: When I go beach camping, which is, uh, about ten minutes from my front door. And, which I’m emphasizing because I don’t go anywhere, far, hard, difficult, I’m

Matt Mulcock: We all know Ryan, you live in Southern

Ryan Isaac: Didn’t come out right. That didn’t come out right. What I’m trying to say is, I bring an actual like 6 inch thick queen size folding mattress and a queen size bed frame. That like folds I got from Amazon to put in my tent. That’s what I’m trying to emphasize. And I

Matt Mulcock: Glamping is what

Ryan Isaac: I have about this battery that will last, I don’t even know how many days it would last.

You can power everything from it’s, it’s the size of a car battery. It’s got this handle on it. it’s called, Oh, the company’s called Jackery. They have the sweetest stuff ever. So if you ever do like any car camping or any traveling that way, and you want,

Matt Mulcock: A battery. It’s

Ryan Isaac: It’s, it. Well, it’s not a, it’s not a generator. It’s an actual battery that’ll last forever. You could power,

Matt Mulcock: In and

Ryan Isaac: Could power stuff for quite a while on it. Yeah. Fans. Yeah. Your equipment. Anyway, that I’m trying to emphasize. I’m sounding cocky. I’m trying to emphasize that. I don’t

Matt Mulcock: Emphasize that you live in Southern California.

Ryan Isaac: Me, everybody. Look at me. Look at

Matt Mulcock: Oh my gosh.

Ryan Isaac: Sleep on a queen size mattress camping and I don’t go very far.

Okay. Yeah. So that was an interesting, um, first podcast to do to kind of. Just hear the, the qualitative side of the, of the data. This is the quantitative. These are the numbers that people are asking for ever since three years ago, when this

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, we did this three or four years ago, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: All right. Without further ado, we have, okay. here’s some things we categories we have today. We have things like net worth, spending income savings. We have, um, real estate debt amounts, commercial real estate debt amounts, practice loan amounts, student loan amounts, total debt, life insurance, disability, savings rates. So these are these data sets that we have. And let’s, let’s make some qualifications here first. There’s some categories where you would want to include zeros. For example, some people have zero debt and you would probably want to include averages that include zero people with actual zero debt, right? Some people have zero life insurance, which we don’t like that.

Matt Mulcock: Reasons for that. There

Ryan Isaac: There could be some reasons for

Matt Mulcock: Legitimate reasons for

Ryan Isaac: Be some legitimate reasons for that. You’re totally right. so those are categories you, you would, uh, other categories like spending don’t include zeros cause nobody spends zero nobody has zero income. there are negative net worths, so that’s legitimate. And then also there’s a difference between the average, which is the average of all the numbers. And then the mean, which is the middle number. Um, is that what I’m talking about? The mean and the median. Yep.

Matt Mulcock: Average and the

Ryan Isaac: Average and the median. The median is the one right in the middle. So I don’t even, I’m explaining what it is and then I’m getting it wrong. So that was cool. All right. yeah. So, where should we start? Let’s start with income. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Matt Mulcock: Ahead. Can we break down why it’s important to hit both

Ryan Isaac: Do whatever you

Matt Mulcock: And median? so I think the reason I want to just hit

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, yeah, please,

Matt Mulcock: Why average and median is important to make the distinction because.

Ryan Isaac: Distinction because, and

Matt Mulcock: And this is actually really important to understand when you see anything in the media when they talk about averages and the difference between an average and a median. So average can be polled. In one direction or the other based on the outliers. So if, you know, we’ve got clients who might have massive, massive incomes on the out like, you know, on the, on the top end of the spectrum on the, what they’d call in the tail, what Rabih would call the tail of the distribution,

Ryan Isaac: Rabih.

Matt Mulcock: Freaking Rabih, it can pull that average up. It doesn’t give you a true sense of what the regular person is. So the median being the midpoint. you’re going to see some differences here when we highlight these numbers and it’s going to show you, again, the average, like, for example, income we’ll talk about is, the average is drastically different from the median, which tells you the, the tails are skewing

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, not a head and a tail. They’re both tails, aren’t they? Cause it, cause it’s a, like a horizontal bell curve

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. Yep.

Ryan Isaac: Did I say all those words, right?

Matt Mulcock: Statistics. Yes.

Ryan Isaac: Alright, let’s start with the income. This number has gone up actually over the years, which is cool to see and I hope this is true given inflation. This first set that I’m going to tell you, this is the average. This is the first data point I’m going to tell you. This is the average Of all incomes, all incomes, well, I am all of our clients. I’m going to break this down. This includes seven figure incomes too. That’s what, that’s what I’m getting at. So the average of all of our incomes together is the average is five, 10. five away, five, 10, right in the, well, I’m in the, I’m in like the other tab of like all of the, yeah, if I’m going to, um, then the median.

Matt Mulcock: Tab all the time. Yeah, 509. Um, then the median, so this is what we’re doing. Yeah, it was in the fourth. It’s not even

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it was in the force. I’m not even 450, 420, 430. Someone

Matt Mulcock: So now we’re at 509 for average income, which is awesome.

Ryan Isaac: To you. Does that tell you any story? Is it hard to like make a story out of that? I mean, you can make a story of any data really. But anecdotally, since you’re working with all these people, does it tell you anything?

Matt Mulcock: I mean, it’s encouraging. It’s encouraging to see the incomes going up. I know we’ve talked a lot about the problems that dentists have had

Ryan Isaac: lack

Matt Mulcock: Compared to quote unquote, like normal or other businesses. in the sense of they don’t have as much control over like pricing with insurance companies and things like that. So it’s cool to see because there’s been, a lot of issues when it comes to staffing and again, pricing issues, lack of control. Like again, it’s cool to see that dentists have, have seen from what we’re seeing, the data showing us a pretty decent increase in income over the last couple of years.

Ryan Isaac: Like do the quick math in my head, but like, let’s go back, you know, a year or two when averages we’re actually, okay. Let me, I’ll get to this in a second. Averages were in the fours, like you said, like the, yeah, four 20 in there.

Matt Mulcock: Probably

Ryan Isaac: Um, and then you think about the average practice is probably seen between what, seven and 10 percent inflation on their P and L and costs.

Matt Mulcock: I would imagine, something like that in that

Ryan Isaac: Supplies and people mostly. So as I’m thinking about it, it’s like, this is really encouraging, but also I’m not sure if anyone’s feeling that exactly.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, if anything, it’s probably feeling like

Ryan Isaac: Yes, it is net income, but you know, taxes go up. Uh, practice has just got more expensive. It is encouraging. Like you said. This might also reflect the fact that, I don’t know, a lot of these people have just been around for a long time with us and they’re growing in their careers. Our average bread and butter client, well, I mean, oh, yeah, I guess we should, we could say this too, the average age is early 40s.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, our average, our average age of client and median has stayed consistently around 44 years.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Uh, for a long time. So, that’s

Matt Mulcock: Do you want to hit the median, by the way?

Ryan Isaac: Age

Matt Mulcock: Sorry, median of income. We never said

Ryan Isaac: So we’re, yeah, we’re in the low fives for averages. I was just going to say this really fast. The average income under a million dollars is four. Let me go back to the tab for 32. So for 32 under a million, that’s the average income under a

Matt Mulcock: So that’s important because you’re saying, that’s what we showed that. And we’re, we’re. Showing that nuance because again, the tails are pulling that up. So if you remove the seven figure earners, that’s still a great income.

Ryan Isaac: A really good income. It’s still really encouraging. I mean, does it answer the question? Is dentistry still worth

Matt Mulcock: I was, I was just going to go there. Is dentistry still a good financial decision? 100 percent

Ryan Isaac: Still think it’s a resounding yes. Now the median, uh, to your question, the median income in this whole data set is three 64

Matt Mulcock: Midpoint.

Ryan Isaac: Midpoint. That’s the midpoint of incomes, which makes more sense. just given the data set. So there you go. Average income. Actually, Matt, while we’re going through these. Sometimes benchmarks and averages can feel affirming and helpful, and then sometimes they can feel like crap, like they make you feel worse. Do you want to say anything about how you should think about a benchmark? Like if you’re hearing this and your income’s not 508 and you’re like, Oh great, I’m 10 years into my career. I’m not even hitting the average from these guys, or I’m not even at 432 from the averages,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I mean, I think like anything right, like you have the control and the decision to apply whatever meaning you want to this, right? The data is the

Ryan Isaac: Good call.

Matt Mulcock: As we said before, to quote our boy, Bill Shakespeare, um, Um, things are neither good or bad, but thinking makes it, makes it so it’s like you, you have the control to do that. Um, our boy,

Ryan Isaac: My brain just caught up with what you just said. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I, again, you choose to think of this the way you want. You can be discouraged or you can say. This is an average, like, meaning the path is there for you to do this. Like it’s, I would look at it as a positive of saying the blueprint is there. How do I actually go make this happen?

Ryan Isaac: Totally. Yeah. And some benchmarks matter more than others. And some, and some benchmarks are way more. There’s just a lot of nuance in it and you can’t take it at face value all the time. We used to send benchmarks out a lot. We used to publish them a lot on reports and

Matt Mulcock: And we did

Ryan Isaac: We did. We ended up finding that sending these benchmarks out, we used to do it monthly and it was like, it caused too much confusion because there was way too much nuance. Let’s just take, for example, we’d send out a benchmark of average, percentage of income that goes to taxes. There’s like a dozen factors, even between two people with the exact same income, probably dozens of factors that affect the tax rate that are not even in your, they’re not comparable to someone else, even in your same income. So anyway, all right, let’s go to spending. Matt, what is our historical spending been like up to this

Matt Mulcock: Um, so from what I remember, I mean, we’re always kind of in the same range again, I’m going off the top of my head, but I believe the first year we did this, we were somewhere in the range of about 18 ish thousand. the data showed the next year, this was two years ago, it dropped somewhere in the range of about 16, five. From two years ago. So, but it’s kind of been in that range of between six, I’ll call this a range of between 16 and 19, 000 a

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it’s about there now the average sitting in front of us here is right around it’s almost 200 That’s the total about 200 grand. That’s the total. So that’s 16, 000 700 a month basically Yeah, we did see that skew down from a little bit of the higher teens over the years But we did start working with younger career dentists who tend to spend a little bit less

Matt Mulcock: One caveat I want to make to this, the spending, the spending is the, one of the hardest data points to gather, mainly because it’s really hard to keep us up to date. We have like connections that break. And so I always like to tell people we have a range here, the range to consider for the average dentist that we work with is 16 to 18 grand. That’s about what we’re seeing, depending on where we’re pulling the data from. Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: That makes sense. and really to know, like in the, the question that always follows that is, is that too much? Am I spending too much? Um, what are your top spenders spending? Oh

Matt Mulcock: Spending?

Ryan Isaac: Can a really successful dentist spend every year in per and let’s be clear, personal spending. What does that include? What does personal spending

Matt Mulcock: Quick, personal spending. What does that include? Anything

Ryan Isaac: At home, personal debts.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Um, so my biggest client is probably spending, I’m not saying this is a good thing, but my biggest client spends probably close to 40, 000 a

Ryan Isaac: I was going to say the same. Now I think my, my highest spenders are that my highest spenders. Thankfully are also probably, they are my highest earners.

Matt Mulcock: Yes.

Ryan Isaac: You the same

Matt Mulcock: For the most part. Yes. I have, I have, some people in mind that, um, that maybe don’t fit that category, but, uh, we’ve had some, a lot of come to Jesus, uh, conversations, but yeah, I mean, for the most part, yes, I would say. 9 out of 10 of my clients who are spending 30, 000 plus are easily 7 figure

Ryan Isaac: There are seven figures and oftentimes these like 35 a month spenders. Sorry. I laugh. That’s just, that’s awesome.

Matt Mulcock: It’s, if, what, no, what it is is just insane.

Ryan Isaac: It’s real estate.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: Honestly. What’s the biggest ticket item on

Matt Mulcock: Always the

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it’s always the house

Matt Mulcock: I have multiple clients who have, um, their payment alone on their home is 20,

Ryan Isaac: Oh yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So, there it is.

Ryan Isaac: chew on that.

Matt Mulcock: Whoop, there it is.

Ryan Isaac: Mean, yeah, here we are. Um, you know, what’s interesting about the annual spending. Number two with the median is the medians like 10 grand, 13 grand off the

Matt Mulcock: I was going to say it’s, it’s pretty much right there, which means it’s not skewing too

Ryan Isaac: It means that the variety and how this is really cool. Because the, the variety, this, the skewedness, skewiness,

Matt Mulcock: The skewedness. Yeah. The convexity.

Ryan Isaac: For real.

Matt Mulcock: Have no idea. Rabih’s not here.

Ryan Isaac: We’re not here. We just say words that we’ve heard.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. I’ve heard that at some

Ryan Isaac: The

Matt Mulcock: In stats class. Prostration.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Sure.

Ryan Isaac: Prostration of the, uh, the, the number of skews. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of interesting because the, the variation that you see in, let’s say income, you don’t see in spending.

Matt Mulcock: Which does tell

Ryan Isaac: Does tell a story. Okay. That actually does tell an interesting story. That tells me that while dentist income can vary a lot, people, most people tend to fall in a pretty rhythmic, yeah, narrow range of spending that most people get to. So, and I was going to say on the spending number, the question’s always, is it too much? Do I spend too much? And that is usually answered with how much you’re saving. What percentage of your income you’re saving.

Matt Mulcock: By the way, so this can’t be stressed enough when it comes to this question of retirement or making work optional. If we boiled it down to one number, it is spending, which is what lifestyle do you want to maintain? That’s it. Like, there’s a massive difference. By the way, the average American, just for

Ryan Isaac: This is, this is hard to hear. The

Matt Mulcock: The average American spends about six grand a month.

Ryan Isaac: You think

Matt Mulcock: Which, again, if you think about it, it makes sense. It’s all relative. the average dentist makes a ton more. Like, 4 or 5x the average American. So, it would stand to reason that, you know, someone or a dentist would spend a lot more than the average American. but everything boils down to spending, so not to simplify this too much, but if you’re out there thinking, when can I retire? That question is grounded in what is the lifestyle you want to have? There’s a massive difference between saying, I want to spend 20 grand a month in retirement. That’s going to be significantly different than saying I can live off five grand a month. Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: I was going to say even 12, 20

Matt Mulcock: Exactly.

Ryan Isaac: 20 to 15

Matt Mulcock: Talking a decade difference in when you can retire.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. And the size of the network that needs to be. I was just running some numbers here too. Cause I was going to say part of this is what percentage of overall gross income is getting spent by the average dentist. And it’s about what I would expect it to. It’s like 32%. The average

Matt Mulcock: So we’d call that burn rate. Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. It’s your burn rates. The, the percentage, um, of your income that you’re spending. Yeah, so that’s right in line with that percentage fitting in taxes, and then savings on top that you should be able to save an appropriate amount of money. So let’s go to net worth. Do you want to meander over there? Let’s go to net worth.

Matt Mulcock: Me and, or to the net worth

Ryan Isaac: So the average net worth. on this average, I’m looking at the front page to Matt and you can say that. And then I’m going to go to the data while you’re saying that. So why don’t, why don’t you talk about the average and median? I’m going to go to the data set and look through this too.

Matt Mulcock: So the average, so I guess, uh, for anyone listening that we’ll just kind of take this to level one, we talk about net worth. It’s everything you own minus everything you owe, comes out to your net worth. So all of your assets minus all your liabilities is your net worth. We have the average of our clients being, uh, about 2.3 million dollars. So, average age, as we’ve highlighted, is about 40. 2. 3 million at 40 years old, like that, I think most dentists would take that. If they said, going into dental school, this is what you’re going to be.

Ryan Isaac: yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Would you say that’s about,

Ryan Isaac: Well,

Matt Mulcock: Would be encouraging?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, yeah. So two, okay. 2. 4, I’m going to do some quick math here. We’ll probably get to this at now. My brain’s like, I

Matt Mulcock: Friggin nerd.

Ryan Isaac: Get to this because I was curious, like, what is that? Come out to an average, um, TT total term, Matt, why do I care about this number? Like what, what does that

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Cause total term we’re talking about, again, most people engage us and they’re wondering most dentists out there are wondering

Ryan Isaac: I like

Matt Mulcock: When, when can

Ryan Isaac: it. I like what I like when my calculator spits out the number. I need it to say. I needed this number to say certain

Matt Mulcock: We are the biggest nerds ever. Um,

Ryan Isaac: it made me happy. I like this.

Matt Mulcock: So TT being what we’d call the retirement readiness

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Just

Matt Mulcock: But just again, when can work be optional? I think most dentists want to know that. Uh, James Heaton, shout out Dr. James Heaton, he, he made a comment when he was speaking and we’ve been chatting this whole week. and again, it was so cool to hear him say this kind of organically. Which work changes the mindset, Mark Costas said the same thing. Your mindset changes when work becomes optional, even if you work for another 20 years. So TT basically tells you that. With

Ryan Isaac: That we calculate this is we just divide your net worth by your spending, your annual personal spending, and the number that it kicks out as a multiple of how many years you could live on your net worth.

Matt Mulcock: No growth.

Ryan Isaac: Zero growth, just as of today, you retire today, pay some taxes and then this is what you get. And the magic number is somewhere around a 30 give or take, depending on your situation, depending on what assets you have. when you do that calculation, if you divide, you take your net worth, divide your spending into it, your annual spending, personal spending. If you come out with about a 30, that means that you could pretty much live indefinitely on the net worth you

Matt Mulcock: And leave money left

Ryan Isaac: And, and yeah, if your spending doesn’t change wildly, or if you don’t make a crazy dumb decision and like get rid of your net worth,

Matt Mulcock: You’re in infinity

Ryan Isaac: You’re in infinity mode. That means, yeah, you’re leaving money behind after, and it’s kind of indefinite spending. So if that’s the goal, and again, that’s also nuanced because you don’t have to hit that number to be done. You can be a little older and have a smaller number. If you’re much younger, you probably need a bigger number. So there’s some nuance in there, but if you want to hit that number as an average. at an average age, let’s say in your young to mid sixties, that means there’s certain milestones, mile markers, and they’re not perfect because everyone’s situated very different, but there’s milestones of what number you would want to be at a certain age. And I would say, in your forties, you want to be somewhere hitting the teens in your mid forties, you know, uh, in your like,

Matt Mulcock: or

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, like, yeah, or anywhere like a 10 to 12. At, let’s say at 45, if you hit a 10 at 65, a 30 standard operating, like standard growth, standard, um, this is just normal people. This is like a normal work life. You know, you get into your sixties and it doesn’t mean you’re still doing five days a week at

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s fair. 10 at 40, 20 at 50,

Ryan Isaac: 45, 40 or 60. Yeah. You can go a little earlier, a little later, whatever, somewhere around there. The average, so if you take our averages and you have an average, net worth about 2. 4 divided by the average spending of about 200, that’s about a 12 total term for the average client age of 40. So our average client has a total term average of 40 or of 12 at age 40, which means on a current pace, because also the average change of total term. It’s almost a two, meaning our average client is changing their, they’re adding about two points per year for the total, which is actually really high. It makes me wonder a little bit about that. But what this means is that our average client, and again, the word average is doing a lot of lifting there, you know, in, at a 52, they’re in the twenties for a total term score. And by in their sixties, they’re in the 30 range for their total term score. so this just tells me that people are on a very healthy path to building a net worth that’s big enough to sustain their spending indefinitely forever and leave money behind by the time they’re in their sixties. And my, from what I’ve seen, and my guess is if people stick on this path and they don’t mess it up with anything problematic or big, my guess is that people will hit a net worth that is big enough sooner than they think. Uh, when they keep, when they keep on these paths. So any insight, what do you think about these, like these total term, you know, ready to

Matt Mulcock: Again, the word I come back to is encouraging. It’s encouraging to see, I think it’s really easy to get stuck in the middle of your career and feel like, am I doing the right things? You’re burned out. Or is this working?

Ryan Isaac: This working? Am I getting anywhere?

Matt Mulcock: So it’s cool to take a step back and see these numbers and say According to the data that we’re seeing with our clients, like, yes, it is working. And by the way, we’re not sitting here being like, we’re the magic, we’re, we’re the magic formula. I mean, maybe we are,

Ryan Isaac: Well, I mean, okay, honestly, okay. Finish your thought. I’m going to push back on you.

Matt Mulcock: Well, no, I just think, again, it’s cool to see, like, for us, from a job satisfaction and fulfillment perspective, it’s helping, it’s actually

Ryan Isaac: It’s helping. So what I was going to say, Matt, do you think that the average dentist in the country, not on our client base, but the average dentist in the country is at a 12 total term at age 40? Not even close. There’s dentists at 60 pretty commonly that don’t have that.

Matt Mulcock: the

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, and I mean the the the ADA’s own data is that the average retirement age for dentists as of the last time they ran The data was almost 70 years old and it’s not mostly by choice Even though I do think that this is a prime career to work a long time. So I do yeah, I guess I’m saying it It, it does have a lot to do with discipline and systems and accountability over long periods of time, but it’s not because I mean, maybe you are, but I’m definitely not a genius. It’s not because like I’m

Matt Mulcock: Speak for yourself, my

Ryan Isaac: You and the other advisors are geniuses. I think you are, but yeah, it’s nothing special. It’s what is it, man? It’s systems, it’s repetition, it’s accountability and it’s staying out of trouble. I mean, that’s how you make progress in anything. And it’s kind of boring,

Matt Mulcock: It’s, it’s, it’s truly getting small wins over and over and over again and avoiding big losses. Like if we brought it down to that, that’s what building wealth is. It’s so simple. It’s so obvious. It seems so, again, so obvious,

Ryan Isaac: A no brainer.

Matt Mulcock: A no brainer. But it, and again, in conceptually everyone out there is like, yeah, duh. But again, there’s a reason why no one does it because it’s not easy. It takes time. It takes patience, discipline, accountability.

Ryan Isaac: The concept is

Matt Mulcock: Is super easy.

Ryan Isaac: Uh huh. Yeah. Concept is really easy. Man, you just said it though. How long does it take to make progress? So freaking long. How long does it take to screw it up? Overnight. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Sorry, growth is slow. Destruction is quick. You got to avoid those big

Ryan Isaac: It’s so true. Okay, so we’ve done spending, we’ve done income, we’ve done total term.

Matt Mulcock: You going to savings

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, you want to do savings?

Matt Mulcock: I’ve got some numbers here.

Ryan Isaac: Okay, first, well, we’ll go, because you’re probably going to say what I was going to ask you. Yeah, go

Matt Mulcock: Uh, so I’d say,

Ryan Isaac: Matt?

Matt Mulcock: Here. I guess I would just highlight really quick. If somebody asked me, what’s the one metric I could look at to assess someone’s financial health if you could only pick one? It’d be their savings rate

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Like your current, give me a real time today indicator of if I’m in, if I’m on the right

Matt Mulcock: Yes It’d be what is your

Ryan Isaac: Saving? What are

Matt Mulcock: And when we say savings we’re assuming you’re investing

Ryan Isaac: Huh. Yeah. It’s going

Matt Mulcock: Somewhere 401k brokerage account. It’s intentionally being invested somewhere but it would be what it Put another way. It’s like what’s your future, savings bill you’re paying? What’s your free cash flow you’re putting away? you know, Morgan Housel says the difference between your income and your, uh, spending is your ego. That’s where your ego

Ryan Isaac: We say that again.

Matt Mulcock: So the, the, the difference between your income and your, and your spending is your

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So, which I think is really interesting. But, again, if you, if you said. What is the number one indicator, Matt, if I could only pick one thing to tell me if I’m going to be financially okay or not in the future? It’s your savings rate.

Ryan Isaac: Savings. Oh, it’s in the low, low 2%. I think the last year or so, um, I believe it’s somewhere around there.

Matt Mulcock: The low, low single digits. I think the last, I mean, I’ll, I’ll tell you. Um, I believe it’s somewhere around 3%.

Ryan Isaac: yeah, and the highest, the highest percentage savers are the 55 to 65 year olds

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’m going to tell you real quick. We’re going to go to our assistant of Google.

Ryan Isaac: Just go to your, your private assistant real fast. their name is Google. Yeah, I think it’s low. I mean, I think it’s definitely low single digits and the highest savers. If it is above that are the older crowd.

Matt Mulcock: Ryan, what did I say?

Ryan Isaac: You said three to 5%.

Matt Mulcock: It is 3. 8%. Uh,

Ryan Isaac: Just, that’s just average.

Matt Mulcock: It just says U. S. personal savings is according to Y charts. It just says 3. 8 compared to 4. 1 last month. This is like the current month.

Ryan Isaac: That’s how current we are with our data on our podcasts. This is monthly data. This is 10 minutes ago. It just came in.

Matt Mulcock: 10, just came in. So again, between 3 and 4 percent is the

Ryan Isaac: So, I mean, it’s kind of interesting, you know, we’ve all grown up with the adage of, grandma’s, Is it even grandma’s financial advice save 10% of your

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, my grandma probably said

Ryan Isaac: My grandma probably said, I mean, I said, grandma, it just, it seems like a loving, wise thing to say that a grandma would say that’s just old. That’s just old wisdom. save 10%. I just don’t believe that. Well, it doesn’t cut it for a dentist at all. A 10% savings rate does not save enough. It doesn’t accumulate enough money for a dentist at

Matt Mulcock: Accumulate enough money. That’s true, they can be up to a lot of

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Uhhuh

Matt Mulcock: Do, I mean I’m saying it this way, but I also think it’s okay

Ryan Isaac: That’s true. The caveat to a lot of this, and I do, I mean, we’re saying it this way, but I also think it’s okay to say not everyone has to build up so much money that they leave any behind. Although no one you don’t want to run out either. But it’s okay to not. Pile it all up as fast as possible. If you can work as long as possible, but you don’t always control that. I mean, you just don’t always control the factors involved working into your seventies. And so if that’s the case and you still love it, I mean, there’s no greater financial tool that you have in your full control than your ability to earn income in your career, in your field. So maintaining your physical, mental, emotional health, maintaining like especially your body and your physical health and not burning out so hard that you want to get out before you’re even 50. that’s probably the biggest tool you have, because even if you’re earning, you know, 50 grand a year from teaching or like a day, a week or something. Which you’d earn more than 50 grand if you’re doing a day a week of

Matt Mulcock: Day a week.

Ryan Isaac: That’s a 100, 000 income. Which is crazy. Like you can be in your 60s doing a day a week earning six figures. I’m saying even if it’s 50 grand that you’re not taking from a portfolio or an asset, every year you don’t take that money is just probably like multiple years on the back end of keeping it in there. So,

Matt Mulcock: All

Ryan Isaac: Alright, so did we even say our

Matt Mulcock: Built that up a lot. We have not established what our average is though.

Ryan Isaac: Okay, do you want to go there?

Matt Mulcock: I’ve been running some numbers here to

Ryan Isaac: Are you running?

Matt Mulcock: Some, uh, to give us some perspective

Ryan Isaac: Give us some perspecti.

Matt Mulcock: Uh, okay. So our average, our average savings. So this is. The savings rate being what percentage of income is going towards my future self is, uh, our average is 15%. So again, good to give the context, average American spending about or saving about three. Our client is five times that, which is amazing. It’s super encouraging to

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, oh yeah.

Matt Mulcock: That comes out to an actual dollar amount of about, we’re going to round up about 60 grand a year. Our average client is saving about 60 grand a

Ryan Isaac: Wait, were you just running projections of the saving 60 grand? Okay, I was just picking up my phone. I’m going to cuddle up in the

Matt Mulcock: it built. I already have it built out.

Ryan Isaac: So Matt, I want to know now as an avid listener to the Dentist money show I want to know what good does saving 60 grand a year get me?

Matt Mulcock: Yes. I’m so glad you went there, Ryan. Because, I want to emphasize for people, like, this works. Like, it’s so straightforward. It’s not easy, but it’s so simple. Uh, I’ve said this, I can’t even tell you how many times this quote that is just rattling in my brain all the time, which is from James clear that 90 percent of success is, is doing the simple and obvious for an uncommon amount of time. Like that’s all this is. So, uh, with that said, Ryan, to your point, here’s the, numbers that I ran 40 year old

Ryan Isaac: Okay

Matt Mulcock: I’m assuming they’ve already done some work. 40. They’ve got about. Let’s say 250, 000 saved. Is that fair? Do you want me to change that number?

Ryan Isaac: I’d like

Matt Mulcock: So 250, 000

Ryan Isaac: You’re saying by age 40, this person has 250, 000 in some

Matt Mulcock: Or brokerage account

Ryan Isaac: That is very doable. And if you don’t have that, that’s okay, but that’s an achievable

Matt Mulcock: I’m just throwing it out

Ryan Isaac: It’s an average

Matt Mulcock: You’re about 40, 000, you’ve got about 250, 000 saved somewhere in a, again, 401k or somewhere. Average rate of return Average, meaning this is not going to be every single year, but Average rate of return. What am I going to put it at?

Ryan Isaac: Uh, if I’m running this for the first time, I want to be like bare bones minimum. I would start with like a 7 or an 8. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: So let’s go

Ryan Isaac: And in context, just, just the U. S. market alone over decades on average, if that’s all you’re doing, which is whatever, that’s a whole other thing, is double digits, 10

Matt Mulcock: We’re going to go conservative

Ryan Isaac: We’re saying an 8.

Matt Mulcock: We’re going to go 8. Okay. okay, perfect. So we’re going to go 8 percent rate of return. You’re putting in 60 grand a year for 25 years. So the age of 65, this is just in investment accounts. Outside of real estate, outside of your practice, outside of

Ryan Isaac: Home equity, everything else you might have,

Matt Mulcock: You have over, over 6 million dollars. 6. 1

Ryan Isaac: What can you take out of 6. 1 million dollars every year and never run out of

Matt Mulcock: Uh, let me tell you Ryan, I’m glad you asked. Let’s go ahead and go there.

Ryan Isaac: I’m gonna tell you it’s

Matt Mulcock: Um, so we’re going to say you could live off of 243, 000 and some change, uh, so about 20 grand a month in today’s dollars that you could live off of that. That’s off of a 8 percent rate of return for 25 years. Let’s say it’s nine. Now you’re talking over 7. 2 million. Let’s say it’s 10. Now you’re talking over 8. 6 million. Get

Ryan Isaac: Man, which is, this is a whole podcast now about investing and how the whole point of investing you guys is not outsmarting everything and picking the right mutual fund out of the 50, 000 it exists or whatever it’s just sticking with it. If you even get what the market offers over long periods of time. You can see the return differences here in 1 percent difference, 2 percent difference,

Matt Mulcock: The most important part of any strategy is having one you can

Ryan Isaac: Stick with. And then the average mutual fund investor is, is actually getting multiple percentage points less than the fund even gets because they don’t even stick with it consistently. So like what a lesson that is there to just, so you’re saying 10 percent return, you’re over 8 million.

Matt Mulcock: 8

Ryan Isaac: We’re talking about like a 320, 000 annual income that you can pull out and never run out of your 8, 000, 000. That’s insane. And it’s not even necessary. Like, you can spend more than that and still leave probably 5, 000, 000 behind.

Matt Mulcock: And by the way, this is just an investment accounts. This is just what you’re being able, this is just what you’re able to extract from what we’ll call your human capital and be being, running your practice. Your, your job as a dentist and business owner, what you’re able to extract from that, put into the financial markets and grow that thing. Um, you’re able to grow that to, to say you’re able to grow this to eight, nine, $10 million. Just an investable account or you know investment accounts that is not even close to out of the realm of possibility Plus you sell your practice plus you sell your real estate or have real estate and creating a passive income from that quote unquote passive

Ryan Isaac: It was so passive.

Matt Mulcock: It was so passive. There was no active work put into that whatsoever. But again, I just want to emphasize that This is so doable that the blueprint is there

Ryan Isaac: And you just ran the calculations at someone saving a static five grand a month forever. That person who’s 40, when they’re 50 and 55 and 60, they’re not saving just five grand a month. But if they did So that, that leaves like a few options that either means that your spending goes up and your taxes probably a little bit, but your, your spending goes up, which hooray for you. That’s great. You’re still on track to retiring or you save more, which is common with our clients, which means you hit these numbers sooner. That’s why I’m saying, when I look at these averages here, I think these average 40 year olds right now, when they’re in their middle to late fifties have options to slow down or be totally done that we would have thought took them till 65. That’s going to be the case if they stick to it.

Matt Mulcock: To it, got to stick

Ryan Isaac: Ah, I love this.

Matt Mulcock: Most of this success comes down to temperament, more than tactics, your personality, your ability to stay in your seat. We were just saying

Ryan Isaac: It’s so hard to do, but that is it. That’s the value.

Matt Mulcock: But this has become so clear to me this weekend or this week, as we’ve been here and putting so much thought into this, as I do all the time, it’s always rattling in my brain of like, what’s the true value of an advisor, honestly. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s accountability. If I use one word, it’s accountability. It’s having someone stick to their plan and not get distracted because Truly the secret of this is time. It’s can you stick with something for a long, uh, enough time for it to

Ryan Isaac: We’re

Matt Mulcock: And it’s, we’re not sitting here saying it’s easy. It is so, you were literally just talking about your ADHD.

Ryan Isaac: Difficult. We live in a, uh, in a,

Matt Mulcock: It, it’s difficult, right?

Ryan Isaac: Where

Matt Mulcock: We, live in a day, uh, in a, an environment today that has probably never been harder

Ryan Isaac: Stay focused, even on like hour to hour

Matt Mulcock: Hour to hour talk about All the different

Ryan Isaac: For a normal brain, which I don’t consider mine.

Matt Mulcock: Even close, neither one of

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So again, the secret being, can I stick with this for a long, for a long amount of

Ryan Isaac: And that’s, it’s long,

Matt Mulcock: It’s long.

Ryan Isaac: like a year’s a long time. We’re talking about like decades.

Matt Mulcock: Sometimes we get stuck because we’re like, answer sometimes is like, you just got to trust us. But it’s really hard when it’s your 10 years in or 15 years in, and it’s like, you got to just stick to

Ryan Isaac: And, and Matt, in your whole career and certainly mine, have you ever had a single year where there wasn’t something to be scared of in the economy or the markets or the, or the, or the world politics at large? A dozen

Matt Mulcock: Dozens

Ryan Isaac: There’s never, never been a year when the whole year goes by and it’s like, Oh, there’s no geopolitical problems. There’s no market problems. There’s no economic problems. It’s just been fun all year. It’s, it never ends, let alone, and we, we’ve been saying this a lot lately, I’m never not surprised at the amount of times dentists need liquidity for things in their lives, things that were so unexpected today or this week, we just saw a presentation from a new good friend of ours and he showed a video clip of the news, a news helicopter of his entire practice exploding

Matt Mulcock: The air. All

Ryan Isaac: Like hundreds of feet in the air all the pieces of the building are up in the air luckily I don’t think anyone died in that he didn’t really say I think most of the

Matt Mulcock: Empty, and I

Ryan Isaac: his was empty and I think the ones surrounding were empty like I have no idea how it was in the middle of a week

Matt Mulcock: Entire building

Ryan Isaac: But he showed a video of his entire building exploding and I mean you get these stories every there It’s it’s If, if it’s not like weekly, it’s monthly a dentist just reaching out like, Hey, didn’t expect this to happen. I need 50 grand. Hey, I didn’t see this coming. I need a hundred grand. It is constant. So I mean there’s just never a good year where there’s nothing to be scared of. There’s never a year when you don’t need some money for something and that could be opportunities too. It’s not all bad stuff, but it’s just, it’s hard. The point, it’s really hard to stick with things for a long time. There’s always something that tries to derail you and that’s not even. The friend and family and social group pressures to deviate from your course. And then this week we’ve been having a lot of discussions and we will at the Dentist money summit with one of our featured speakers about burnout. How many dentists start deviating from the things that got them to their successful place purely because they’re burned out and they’re just looking for a little hit of some dopamine because they just feel dead inside and they’re like, I need something to wake me up and make me feel alive.

Matt Mulcock: Me up and make me feel alive. That felt personal. Yeah, um, this would be cool to come back to the data. To

Ryan Isaac: To go back to the data. Thank you. Yeah. Let’s go back.

Matt Mulcock: To bring us back to the data.

Ryan Isaac: To the data, right?

Matt Mulcock: Cool to see, I think this is cool. So total, total dollars saved from our

Ryan Isaac: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: uh, over 27 million saved

Ryan Isaac: Where did you get that? You’re cheating. Or is that no, you’re not cheating.

Matt Mulcock: I’m not cheating my

Ryan Isaac: I didn’t see that. I didn’t see that. That. Oh, there it is.

Matt Mulcock: million

Ryan Isaac: Wait, hold

Matt Mulcock: and invested in markets

Ryan Isaac: last year.

Matt Mulcock: in last year,

Ryan Isaac: In 2024, our client saved 27. 6 million. 27. 6 million.

Matt Mulcock: Isn’t that cool?

Ryan Isaac: I’m kind of

Matt Mulcock: you’re blown away.

Ryan Isaac: yeah, I’m like that. That’s crazy.

Matt Mulcock: million.

Ryan Isaac: I mean, here’s the deal, man. I know again, this is all systems and it’s all accountability.

Power just went out, by the

Matt Mulcock: Power literally just went

Ryan Isaac: We’re back on, but we have some, we have some backup powers. No, we

Matt Mulcock: just happened multiple times. We were presenting and the power went out.

Ryan Isaac: Just went out. Um, that’s why this, this goes back to, this is all systems and accountability because I mean, that’s a staggering number, man. I’m sorry, but that’s a really staggering

Matt Mulcock: Were like speechless for a

Ryan Isaac: I’m still just thinking about this. Like

Matt Mulcock: like, no, out there

Ryan Isaac: I, I do. I know for a fact, the average dentist is not doing this in there in the average, just out there among the 200, 000 or so dentists that exist in this country.

This data group represents roughly 600 plus. I know the average dentist isn’t doing it, but there’s like the, the most magic thing that we’re doing here for these people is organization and accountability. And lots of communication and there’s data and there’s reports and there’s dashboards and there’s cool tech that’s always changing and evolving. But it’s just the tried and true systems, processes, and accountability on your, on your first, your personal finances. And there’s just, there’s no substitute for this. I’m just kind of blown away. 27. 6 million saved from our clients last year. That’s just cool, man. That makes me like proud of everyone. Good job,

Matt Mulcock: cool, man.

Ryan Isaac: I, I personally only saved 26 million. Um, just me

Matt Mulcock: Good job. I personally only saved 26 million. Um, just me, alone. Yeah,

Ryan Isaac: You, you were above that

Matt Mulcock: To debt. We’ve

Ryan Isaac: Go to debt. Where are we at? Let’s see. We’ve got a good 46 minute mark. Will you do part

Matt Mulcock: do part three? What do

Ryan Isaac: You think? Do you, could we, or do you want to roll? Do you want to roll through data debt

Matt Mulcock: I mean, we have life insurance, we have debt to hit.

Ryan Isaac: Let’s do a part three wwrapped part three. All right. We’re pausing here. Wrap.

Matt Mulcock: It’s

Ryan Isaac: Why it’s our show, everybody. Did you know that?

Matt Mulcock: that? It’s our

Ryan Isaac: Did you guys know? All right. So part three, we’re going to hit the debt side and the insurance side. What averages? Yeah. And I don’t want to rush that because there’s a lot to be said for this stuff.

Ryan Isaac: No, you know how happy the marketing team is because we’re squeezing out content out of this

Matt Mulcock: True. They’re

Ryan Isaac: Like there’s a lot of juice to squeeze from this. A lot of meat,

Matt Mulcock: A lot of meat on that

Ryan Isaac: There’s a lot of meat on this bone. Uh, okay. So part three, we’re going to hit averages of personal real estate, commercial real estate, practice debt, student loans, total debt. I’m going to talk about averages in life and disability insurance and what some of those stories might be telling us as well. So as of right now, thanks for tuning in. Uh, we’ll be doing this. If you listen to this, uh, we’ll be doing a webinar end of February, right?

Matt Mulcock: There because there’s

Ryan Isaac: Okay. On this, we’ll do this live and cover this. I guess there might be a part three. What there has to be a part three webinar into March. Now mark marketing stoked. I’m glad we went there though, man. I’m glad we went there because there’s more to the story than just reading numbers. And I’m glad we spent some time around savings and net worth, especially, uh, and the calculations. Yeah, I’m glad I had a good time. Um, this year, Matt, what do we got going on? We want people to be invited to.

Matt Mulcock: The Dentist money summit. We’d love to have you out. we are getting updates every, like literally every day from our marketing team, messaging us, uh, people signing up. It’s honestly super cool to see, uh, comparing the numbers from last year to this year, last year was our first year of the first annual, this year is the second annual Dentist money summit, whole new slate of speakers, and it is amazing. Honestly, it’s so cool to see. From last year to where we are to, uh, compared to this year of how many more people are coming. Um, and again, I’m not, we joke around about like, Oh, there’s only a few slots

Ryan Isaac: Actually, now

Matt Mulcock: Act now. No, there’s obviously more spots left. Um, we don’t know if we’re going to, uh, totally, uh, sell out, but it is dang close. Like based on the trajectory we’re on. We’re gonna have easily over 200 people there, 250 probably. We would love to have you out, uh, to come meet the team, to hear some incredible speakers. Uh, we’ve said this before, we’ll keep saying it. This is going to be very different from a typical dental CE event. You know, it’s very clinical heavy. We’re not trying to compete with those groups. We’re trying to bring something that’s a little bit different, um, more around the theme here being, plan for the present. It’s more, we’re trying to be just inspirational. Talk about leadership, talk about living a good life, aligning your money with your values. Um, it’s going to be awesome. Our goal is to try to make us feel like somewhat of a vacation.

Ryan Isaac: Well, it does just being in Park City in the summertime alone,

Matt Mulcock: Incredible, but also get some CE while you’re there.

Ryan Isaac: Get some CE while you’re there. Why don’t ya?

Matt Mulcock: Why don’t you?

Ryan Isaac: Matt, tomorrow we gotta pack it up and go to the airport. This will be us signing off from Nicaragua from the Elevation Association Retreat 2025.

Matt Mulcock: We’ll be back next year.

Ryan Isaac: Catch you later, bye bye.

Keywords: Dentistry, Savings, Net worth, Spending habits, Savings rate, Benchmarks, Quantitative Data, Client Insights,

 

Behavioral Finance, Tracking Progress, Year-End Planning