4 Unsexy Truths of Comprehensive Financial Planning – Episode 279

When you need to make tough money decisions, it’s critical that you have your financial house in order. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt discuss the reasons why feelings of vulnerability turn into relief when people finally get on top of their finances. Find out why it’s so difficult for people to get—and keep—their finances organized.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, Dentist Money Show listeners, welcome to another episode. Today, Matt and I talk about a common reaction people have to a very specific activity, even though these people have extremely different financial and career situations and this reaction is extreme relief and a lot of hope and excitement to move on for the future. And we’re going to leave it at that because this is an activity and an exercise that should be the staple foundation of any good comprehensive financial plan and it shouldn’t be a one time event, but it should be something that is happening multiple times per year for many years. My thanks to Matt for joining us. As always the mountain himself and thanks to all of you for being here with us.

Ryan Isaac:
And if you have any questions that you’d like to ask us, you can go to dentistadvisors.com and click on the book free consultation link and schedule a time to chat with one of our very friendly dental specific advisors. Or you can go to the Dentist Advisors discussion group on Facebook, post a question, we’ll post an answer. And always, as always the Dentist Money Show is sponsored by the illustrious Dentist Advisors, which we are a no commission, fiduciary dentist only comprehensive financial planner. If you got any questions reach out to us. Thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us on another episode and enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consult an advisor or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions and help them avoid the bad ones along the way. I am Ryan Isaac and I’m here with the mountain, Hollywood himself, Matt Mulcock. What’s happening, Matt, how you doing buddy?

Matt Mulcock:
Yo Ryan, how are you?

Ryan Isaac:
Doing good. I like introducing you every time. I like watching your face on the Zoom here as I announce your nicknames, because you always roll your eyes and just be like, dude, stop it. But I like it.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, for the people that can’t see us, I’m always give a very uncomfortable smile and kind of, I don’t roll my eyes, but I’m also kind of I don’t know how to take this.

Ryan Isaac:
Just like, oh geez, just stop it.

Matt Mulcock:
I never will be okay with it.

Ryan Isaac:
The Hollywood mountain, it’s getting around. People are knowing it. If you’re new to the podcast, we don’t do this enough but if you’re new to the podcast, if you’re just jumping in episode whatever this is, 280 probably, somewhere around there.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. First of all welcome.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s it. Just welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, that’s where you were going to go?

Ryan Isaac:
That’s it. Just a welcome.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, it felt like you were leading into something bigger.

Ryan Isaac:
Something big. Well that’s big enough.

Matt Mulcock:
That is big.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just welcome to the Dentist Money Show. And we’ve been doing this for about five years and every Wednesday we put out an episode, we try to help you good financial decisions and try to lead you along a journey to avoid mistakes too. I guess to continue the theme real fast though. If you are joining us new, yes welcome. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. We hope this is helpful.

Matt Mulcock:
I knew there was more.

Ryan Isaac:
Just came to mind. Now we also have other resources. If you’re really like, oh, I want to learn about personal finance and investing, insurance and financial planning, go to dentistadvisors.com. We also, for the last 15 months about we’ve been going steady on a monthly webinar of various topics and they’re all in there. They’re free, dentistadvisors.com. You can go to the education library, there under webinars page and sign up for next month’s too, while you’re at it. Whenever you’re listening to this, just get on the train.

Matt Mulcock:
Get on there. Sign up.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, so check it out. Okay, Matt, I’m going to describe.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m kind of nervous.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m excited for this. This is going to hit home. This is what I hope, I think this is going to hit home for a lot of people. And it’s very relatable and it’s a message that we want to tell people over and over and over again, because it’s true and it’s different than the rest of the industry, but it’s one of the most impactful things you can do for your net worth and your future financial situation. I’m going to give you four situations. You guess what these have in common. You’re not going to guess because it’s a little stretch here.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m going to try to guess.

Ryan Isaac:
But here’s four different people. You can try to thread it together. One is a brand new graduate with a negative seven figure net worth. Brand new graduate, might not even have a job yet.

Matt Mulcock:
Been there, been there.

Ryan Isaac:
Been there.

Matt Mulcock:
Been there.

Ryan Isaac:
Negative seven figure net worth. Another person is a spouse of a dentist, a new practice owner who is for the first time feeling a little cashflow start to pile up after years of associateship and a couple of moves and a new practice. A practice purchased actually right before COVID and the shutdown. That’s another person. Person number three is a dentist mid-career practice owner by all signals and metrics on their way, doing good, where they should be, making good progress. And last number four is dentist early retiring dentist, still in their fifties with a very high net worth, multiple practices, huge multiple exit, lots of reward for all their hard work and practice ownership. These are the four people and any themes that are coming to mind? Anything you can think of that they have in common at all? You’re not going to get it it’s a total stretch so you can just throw out anything.

Matt Mulcock:
I was going to go with, I was going to be real, witty here and say, “They’re all dentists.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s fair.

Matt Mulcock:
But you already said the second person.

Ryan Isaac:
Hey that would be a good guess.

Matt Mulcock:
No, but you said the second person was the spouse of the dentist. Now I’m going to go, I’m going to take a different angle. I’m going to say they all have a dog.

Ryan Isaac:
Ooh, hold on.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m just kidding, I have no idea.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know about two of them. I know about the other two, 50% have dogs that I know of.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m guessing they do because everyone has a dog nowadays.

Ryan Isaac:
Everyone’s got a dog. COVID dogs, #coviddogs.

Matt Mulcock:
I have no idea other than they’re all lost in some way in the woods of wealth. Let’s say that.

Ryan Isaac:
Ooh, I kind of like that. Here’s another hint. All of these people had the exact same reaction to a certain situation, despite the fact that they are all in vastly different parts of their career and net worth and life. They all have the exact same reaction to the same exercise or situation, despite the fact that they are all very different in their wealth, their cashflow, net worth.

Matt Mulcock:
I should have watched the webinar, I feel like I’d have the answer to this if I would have watched the webinar.

Ryan Isaac:
I think you would towards the end of the webinar. And I’m going to reference that first really quick. And then I want to explain what this is and this will tie in and everyone’s just going to be like, ah ha I knew it.

Matt Mulcock:
Minds will be blown.

Ryan Isaac:
I knew it. Light bulbs are going to click.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like the end of the Sixth Sense where you’re just like, what?

Ryan Isaac:
Knew that that all along. I saw the signs.

Matt Mulcock:
The whole time?

Ryan Isaac:
I saw the signs.

Matt Mulcock:
He was dead the whole time?

Ryan Isaac:
Wait, that’s it?

Matt Mulcock:
Spoiler alert.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Last night we did one of our monthly webinars. It was kind of a first time for us. We actually had a panel of three dentists at different parts of career. We had a beginning dentists, mid-career and a retiring dentist. And that’s where all this ties in. Here’s what happened. Last night, at the end of the panel, I asked all these dentists the question, I think the question was, what they wished they would have known earlier in their career that they know now. Which is really cool to hear all these perspectives. These people were very, had taken different paths, built very different businesses, all very successful, but two of them, they all said this, but two of them specifically mentioned this and they said that they wished earlier in their lives, they had made the choice or got help to become more financially organized. And so I’ll start with this one, the one panelist who’s a client is the end person, number four that I talked about. Very wealthy individual, was wealthy before.

Matt Mulcock:
Baller status.

Ryan Isaac:
Baller status, was wealthy before we met them and is wealthy now so we didn’t hurt that. Still going strong.

Matt Mulcock:
We didn’t ruin their life. We just kept them going.

Ryan Isaac:
I think we helped. And did the dream. Built up multiple practices and sold it and is loving life and just is great. Great life. But he said, “I wish I would have got more organized earlier on.” And he mentioned his exact experience was when we met and this is probably six years ago. Again, he’s already when we met, he could have been retired when we met. He’d done a good job, but he’d never seen it on paper. He had never sat down and had it organized on paper. He’d never seen the math tell him that story. And so he was just describing this exercise the first time we met, when we work with people, we do what’s called comprehensive financial planning, which is we gather data in dozens of areas of people’s lives and we organize it and track it.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re going to talk about this in a minute, but we do this in a very detailed, meticulous way, even before we make any decisions at all. The first outcome of someone hiring us is about four to six weeks into the relationship. Someone maybe for the first time and often for the first time has a clean balance sheet. Finally has what’s my house worth? And what’s my practice worth? And what are in all of these accounts, including checking and savings and random kids’ accounts? And what’s this building worth? And all these things. And then the scary one, what are all my debts? What’s the balance on all these credit cards? And what are my student loans? And what are the practice loans? The real estate loans?

Matt Mulcock:
What are these Amazon purchases?

Ryan Isaac:
Amazon, I was going to say, what am I spending exactly? Not the number I hope it is, not the number to meet bare minimum expectations every month.

Matt Mulcock:
Not the number I tell myself every month I spend.

Ryan Isaac:
In a whole year, what’s getting spent on average per month? What’s my income? What’s my profitability? How am I insured? All of these things are questions we answer first before we do anything at all, before we invest money, move money, make recommendations. And by the way, that’s what a real fiduciary advisor is going to be versus someone who will either stand up in front of a group or meet you and in five minutes in a sales pitch, tell you what you need to go do.

Matt Mulcock:
Tell you the solution.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. You have to go through this exercise that I’m describing to give a real personalized solution or it’s not a solution, it’s a pitch with another motive. He’s describing this process. Now, this person’s already very successful, could have retired when we met, but he was describing the process of going through this exercise for the first time ever, seeing everything on paper, having the numbers and the data, the math tell him he’s okay. And the immense tremendous relief and what I thought was cool. He said, “Excitement for moving forward.” He finally on paper saw that he’s good, good to go. He hit the thing, everyone dreams of hitting. He’s good. But then his career actually got better in the last five or six years. It got bigger. He enjoyed it more. He had more passion for it and then had an awesome exit at the end. He talks about this on our webinar. This isn’t divulging personal information. He was discussing this on the webinar last night, you can watch it, dentistadvisors.com webinars.

Matt Mulcock:
There’s no secret here.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, go check it out. Anyway, here’s what I’m getting at. Let’s go back through the other people, the student, this is I’m thinking of one in particular, but this has been dozens and dozens of times, a graduating student is the person who goes through the same exercise. They hire us for the first time. Some do that early in career, by the way. We do have early career associates, brand new practice owners hire us just because they want to get started on the right foot immediately. They go through that same exercise but instead of finding out that they’re financially independent and they’re good to go, they see a negative net worth. And oftentimes I’ve seen it be a negative by the time they got student loans, a house and a practice and a building it’s a negative seven figure number.

Matt Mulcock:
Definitely.

Ryan Isaac:
The spouse of the client was actually an experience I had this week, which is why last night of the webinar, this all tied in for me, we were going through this exercise. And for the first time ever, she’s kind of in charge of their family’s finances and everything. Kind of was speaking for her husband, the dentist at the time and was just kind of going through their family finances. And she was saying, “Oh, this is a mixture of huge relief, a little overwhelming and kind of scary and a little vulnerable because you just don’t talk like this with anyone else. You tell someone all of your open financial life’s secrets and details.”

Ryan Isaac:
And then the number three person was a client again, this happened couple years ago. He was walking around Disney World, I think, and shot me a text to tell me that for the first time ever and he’s doing great. He was fine this time. But for the first time ever, once he was finally organized and knew that the numbers were telling him he was okay, he was on a vacation with the family, not worrying about work and money because he knew he was okay. Savings rate was okay, his net worth was okay. He was doing all right.

Matt Mulcock:
So cool.

Ryan Isaac:
when I heard this client talk last night at the webinar, the recently retired doctor, I just thought about these four scenarios and how vastly different and these are just four specific ones. Matt, I’m sure you’ve had almost maybe hundreds at this point of these situations. These are not like the exception. This is the rule. This is how people are. But I just remember thinking, as I’m hearing him tell this story last night, I’m like the brand new associate with a negative million dollar net worth, negative, had the same relief as the retiring orthodontist with the multiple seven figure net worth who can quit work yesterday. And crazy, the same reaction. And what we’re going to talk about today and what was on my mind was, why is this happening? Why do people have this reaction whether they’re financially independent or they’re a million dollars in the hole? Why does it feel good to admit it on paper and see it and then move forward from there? That’s the question I’m going to pose.

Ryan Isaac:
The second part of this, Matt, let’s jump in and talk about what the unsexy definition of real financial planning is and the part and role that organization has in financial planning. But first, let’s go to that question, which is why do these people in vastly different scenarios have that reaction? What do you think?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I just want to point out first that my answer, my real answer was actually not that too far off. I just want it to be known. I said, I started on the record please, that they were wandering through the woods of wealth.

Ryan Isaac:
You said that.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Because I love alliteration. Let’s just go with wandering through the woods of wealth.

Ryan Isaac:
Sometimes they’re scary woods.

Matt Mulcock:
And they needed to be found. And so organizations, the first step in that.

Ryan Isaac:
Dude, you did say that.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what I said.

Matt Mulcock:
You did say that.

Ryan Isaac:
On the record, it’s recorded, I hope.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s on the record. I hope I’m recording. No, I say that jokingly, but I think that honestly, I think from my perspective, because I had the same reaction from pretty much every person I work with when we first go through that process of getting them organized and having our first what we call strategy discussion, which is kind of laying everything out and saying, “Okay, here’s everything in one place, here’s your net worth. Here’s your cashflow. Here’s your accounts. Here’s your debt. Here’s your insurance. Let’s go through all this.” I think it’s something that money’s an interesting thing because it’s something that touches every aspect of our life that nobody wants to talk about. But you’re constantly thinking about it.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m just going to say this because it just came to mind. The editor will cut it if it’s not. But I had one client stop in the middle of one of these discovery sessions in the middle and just look at me and be like and he said, “I feel like I’m standing here totally naked right now and it feels so weird, but kind of good.” I’m like, yeah, yes.

Matt Mulcock:
I think you’re more vulnerable in those conversations than any conversation, anything you talk about.

Ryan Isaac:
Because you can’t pretend. Once you tell someone, “I don’t save any money, I spend it all and I’m a little behind on taxes.” Once you tell someone that, it doesn’t matter what car you drive or how big your house is or what you posted on Instagram, that doesn’t matter anymore. And that might even look worse once it comes out.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly. And I think it’s because in the day and age we live in especially, we attach this idea of status to money, way more than we should, but I think we all do it naturally. I think with that, when they can get into a conversation with an advisor that’s not judgmental, it’s not looking at it from a status perspective. We’re looking at it from a prescription perspective. Literally just, “Hey, what are we going to do? Here’s where you are.” It’s just completely factual. There’s no judgment here. It’s just, here’s where you are and here’s where we need to go. Here’s the things you have to do to get there. I think it’s the first time I’ve heard this a lot. It’s the first time in their life that they’ve had a conversation about money that again, I think isn’t attached to that level of, or that insecurity of status. And what does this say about me? It’s just this person is just helping me and it’s completely agnostic in how we’re approaching it. There’s no again, there’s no judgment there.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I love that you bring that part of it up because again, for people not maybe just joining us are not familiar with our firm or maybe how the industry works in general. We’re what’s considered a no commission fiduciary, which means that we don’t have things to sell people that pay us more money than other things. And so I think that it’s important to bring that up because I think it speaks a lot to just that relationship, when someone’s willing to go through that discomfort and it is so discomfort. Even this is your full-time job too. We talk about money every single day. But last time I applied for a mortgage and I had to just show everyone everything.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, it’s uncomfortable.

Ryan Isaac:
I was still just a little bit like, oh this is uncomfortable. I don’t like this feeling. And I think what you’re saying, I’m glad you brought that up because I think it speaks to how awesome our clients are and the people that have chosen to trust us with these highly emotional details of their lives. Now and here’s what I wonder too is you’re saying that. I wonder if, because we see this hundreds of times over a career. I wonder if it ends up being thousands after you talk to so many people over a career. But it makes me wonder if it’s a lot like a dentist seeing hundreds of mouths every single week and someone comes in and hasn’t been to a dentist for a while and is a little ashamed. I’m sure this happens a little ashamed of their oral health. Kind of let things go. They got some stuff to work on. A dentist doesn’t sit and judge that. You don’t feel that. The dentist I’ve gone to and I’m not the best, I don’t return every six months.

Matt Mulcock:
Not the best patient.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t return every six months all the time.

Matt Mulcock:
Speaking of getting vulnerable, Ryan. Let’s talk about this.

Ryan Isaac:
I go and I got a few cavities or something worse, I don’t feel judged. I feel like I’m with a caring, empathetic clinician who knows how to solve my problems and who is listening and then can offer me solutions. And I feel like that’s the reverse. When you have the right relationship with someone as an advisor, that’s how it feels. There’s not shame. There’s not guilt. You’re not fearful. You don’t leave that conversation worried, panicked, fearful. That’s why I’m saying all these people leave these conversations, hopeful and excited. Even if their net worth is a negative million dollars because of that dynamic that you’re describing, which I think is so cool that you bring that up, man. And that’s the reaction every time.

Matt Mulcock:
Every time. I think it’s the word I’d use is relief that I hear more times than not. Because like you said, it’s across the board. It’s either it’s the client that knows they’re in a bad, I wouldn’t even say bad. They know like the first client you mentioned that has a negative net worth. Again, it’s not good or bad. It’s just, it’s kind of, that’s what your situation is. There’s a reason why you’re in that situation. And guess what? We’ve seen that dozens and dozens and dozens of times, people in that same situation. But that person or the other person on the other end of the spectrum, that’s worth millions and millions, it’s just a level of relief knowing, okay, here’s where I am and then I’m making progress towards some future state. And that in and of itself, I think is relieving for anybody.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s so cool. I’m glad you use that word. This first part, then I think that’s the takeaway we want people to have is just understand when you go through a process of real comprehensive financial planning with somebody, that’s probably the most common reaction and it doesn’t matter if you’re negative a million dollars net worth or if you’re positive $20 million, it’s relief and it’s excitement to move forward because it’s finally just like, ah, finally, now I don’t have to carry this pretense anymore. Finally someone knows and someone can just help me go to where I want to go. I’m glad you brought that up, man. I think that’s really good clarity. Let’s take a quick break and we come back, let’s talk about, let’s hit I’ve got four on my mind, the four unsexy truths of real comprehensive financial planning when we come back.

Matt Mulcock:
On the Dentist Money Show, we teach dentists how to make smart financial decisions.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re correct.

Matt Mulcock:
Is that all it takes, Ryan, to make smart financial decisions, listening to our show?

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, it’s a good first step, but to put your financial future on the fast track, the next smart decision is to go to dentistadvisors.com. What you do there is you click on the book free consultation button, right in the middle of the home screen. And then you schedule a time to talk with one of our very friendly, dental specific financial advisors today.

Ryan Isaac:
The way that we would describe what real financial planning is, and again, this is not an event. A plan is not an event. It’s not a book. It’s not a binder. It’s not a printout. It can be, but it’s going to be different in three to six months in some way, sometimes minor ways, sometimes really major ways. It’s an ongoing, can I use the word organic? Is that frou frou to say organic?

Matt Mulcock:
Let’s do it.

Ryan Isaac:
Step one of a real financial plan, this is what we started with today. It’s getting organized. And if you go to our website, if you’re wondering, well, what does that mean? I’m pretty organized. I log in and I see my bank account so I kind of know. If you want to know, go to dentistadvisors.com and go click on the elements section. What I want you to pay attention to, you’ll see all these boxes, the names and all the shapes, that’s not as important as what I want to say is you’ll see categories. Those are 12 main categories of places you should be organized that require work every single year, at least once a year for some of those categories. And for some of the categories, it’s multiple times a year, you have to work at getting those things updated. It’s things like your income or profitability, insurance, investments.

Matt Mulcock:
I was going to say, hello cashflow.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, liquidity, debt, taxes, net worth, spending. It’s a lot of things in all of those 12 main categories have sometimes a dozen or more sub categories. It’s legal, it’s estate planning. There’s a lot of stuff on there. If you’re wondering, what do you mean by getting organized? Go to the website and just push pause or follow along and you’ll see those are the categories and what that entails, we can just tell you, because we built a whole business around doing this and this is what our careers are. If a dentist is going to be truly organized, you can pull up something at any given point and have a number that tells you where you’re at in all those categories, it’s hours and hours of work per year. We’ve tried to put numbers on it. How many hours would it take to keep someone organized in all those categories per year? It’s probably at a minimum, I don’t even know if I want to put a number. It’s hard. It feels like is it 10 hours a year?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a lot of hours.

Ryan Isaac:
To more than that, double that in some cases, if you’re more complex and have more things going on. The point is, getting organized and staying organized is, you don’t clean your garage once and then be this thing’s going to be clean forever.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, don’t even bring that up right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Mine’s such a mess right now.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh my gosh. That is a sense, you just hit me right in gut.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what I’m talking about.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a gut clench.

Ryan Isaac:
Or the closet, man. Or under the stairs or the junk drawer in the kitchen. You don’t just clean those things once and then they’re done forever. And getting financially organized is the exact same thing as the dang garage. Good for you, you put up some shelves and hung things on hooks and swept it out. But give it three months.

Matt Mulcock:
And then the next week there’s boxes up to the ceiling again somehow.

Ryan Isaac:
Go through a major holiday, unpack and unpack Christmas.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh my gosh.

Ryan Isaac:
And then you’re just back to square one or probably worse. Getting organized is step one of a real comprehensive, actual financial plan. You can see kind of what we’re talking about on our website, but look, the reason why we lead with those stories and those different kinds of people is because it’s highly, highly underestimated at how impactful and helpful being financially organized is. And it’s not a one time event. You got to keep it up. Either you’re going to spend hours and hours of that every single year by yourself or someone else is on your behalf and you’re going to pay them to do it.

Matt Mulcock:
Whether we’re doing it for you or another advisor is doing it or maybe not doing it or you’re doing it on your own, that has to be the foundation.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s everything.

Matt Mulcock:
Of everything that you do.

Ryan Isaac:
Well think about the dentist who’s leasing, lease is coming due` and they’re thinking about buying the building. When someone’s not organized, here’s how that decision gets made. They have a real estate broker or maybe they’re not even that, they’re already in the building, they’re just talking to the owner and then they have a lender. Or maybe not even that because the owner is going to seller finance. But what does a purchase like that actually affect in your life? Well, geez. It affects how much you can produce in your practice. It affects your overhead, which affects your income, which affects all of your cashflow, which is how much can you even save, which is everything. What can you spend? What should you spend? What are your new debts? What are the rates? Terms? What are your taxes now? Because those will be impacted. Changes your liquidity. It might change your type of retirement plan you have in the office. It’ll change your net worth. It’ll change the insurance you have to carry. It’ll change your investment allocation mix when you purchase real estate.

Ryan Isaac:
It affects everything. But if you’re not organized, you’ll just look at it in a silo and you’ll be like, I got the building so I got a broker and a lender and we’ll just make the decision. And if it’s a good rate, we’ll take it. Whatever. And this isn’t a knock on anyone, but this is what happens in financial decision making when there’s no organization. And what’s even worse than that is if there’s a lack of organization, not only is everything decided in a silo by itself, but it’s emotion. It gets even more emotional when there’s no numbers present.

Matt Mulcock:
Well yeah. And it gets more stressful. It’s like, you’re, you’re just shooting in the dark.

Ryan Isaac:
Number two, once you have this organization, you have this data. Number two foundation would be to analyze things, to track the progress, similar to what a dentist does for any patient, any good dentist is doing for a patient. You, you know, the trends in a set of basic areas of someone’s oral health, you know, and that’s what a good that’s what we do as financial advisors for dentists, comprehensive financial advisors is once we have this data organized, well, we, we have to reorganize it multiple times a year. And by being able to do that, we have the chance to watch trends. How does your spending trend as your income trends? How does your savings rate change as your income changes? How is your net worth trending? If you want to be retired at 57 and you’re 37 right now.

Matt Mulcock:
Are you even moving in the right direction?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, what’s your net worth right now? How much does it grow every quarter? Do you know that? Do you know why it grows every quarter or doesn’t? Once you have the data, watching trends and keeping track of those things, it’s a huge part of making decisions. And it’s a huge part of being proactive about fixing things before they become a big problem. Matt, if you watch a client have a savings rate that’s 10% smaller than it should be compared to the average of their other peers in the similar income groups, if you’re tracking them and you’re going to be on top of that before it’s a problem. You’ll have discussions on that probably four times a year before it ever becomes a big problem.

Matt Mulcock:
Or even more specific. If we take it, when it comes to savings rate and we’re not even, let’s say we don’t even bring up the averages. Let’s just say that client tells me, because there’s a whole other thing maybe we’re going to get to it. But the non kind of quantifiable things, the more qualitative type things, having someone in your corner that understands your goals. It’s having the affordable conversation with you.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s where it’s headed. It’s where we’re headed. It’s where the list is going.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay sorry, I’m jumping ahead.

Ryan Isaac:
No, do it.

Matt Mulcock:
But if I’m that person’s advisor and I know that they’ve told me, let’s say they’re 40 years old and they want to be done clinically in five years. Well, I know within a certain percentage where their savings rate needs to be and it’s probably going to be more aggressive than someone that’s telling me they want to retire at 65. Knowing those things and being able to come back to those goals and say, “Hey Doc, you told me you want to try to be done here in the next five years, but you’re only saving 11% of your income and you’ve only made X progress on your net worth. We’re not on track. We either need to readjust your goals and have a conversation around that or we need to start fixing something on the planning side or on the logistics side.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, strategy side. That’s actually basically three and four. Number three, once you have the data organized and it’s number two being analyzed and you’re watching trends. Number three is making decisions with those numbers. When you have an expert who only does one thing like a dentist, tracks a patient’s data and how’s it organized? Because you got pictures and x-rays and you got previous visit history and treatment history. When you have that expert to go to and then go, “Okay, you have the data Doc, what do I do?” That’s what a decision partner is like, not making financial decisions by yourself, not making them emotionally, not making them in a silo, in a vacuum of information and data. That’s what you’re describing is having an advisor. And sometimes, you know what’s cool is sometimes you, as an advisor, Matt, you’re suggesting these things because you see the data. Other times they’re bringing the decisions to you because they’re saying, “Hey, I got presented with an opportunity to do something. What do you think?” Sometimes you’re giving.

Matt Mulcock:
Happens all the time.

Ryan Isaac:
All the time. Sometimes the outcomes of those conversations, are you telling them something they didn’t know before or you’re giving them questions they didn’t even know to ask before. Sometimes the decision they bring to you is great and they’ve thought through it and their decision making is solid. And you are just a separate pair of independent eyes and ears that are saying, “Yeah, let me be your sounding board. And this sounds good. Let’s move forward with this.” And the stress that’s relieved when you have a person to do that with in especially financial decisions is huge. Number four I was going to add on top of this and that you’ve segued into this is just the accountability of it. Once you make decisions, then how do you stick to them? Because here, people if you’re not new to the show, you’ve heard us joke around about 20 for 20, which is not an ESPN series, that’s 30 for 30, isn’t it?

Matt Mulcock:
30 for 30, so good.

Ryan Isaac:
20 for 20, we joke around a lot. It’s kind of joking, not really joking though. Our goal is if we can get a dentist to save 20% of his or her income for 20 years, they’re going to be in good shape. They’re going to be set and okay. And so if it’s so simple, why doesn’t everyone do it? It’s because we as humans just don’t tend to stick to things especially if we get bored or stressed or emotional or distracted.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, it comes back to what we were just saying. The constant process of this is it’s not a one time event. A lot of people out there right now have probably been super organized financially or in some aspect of the life at one point or another but the question is, are you doing it continuously?

Ryan Isaac:
And still organize. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Are you still organized?

Ryan Isaac:
Last time you got a mortgage, you had to get organized in a few parts, because you he had to write down a balance sheet.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
And some cashflow, but then five years later you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on. Yeah. That’s how we describe it. The four parts of a real comprehensive financial plan. And it’s always you have to update this stuff. It’s not a one time event. It’s organization, it’s tracking progress, it’s decision making and it’s accountability for the longterm because if you don’t stick to it, then it doesn’t really matter what your plans were in the first place. Man, it can’t be expressed enough how important a foundation of organization is to everything on top of that. It’s everything. And it has to be constant. You can’t get organized once every five years and then expect to make good financial decisions. And you can’t expect to miss, not make mistakes because you will unfortunately when there’s not organization present.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. You can’t just think that every spring rolls around, you’re going to be able to cut that 10 or 15 pounds.

Ryan Isaac:
God dang it.

Matt Mulcock:
And then put back up, put it back on in the winter. At some point age is going to catch up to you and you’re not going to be able to keep doing it if you’re not being constant and diligent.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re looking me dead in the eyes as you’re saying this. You talking to me? This feels very personal all of a sudden.

Matt Mulcock:
Just staring at you.

Ryan Isaac:
Geez, man.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Right. The guy with the body of a Greek god, come on.

Ryan Isaac:
Greek, oh, here we go. It’s easier to keep your garage clean if you just clean it. If it’s easier to keep your teeth healthy if you just go to the dang dentist every six months and floss and brush. But why don’t humans do that? Why don’t humans do the simple task of flossing their teeth, brushing and showing up every six months?

Matt Mulcock:
I am a diligent flosser. I can tell you that.

Ryan Isaac:
We talk about this all the time. Me too. But I haven’t been for a while. I got to go. Anyway, thanks everyone for joining us again. If you’re new, welcome. If this is your first episode.

Matt Mulcock:
Welcome and goodbye.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s great. Yeah, welcome and goodbye. If you have any more questions about this, which I kind of hope some of you do, I hope for somebody out there you’re hearing this you’re like, man, that’s my philosophy. These guys are talking to my language. I relate to this. Then what you do is you just call us. You just go online and then we call you actually, is kind of how it works.

Matt Mulcock:
We’ll set up a call with you.

Ryan Isaac:
You can call us.

Matt Mulcock:
Technology.

Ryan Isaac:
But the easier way is to go to dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation button and just pick something on our schedule that works for you. Let’s have a chat because maybe this is something, our business, the thing we’ve built can be introduced into your life and improve your decision making, your outcomes, relieve stress and help you have the same reaction as those people did too, of relief and excitement to just finally move forward and move on. Matt, thanks very much, buddy. Appreciate it.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, thanks Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
And thanks everyone for joining us. We’ll catch you next time. Take care.

 

 

Getting Organized