7 Mistakes Dentists Make that Ruin Retirement – Episode 298

Dentists consistently rank among the most successful working professionals in the U.S. But a good income does not guarantee a successful retirement. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt list seven mistakes that prevent you from having enough at retirement. Your practice is thriving and the retirement road looks smooth—unless a big blunder wrecks your plans.

Show Notes:

7 Big Mistakes Dentists Make E-Guide

 

 

---

 

Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello, everybody and welcome back to another glorious episode of The Dentist Money Show brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission, fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I are talking about a very important list that I think you should download and follow along with us as we go through this episode.

Ryan Isaac:
The download it’s called the Seven Big Mistakes Dentists Make That Wreck Retirement, and it can be found at dentistadvisors.com under the education library under e-guides. It’s a free download. Download it now. Press pause. Follow along with us in the e-guide as we go through this list of mistakes and tell an exciting story about a fake monster on Florida beaches. Thanks for joining us and being with us. If you have any questions, go to dentistadvisors.com.

Ryan Isaac:
Click the book free consultation link and schedule an appointment with one of our very friendly dental specific advisors today, or go to the dentist advisors discussion group on Facebook. Post a question. We’ll post an answer. Thank you for being here. 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 avoid the bad ones along the way. I am Ryan Isaac with my scratchy, deep, slightly sick voice, but recovering, and I’m here with the Hollywood mountain, Matt Mulcock. What’s up. Matt?

Matt Mulcock:
Yo, Ryan. You sound like you… Again, it’s sultry. It’s a sexy voice. You should keep this. Isn’t this a Seinfeld episode, I think?

Ryan Isaac:
I sweat it is.

Matt Mulcock:
Is it Seinfeld?

Ryan Isaac:
I swear it is.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, Elaine gets the sick voice and then starts wanting to be sick again because her voice sounds all sexy.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m not sure. Mine is more like A.K.A, where does all this snot come from? That’s more like my sickness right now.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like where is it being stored right now?

Ryan Isaac:
Honestly.

Matt Mulcock:
In my brain.

Ryan Isaac:
A lot of doctors who listen to this clearly. Can someone please tell me where on earth all the snot comes from? I blow my nose a hundred thousand times a day. That’s a lie, but it’s close.

Matt Mulcock:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
Where does it?

Matt Mulcock:
And that’s the part that last the longest is that. It’ll be like two weeks you’ll be feeling better and it’ll still be coming.

Ryan Isaac:
What is happening? Welcome to the show, everybody. If you’re new here, we won’t talk about my sinuses the whole time.

Matt Mulcock:
Just to kick it off.

Ryan Isaac:
We just had to kick it off with something. Welcome if you’re just joining us for the first time. If you are a long-time listener, we are glad you are back with us and you’re still in the saddle, as they say, on the ranch.

Matt Mulcock:
Still on the wagon.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re still on the wagon. Today on the show, we’re going to talk about something that you can actually and download and follow along with. And actually maybe we should say this right off the bat. This is what you should do. This is the time to push pause.

Matt Mulcock:
Pause it.

Ryan Isaac:
If you go to dentist… Well, I guess you should listen to this and then push pause, because you got to know where to go.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’ve already paused, sorry.

Ryan Isaac:
Sorry, come back.

Matt Mulcock:
Come back. Come back.

Ryan Isaac:
Give it a second. Go to dentistadvisors.com and there’s a little link on there. It’s the education library. But because we’re really cool I think, we just call it the EDU Library. E-D-U.

Matt Mulcock:
EDU.

Ryan Isaac:
EDU Library. Click on that thing. It’s a huge menu of all kinds of things. You can see videos, podcasts, webinars, sketches. We have a section for sketches, which is really cool.

Matt Mulcock:
Just for sketches. I think those are probably some Reese Harper specials.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s from Reese Harper. I feel like we need to add more sketches. That just is kind of invigorating to think about, that we get to add sketches.

Matt Mulcock:
I felt like we should have a section for painting. Like these are our paintings.

Ryan Isaac:
It should go in that section. There’s a section that is called e-guides. These are specially crafted PDF downloads that are on pretty hot button topics.

Matt Mulcock:
They’re handcrafted. Handcrafted.

Ryan Isaac:
They are handcrafted, custom hot button items. The one we’re covering today is called the Seven Big Mistakes Dentists Make That Wreck Retirement. I think is the first one we ever made. This is an oldie, but a goodie, as they say in the radio business. Follow along. Click on that. Put in your name near your email and download it. Follow along with us because we’re going to talk about it. But first, I want to tell a story basically…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s why I love the podcast is because I get to just try to relate a financial topic to an insane story that I read in the news that I just want to tell to somebody. That’s what this.

Matt Mulcock:
You want to tell it to all the people. Whether it relates or not, we don’t care. We just want to tell the story.

Ryan Isaac:
You draw like the bridge to it later. Of course, it starts with Florida Man. Florida Man…

Matt Mulcock:
Always. It’s always the Florida Man.

Ryan Isaac:
All you guys in Florida, what’s going on? You do some wild cookie stuff every once in a while. That’s really awesome. No, the story is so cool. In 1948, a resident in Clearwater, Florida, which I’ve never been to Clearwater. Matt, have you visited the town of Clearwater?

Matt Mulcock:
I have never been Clearwater. I’ve ever been to Florida.

Ryan Isaac:
Are you serious?

Matt Mulcock:
Never been. It’s on the list. It’s on the list.

Ryan Isaac:
Florida is incredible. People keep telling me to visit the gulf side of Florida. I hear it’s pretty incredible. So anyway, 1948, someone’s walking along the beach in Clearwater and they stumble upon a set of footprints in the sand that are huge. They’re over a foot long and almost a foot wide. They have like three prong toes tipped with huge long claws. Basically you would think of… I would have thought of Big Bird, if Big Bird is alive.

Matt Mulcock:
Totally. Big Bird is around, hanging out.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s where Big Bird retired after he got done doing kids TV. He went to Florida.

Matt Mulcock:
He was teaching the kids about life lessons, and then he went to Florida to teach the geriatrics the same stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
He just did the same thing. This set of tracks comes out of the water, Gulf of Mexico side. Walks on the beach.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, it comes out of the water?

Ryan Isaac:
Out of the water. That’s what’s crazy. Out of the water, walks on the beach, and then disappears back into the water. The strides were like four to six feet between. Like huge strides.

Matt Mulcock:
A sea monster.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. These tracks start showing up for years randomly across beaches all over Florida. For years, these tracks are seen all over the place and people start calling it Old Three Toes. That’s this monster.

Matt Mulcock:
Old Three Toes

Ryan Isaac:
Old Three Toes

Matt Mulcock:
Good guy.

Ryan Isaac:
Some people even start talking about how they’ve seen Old Three Toes.

Matt Mulcock:
Of course.

Ryan Isaac:
That it’s like this huge bird thing with large yellow head shaped like a pig’s head. That’s what people said. Yeah, it was insane. Along comes this expert. He’s a zoologist. Is that the way you say it, zoologist?

Matt Mulcock:
Zoologist.

Ryan Isaac:
Zoologist.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I don’t know.

Ryan Isaac:
It looks like zoologist, but I think it’s zoologist.

Matt Mulcock:
Zoologist. Let’s go with that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I think it’s zoologist. You know what we can say about zoology is we can say zoology is an expert or a student of the behavior, physiology, classification, and distribution of animals.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow! Sounds like you read that.

Ryan Isaac:
I did. This guy named Ivan Sanderson, he comes along and he’s like the guy…

Matt Mulcock:
His name’s Ivan Sanderson?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay. Love it.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s the guy. He comes along, digs up one of these prints, fossilizes it, takes it home so he can start studying it. He’s like the guy who’s world renowned in his field for studying kind of like off the beaten path type of monsters.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, Old Three Toes.

Ryan Isaac:
Anyway, he was kind of like a legend in his own field. He studies this whole thing, and he comes to the conclusion that it was not a hoax. That it was totally real. And that he even said that he saw the creature himself. He said it was like 12 feet long.

Matt Mulcock:
It was Ivan the whole time.

Ryan Isaac:
Grayish yellow. Didn’t you say yellow? Is that what you said?

Matt Mulcock:
I said yellow because of Big Bird.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, Big Bird. Exactly. Grayish yellow, having large arms and flippers at the end of the arms, and then these feet. And then it made huge waves when it was swimming. It had a big powerful kick. His final conclusion…

Matt Mulcock:
Wait, wait. Hang on. He got this from a footprint? He got like the color, the powerful…

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. Well, he said he saw it.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, he said after. Okay, he saw it himself.

Ryan Isaac:
You didn’t see this part coming. His final conclusion was the creature had to be an enormous penguin. That’s it, an enormous penguin. Anyway, fast forward after this…

Matt Mulcock:
Old Three Toes was a penguin.

Ryan Isaac:
Giant penguin. The tracks was spotted in the ’50s, and then it kind of just died out. Years later, 30 years later to be precise, June 11th, 1988, I was a wee eight year old lad.

Matt Mulcock:
I was a wee two year old.

Ryan Isaac:
The St. Petersburg Times wrote an article saying that the whole thing was a hoax. And this guy from Clearwater, his name was Tony Signorini, who’s the hero of our story here, he confessed that he and a friend when they were young made a giant pair of like steel cast iron feet and then bolted them to a pair of shoes. They would take a rowboat out in the early dawn morning close to shore, get out, and then walk the beach. And then go back and get in the rowboat and take off.

Ryan Isaac:
They did this for years at night and early dawn for no other reason than just making a fake set of footprints that someone would follow and believe in and freak out about and tell stories about. Old Signorini…

Matt Mulcock:
Was Mr. Three Toes or Old Three Toes.

Ryan Isaac:
He was Mr. Three Toes, who indeed was not 12 feet long. He was not grayish yellow. He was not a penguin.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow!

Ryan Isaac:
Exactly.

Matt Mulcock:
To be fair, in 1948, what else do you do for fun?

Ryan Isaac:
I wasn’t alive then, but I assume that there probably wouldn’t have been much to do, but make fake monster feet. It feels natural.

Matt Mulcock:
Just go out there and make Old Three Toes and fabricate a monster. I like it.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, ’48, you’re probably getting tired of the war. The world has been at war. You’re kind of tired of it. You’re like, what do we do for some fun? Anyway, 30 years this myth lasted of the three toed gigantic penguin who even had an expert zoologist confirm.

Matt Mulcock:
Named Ivan.

Ryan Isaac:
Ivan Sanderson confirmed that it was indeed a giant penguin.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow!

Ryan Isaac:
I’m like, what was his incentive to lie about that?

Matt Mulcock:
I know, right? And he said he saw it?

Ryan Isaac:
He said he saw it. He was writing a book. He wanted to be like the Indiana Jones of crazy animal finds.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, there it is. There’s the incentive.

Ryan Isaac:
How on earth does this relate to the Seven Big Mistakes Dentists Make That Wreck Retirement?

Matt Mulcock:
I’m waiting for that. I’m excited for this part.

Ryan Isaac:
The first thing I thought of… Because I don’t know why. I find stories like this all the time. The first thing I thought of when I read this was, how often in financial decision-making do we follow the wrong tracks?

Matt Mulcock:
Beautifully done. Beautifully done.

Ryan Isaac:
Feel that?

Matt Mulcock:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
How often do we follow a set of financial footprints that we kind of just be like, “That seems real.”

Matt Mulcock:
We’ll go with Old Ivan over here. He seems like he knows what he’s talking about.

Ryan Isaac:
How often do we follow the wrong set of financial footprints and even have confirmation from people who sound like they know what they’re talking about, who confirmed to us that, yes, indeed, this is real and you should follow this. You should believe in this. So hence, the seven big mistakes that wreck a dentist retirement. If you missed downloading your copy, go to dentistadvisors.com. Go to the education library, e-guides. Download. It’s free. It’s there. Follow along. Matt and I are going to go through this…

Ryan Isaac:
What do we call it? An e-guide. I’m going to say PDF, but this sounds cool. It is a PDF.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a PDF, but it’s an e-guide PDF.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s an easy guide so it’s cooler. We’re going to go through the topics in here. These topics are their own show in standalone episodes easily, and they have been multiple times, but we want to kind of go through… I mean, we wrote this… Man, this could have been like seven, eight years ago when I think Reese wrote this actually.

Matt Mulcock:
These are core principles that have not changed. We’ve not wavered.

Ryan Isaac:
We have not wavered. They are still some of the biggest mistakes we see dentists make, and we get that question all the time, honestly. What are the biggest mistakes dentists make? Matt, without further ado, let’s just kind of go down the list. What I thought we could do, there’s obviously not time to go through each one in great detail and with a ton of explanation behind each one. If you have a tidbit, an antidote… No, anecdote. An antidote.

Matt Mulcock:
Or an antidote.

Ryan Isaac:
I need an antidote for my snotty nose.

Matt Mulcock:
You do need an antidote.

Ryan Isaac:
An anecdote, a tidbit, a tip or a trick for people to hear about each one. Please share. I’m going to start with number one. Mistake number one, you do not track what you spend. This may be goes without saying as one of the biggest common financial mistakes. Everybody relates to this. I just got off the phone today talking to a long-time client and this was a topic of conversation.

Ryan Isaac:
This person is a high producing, multi-location partner with huge collections and a high savings rate and a big net worth and lots of liquidity, and more like mid-career, and he’s still today on the phone talking about, “Man, I think we spend too much money.” The good thing about him…

Matt Mulcock:
You’re like, “Yes, you do.”

Ryan Isaac:
See, but he’s hired us and we track his spending. When he says, “I think we spend too much,” I can tell him the number. And then he’s like, “Yep, that’s too much. That hurts.” Number one, people don’t track what they spend. Where does this lead us into problems? Matt, what’s the problem with not tracking spending?

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, to me, this is like number one… This is probably why it’s the number one mistake. It is the number one piece of data you need to know where you are to being ready for financial independence. If you don’t know what you spend, everything else is a pure guess.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, because it’s like is $5 million a big enough net worth? I don’t know. What do you spend? Is 10 enough? I’m glad you said it that way. Because this week I am in the middle of two or maybe three kind of analysis projects on DSO offers. Is this chunk of money, big enough. Can I retire sooner? It’s funny you say that because the real answer is it comes down to how much these people spend. It could be. It totally could be, or it might not be enough and not worth it for you to get rid of your practice that early.

Ryan Isaac:
Track what you spend. If you’re not tracking what you spend, that’s what a good financial advisor will help you do and help you keep in control. I think you’d be surprised at the ways to keep spending under control. It’s not all about yelling at your spouse and partner and budgeting every month. Matt, hit us with number two on the list of seven big mistakes.

Matt Mulcock:
Number two, let me get to that, I’m just scrolling down this beautiful e-guide.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s beautiful. It is very well… Now, the one thing we have changed over the years is the design of this thing, and it is so well-designed.

Matt Mulcock:
It really is.

Ryan Isaac:
I really love it. For the biggie guide fans out there, people who are just tried and true e-guide fans, and you know who you are.

Matt Mulcock:
You know who you are. It’s like Dungeons and Dragons, and then e-guides. The e-guide crowd. We know who you are.

Ryan Isaac:
E-guide crowd. If you look in the background of the dark pages, where it’s like a dark, dark gray, there’s all these little…

Matt Mulcock:
Sketches. There’s sketches.

Ryan Isaac:
Guess who made those sketches?

Matt Mulcock:
You know who’s our guy, Big Hoss.

Ryan Isaac:
That guy, Reese Harper.

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out.

Ryan Isaac:
Shout out to Reese for his artistic ability.

Matt Mulcock:
Is Reese still listening to the show, you think? Is he going to get our shout outs?

Ryan Isaac:
I’m going to text him and make sure he does.

Matt Mulcock:
You got to listen to this one.

Ryan Isaac:
Reese, we love you. All right, what’s number two?

Matt Mulcock:
Mistake number two is you pay off debts without a strategy.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
I love this one and the way it’s worded. First of all, it goes without saying that our audience out there is dealing with a higher level of debt than the average Joe out there, right? But I love the way this is phrased of paying off debt without a strategy, because we’re not saying that paying off debt should not be part of your overall plan, right? It’s just that we’re not about like the Dave Ramsey approach of just like, no matter what you do, you’d have to get out of debt before anything else. It’s like very cookie cutter.

Matt Mulcock:
There is no wavering from this strategy. It’s like, you’ve got to pay debt off first before you can live your life. No. You have to have a strategy around this. There’s more to this. There’s the spreadsheet part of this. There’s the emotional part of this. There’s how does this fit into the overall plan. I mean, anecdotally or…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, not antidotally.

Matt Mulcock:
Not antidotally. Anecdotally. I mean, we have these conversations. I mean, how many times did you say it, Ryan? Weekly?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, weekly. For sure.

Matt Mulcock:
I just had this conversation literally yesterday with a client and it usually starts with coming from an emotional place, right? This conversation I had with this client was, “Man, Matt. We just really want to get out of debt in the next five years.” Of course, curious. Not judgemental. I’m just always like, “Okay. Tell me about that. Why is that so important to you?” I don’t know is the answer usually. I don’t know. It just sounds good. It just feels good. When we talk about having a strategy, it’s okay, how does this actually fit into your plan?

Matt Mulcock:
What are the trade-offs here? What’s the opportunity cost to paying off debt to aggressively have a strategy around, I mean, everything, but specifically how you’re going to approach your debt and the types of debt that you have.

Ryan Isaac:
People need investment experiences early as possible in life, and it’s for two reasons. Number one, it’s for the growing compounding effect of money at an early stage in your life as soon as you possibly can. As soon as you can get that balanced as big as possible, as early as possible, it’s just so much in your favor because of time and growth. We’re talking about your investment accounts. The other part of that is the ability to grow some investment calluses.

Ryan Isaac:
Really it’s a learned skill. Investing is a learned skill. I don’t mean that in terms of like having five screens on your desk and day trading.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, no. I mean, you should see my desk right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Having two phones. A phone up to each ear and you’re just yelling.

Matt Mulcock:
I have a Bluetooth in each ear, and I’ve actually got seven screens.

Ryan Isaac:
Seven screens. You got the seven up.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
More advanced. Investment experience, meaning what does it feel like to put money in an investment account and watch it go up, and just watch it go up and up and make lots of money and then not get like crazy greedy about it. Or what does it feel like to put money in an investment account, and the very next day, your $10,000 turned into eight overnight? You know?

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Those are experiences that are kind of robbed and taken from you if you focus too much exclusively on debt reduction. This is a very nuanced subject. We love balance, so we love investing and debt reduction, even at a rapid rate when things make sense. Anyway, mistake number three. Whoa! We got to get going. Mistake number three, you don’t automate your investment program. I’ll just say about this. I mean, this is my own personal experience in my own life and watching clients do this for a long time.

Ryan Isaac:
When we as humans do not automate things like savings and you instead choose to say, “I’m going to let that $5,000 come home with me and just get snugly next to me here on the couch…”

Matt Mulcock:
I’m going to put it on my pillow. See what happens.

Ryan Isaac:
Pull up a chair. Get the Ottoman up. Let it kick up its feet a little bit. Pour a little glass of something comfortable in the evening and we’re just going to hang out together.

Matt Mulcock:
A little cabernet.

Ryan Isaac:
A little something. And then I’m going to see, maybe I’ll kick it out of the house later. Maybe. It doesn’t happen. If money comes home, that’s like extra slush money…

Matt Mulcock:
Way too comfy with that money.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s going to get spent on something. I know this firsthand personally, because I’ve done it so many times. I still do this to this day. We all do this. Automating savings for our clients. Someone might be saying like, “Well, I don’t have enough steady cashflow yet. I’m not really to that point.” You can automate something.

Matt Mulcock:
Liar!

Ryan Isaac:
Whoa!

Matt Mulcock:
Sorry.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re going at it. You can automate something. We do this all the time for clients who are in like a growing phase of their career or where cashflow is kind of like up and down. We’ll automate something. Something that’s bare minimum.

Matt Mulcock:
A hundred bucks.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it could be a hundred. It could be a thousand. It could be 10,000, depending what your situation is. But if you have an advisor, someone who’s checking in with you frequently, maybe bugging you a little bit about saving money, which is kind of hard job, then what’ll happen is we’ll set up some kind of automated savings and then you’ll have chances to check in with your person multiple times a year, where they’re going to say, “Hey, I’m looking at the business account.

Ryan Isaac:
It looks like we’re up like 50 grand more than we need right now. What do you say we save a little bit of that?”

Matt Mulcock:
You’re getting kind of snugly with that money.

Ryan Isaac:
What do you say we save a little? Let’s save a little money. That’s what we do, and then you’re more likely to do this stuff. Step one, automate some savings, an easy one. Now, see, this is why I love retirement plans at the office. I love 401(k)s, because you save the money and then even if you regret it and you’re like, “Ah, I wish I had that 1,500 bucks back from last payroll,” it’s really hard to get back.

Matt Mulcock:
It doesn’t matter. It’s gone.

Ryan Isaac:
You can have it, but it’s like penalized, taxed, and it kind of is a pain to go get. Automate your savings. I love retirement plans for that reason. But anyway, let’s give them something else to say about automating savings, Matt. Hit number four for us.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Let’s do four. This will be a quick one. Mistake number four is you buy whole life insurance.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yes!

Matt Mulcock:
We’ve done podcasts on this. If you ever get Ryan and I in a room together where we’re talking and you bring up insurance, we’ll get spicy.

Ryan Isaac:
I was going to say episode 293. We just did one like four weeks ago, episode 293. I bought permanent life insurance. Now what? We just did that. Check it out if you want to hear more.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. This one is, again, pretty straight forward. The mistake is you buy whole life insurance. I’m going to say for… I don’t know if I want to put a stat on this, but I’m going to say nine out of 10 people.

Ryan Isaac:
I like that. Studies show.

Matt Mulcock:
Studies show that nine out of 10 people do not need whole life insurance. You’re going to get sold on a lot of different reasons why it makes sense for you. I’m just going to say most of them are crap. Sorry to be forward and candid with all the people out there. But here’s what I’ll say. This is something that is sold, not bought. And there’s a reason for that. Very rarely does someone wake up and say, “You know what? I need a whole life policy in my life right now.”

Ryan Isaac:
Give me some of that.

Matt Mulcock:
But you’re going to have people knocking on your door saying, “Hey, you need this and here’s why,” and they always sound great. They never… I shouldn’t say. You can never say never, but very rarely do they ever work out to be whatever they were sold as. Again, these are sold, not bought. There’s a reason for that.

Ryan Isaac:
Episode 293. And also in the education library, if you’re poking around in there, which we encourage you to do poking.

Matt Mulcock:
Poke around.

Ryan Isaac:
Poke away. In the webinars, we’ve done longer webinars to kind of illustrate the differences between types of insurance. There’s probably half a dozen podcasts episodes. Just click on the insurance thing in the education library in that topic. Mistake number five. Oh, we’re getting here.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, we’re good, man.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s only seven. It’s not only seven mistakes, by the way.

Matt Mulcock:
No, no.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s probably a lot of mistakes. We’re humans, guys. There’s a lot of mistakes we can make. Mistake number five, you squander your income on overhead. Basically you’re not bringing home enough money from your practice in the money you collect. You’re not taking enough home. This is not a function of Dentist Advisors. We are personal financial advisors. We are personal investment advisors. We cover a very broad range of things. And yes, we are very involved in practice financials in terms of understanding how your money flows in and out of the practice.

Ryan Isaac:
We spend as much time in business tax returns, in P&L’s, as we do on investment allocation and insurance policy research. I mean, we’re very informed and involved and familiar with the flow of money in a dental practice. But if your practice is broken and it needs a professional to come in and fix it, it could be team, process, systems, marketing, clinical, something, that is something that another professional like a consultant will do.

Ryan Isaac:
And we have some good friends of the show that we could recommend or introduce you to, that we have confidence in that could help you out with this stuff. But the point is the dental practice is most likely the main thing that will get you wealthy as a dentist. Most likely. Some dentists end up having some interesting side gigs every once in a while or some home runs in some less common parts of the investing world. That happens sometimes. You hit a little home run unexpectedly somewhere. But the dental practice is where you’re going to make your money.

Ryan Isaac:
Things like stock markets, real estate, those are places that will preserve and slowly grow your money over long periods of time. But the practice is where you’re making the money. There’s no room to waste years, let alone like multiple years, decades of low profit practices. There’s just no time to waste. It is, in my opinion, very worth spending money on fixing. As an advisor, I know the part I can play is we can talk about this. Income and profitability is something that we measure every year for people.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re looking at all the sources of a dentist’s income. We do take note of what percentage of your collections is that? Does that seem normal? Maybe you’re the only provider in a single location, or maybe there’s four partners in three locations. We can take that into account and start to look for red flags and then get other people involved where it needs to be. But ignoring an unprofitable practice for too long could be one of… Man, it has to be one of the top biggest mistakes.

Ryan Isaac:
None of these are in order of severity, but this has to be a big one, because it is the driver of everything that will ever happen to you financially for the rest of your life. Don’t ignore it.

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, to your point, your greatest return on investment, ROI as they say in the biz, your ROI, you’re much… For you to spend time on your practice and put your focus and energy especially early on in your career… This is why when we talk about like the order of operations of investments when it comes to your time, your money, your energy, for the first several years, it should be almost entirely on your practice, and this being one of them, right, is the overhead and making sure you’re running things efficiently and growing at a proper rate.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s as simple as a couple of times a year monitor what’s happening, what kind of money’s coming out of there to you as the owner and the producer in terms of as a percentage of collections. What’s also kind of nice about doing that is the more involved you are with your own P&L… I mean, you don’t have to do your own books, but at least understanding the numbers, the more likely you are to have a handle on taxes coming up or be more informed in a conversation with your CPA and maybe catch some surprises on tax bills.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve found that maybe one of the biggest value adds to a client throughout the year is just going over a P&L in really basic terms. A lot of people aren’t doing this with dentists. Some CPAs are doing that. Fantastic job, but a lot of dentists are having an opportunity to cover this stuff. It’s maybe one of the only times they’ll take a peak into like what percentage of my overhead is my people, my team, and how is that changing over time?

Ryan Isaac:
What about my supplies and my other costs? It’s a super valuable conversation. It’s not hard to do, and it’s so worthwhile to keep on top of.

Matt Mulcock:
Hey, Ryan, tell me, what happens during our consultation?

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a great question, Matt. The first thing we’d like to do is just get to know more about you and your practice. What are your career goals? What are you doing in your practice, in your business? What kind of big decisions are you making in your personal financial life? Then we talk about how hiring a comprehensive fiduciary dental specific financial advisor can help you make better financial decisions in your future, help you grow your net worth, get more organized, and get more peace of mind around your financial situation.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re telling me it’s that easy and painless?

Ryan Isaac:
I am telling you it is that easy and totally painless. Exactly, Matt. Just go to dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation button. Do it right now and talk to a friendly advisor today. Hit us with a little six.

Matt Mulcock:
Number six, the sixth mistake, mistako. I don’t know. I don’t know. Sais. You lose money in high risk investments. Oh man, this is a good one. I mean, this kind of comes back to… Again, we’ve talked a lot about this when it comes to investment strategy and automating investments, right? I mean, how could I sum this up in like a very short…

Ryan Isaac:
We say it at the beginning of every show, help you make smart financial decisions and avoid the bad ones along the way.

Matt Mulcock:
Generally what this comes down to whenever I have these conversations, it’s usually people that are getting what I call kind of like the shiny object syndrome, right? Like we were just saying, as opposed to spending time in their business or on their business and building their wealth that way, which is 10 out of 10 times going to lead to better success, we do see sometimes where people are trying to chase things outside of their business, thinking they’re going to hit that home run, because they heard about their cousins, uncles, brothers, friend, who did something that is going to allow them to retire sooner than they thought.

Matt Mulcock:
They’re trying to basically… Usually with this kind of stuff, the way I can sum this up is they’re trying to… I don’t want this to sound too harsh, but they’re trying to cheat the system a little bit. They’re thinking that they can kind of rig the game as opposed to realize that really this just comes down to building wealth takes time.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, what is the game? The game is hard work, sacrifice, and a sustainable, repeatable process that you keep up with for years and years and years. That’s really how you make money and success out of anything. That’s the game. Cheating the game is how do I like shortcut all that hard work, sacrifice, and slow returns and just get like a giant return in a couple of days or months.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly right. This is something I tell people all the time. A core principle to think about with investing is to come back to this idea of the most important part of any investment strategy is having one you can stick with.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s it.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s it. If you hear about, again, some random person you know that made a bunch of money on X, Y, or Z thing, or maybe you did, maybe you got into GameStop and you were part of the short squeeze.

Ryan Isaac:
Maybe you’re the one telling the stories at all the golf parties.

Matt Mulcock:
Maybe you’re the one telling the stories. Yeah, exactly. That’s fantastic if you are. Honestly, that’s awesome. But my question always is, can you repeat it? Can you repeat this? Are you being outcome focused? Are you being system focused? Too many people think about the outcome is an indicator of the quality of the decision made when really it’s not. The system you followed is the indication of the quality of the decision made despite the outcome, meaning you can be right and still be a moron.

Ryan Isaac:
Shout out to Daniel Crosby.

Matt Mulcock:
Daniel Crosby. Honestly, I use it all the time.

Ryan Isaac:
Best financial quote ever.

Matt Mulcock:
It really is. Again, that’s what it comes down to. You’re trying to shortcut something. You’re thinking that either this time is different, or again, you’re trying to rig the game. More times than not, it’s going to end up more likely in ruin than it is going to be in success.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, it’s human error, right? Yeah, I guess it’s our error, our frailty. It’s human nature.

Matt Mulcock:
Human nature.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, it’s nice to think about getting the end result without all the process. I mean, that’s kind of nice. You know?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, totally.

Ryan Isaac:
Isn’t that the entire push of the whole diet industry for the most part as a marketing…

Matt Mulcock:
Take this pill. Just take this pill.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s like get the result without the process. We all know that that’s not really like how things work, but it’s easy to fall into it. It’s easy to fall into it. And even the smartest, most like stone cold, logical, smart people will still do these kinds of things. Actually this bleeds into number seven. Mistake number seven, which I think might be the biggest one on this list honestly, is making uninformed financial decisions. When people ask me what’s the biggest mistake dentists make, I’ll always say it’s being unorganized and making we call it random acts of finance.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what we’ve said over the years. When you have an unorganized financial picture and you have huge decisions to make every few years as a dentist, and then you have dozens of small ones every year to make, it’s easy to start making them out of order, out of context, and make the wrong ones. I mean, it’s easy to do that. You can blow up a whole financial future with a couple of big mistakes, but you can also blow up a financial future with lots of little mistakes that just compound on each other for years and years and years.

Matt Mulcock:
The old death by a thousand cuts.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s a great song by Taylor Swift.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It is honestly such a good…

Matt Mulcock:
We are big T. Swift fans here, just so you know.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a great song, and it’s so true. That’s my answer every time. I think it’s where everything begins. And see, the funny thing is though the solution to it is exactly what a good financial planning relationship is. It’s also like the least sexy solution to financial problems that exists possibly. It’s like the least exciting, least sexy financial solution to your problems is to be very organized and then have a conversation about everything a few times a year.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s more boring than that? That’s like give me an investment, give me a stock tip, or something that’s going to change my life.

Matt Mulcock:
Tell me what the big unicorn coming up next is.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Tell me which coin should I buy this month? That would be more exciting, but the truth, the actual truth is just organize everything with another human being that knows you better than anyone else and talk about all the mundane details a handful of times a year and check in, and then you’ll probably avoid…

Matt Mulcock:
Track your progress.

Ryan Isaac:
Track your progress. You’ll probably avoid most of the big ones easily along the way. That’s number seven is just making uninformed, out of context decisions, random acts of finance as we call it. This, folks, haven been our presentation of the Seven Big Mistakes Dentists Make That Wreck Retirement.

Matt Mulcock:
Hope you’ve enjoyed it. Hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Ryan Isaac:
We hope you enjoyed the e-guide review, and I hope you saw the connection between the 12 foot yellow-gray giant penguin and seven…

Matt Mulcock:
Listen, man, even if they didn’t catch it, even if it didn’t make a connection, it’s a fun story.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for humoring us and let us tell funny stories on the podcast. If you have any questions about these things, the appropriate thing to do, okay, is to schedule a chat with one of our advisors. It’s really simple. Our advisors are very nice. We only work with dentists.

Matt Mulcock:
We are nice.

Ryan Isaac:
We are nice people. Okay?

Matt Mulcock:
I’m not just saying that. We are nice people.

Ryan Isaac:
And the other ones besides me are even nicer. Nice people. Hey, and we only work with dentists. Anything that you’ve worked on, any question you have, any problem, maybe you’ve made some of these mistakes and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, who am I going to tell about this? It’s really embarrassing,” we only work with dentists. We’ve seen them hundreds of times over and over again. That’s why we write these things and that’s why we do what we do.

Matt Mulcock:
And I can’t stress it enough that genuinely we are curious, not judgmental. That’s it. Don’t ever feel… If you’re not calling or you’re not sending something up because you’re worried about being judged by mistakes or whatever, or wherever you are versus where you feel you should be, no, we’ve seen it all.

Ryan Isaac:
Go to dentistadvisors.com. Click on the book free consultation link and schedule a chat. We’d love to talk to you. It can be as simple as 10, 15 minute, little Q&A, point you in the right direction, or it might be a multiple conversation deal where you’re trying to hire a financial advisor to be involved in your life and we’d love to be a part of that conversation. If you want to post a quick question, just get a little noncommittal response from us, we’ll do it.

Matt Mulcock:
I love being noncommittal.

Ryan Isaac:
Noncommittal is my middle name, I guess. Go to Dentist Advisors discussion group on Facebook. As I said, I’ve been married for 20 years. I’ve got four children. I’ve been at the same job for 14.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m 11 years in with two kids. Noncommittal for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
Go to Dentist Advisors discussion group on Facebook. Posted question. We’ll literally post like a video answer right back to you if we have an answer. Or if not, we’ll just tag someone in the group and say, “Hey, what do you think about this question?”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Let’s call you out.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll be like, “Hey, you’re the expert. What do you think? Can you answer this question to this person?” Anyway, thanks for joining us today. Don’t forget to download the Seven Big Mistakes Dentists Make That Wreck Retirement. It’s at dentistadvisors.com. Matt, thanks for being here and we’ll catch you next time. Take care.

 

Investing, Retirement Plans, Tracking Progress