Are You Properly Insured? A Dentist’s Guide to Risk

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Will take a closer look at risk management and how dentists can protect what they’ve built. They discuss the biggest financial risks dentists face, the different ways to manage those risks, and when insurance makes sense as a way to transfer risk. From disability and life to liability insurances, they explain what dentists should consider, how insurance needs can change over time, and why it’s important to understand the risk before choosing the product.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to the Dentist Money Show where we help Dentist make smart financial decisions. I’m a guy named Matt. I’m here with Will the Brain Gochnour Will, what’s up, man?

Will: What’s up, Matt? How you doing? Yeah.

Matt: Good to be here. I’m great. School school has started. officially both kids now and all all your kids that are all your kids school age? Three of the five. Three of three

Will: A couple of yeah. No three of Three of the five. Yeah. Yep.

Matt: Of the five little chickens are are off out of the roost. yeah, it’s crazy.

Will: Are off, yep. Bittersweet, bittersweet. A little bit bitter ’cause you love your kids, but sweet to have get back to a routine

Matt: Yeah.

Will: And bedtimes and so it’s been nice. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, well I had this’ll come out, you know, weeks after this actually happened. But today, my son started kindergarten. So that was a a big a big milestone, but really

Will: It’s big milestone. Yeah. What he

Matt: Fun. He was like super pumped. So went from my

Will: Yeah, sweet. It’s cute.

Matt: Daughter two years ago who was crying and was like just really sad and like nervous and he w I think he was nervous, but he was all the backpack, is there anything better?

Will: Yeah, it’s way too big.

Matt: Then the backpack that is three times too big because there’s no backpack that is

Will: Yeah, it’s so cute.

Matt: Small enough to fit a five-year-old kid.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: And he’s got his Utah hat on, just walking in, just like waving, like, see you later, mom and dad, no

Will: It’s the it’s so cute, yeah.

Matt: big deal. I was just, it was so fun. So cool.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: That is not what we’re talking about today, but we thought we would it’s important to to mention what’s going on in life, I think, sometimes. We could tie it in. Hey, here

Will: It’s important, yeah. We could tie it in. We could tie it in to somehow, yeah.

Matt: We go. There’s a there’s a risk to sending your kids off to school. There’s a risk you’re taking on to sending your kids off to school.

Will: Also, we’re gonna talk about protecting the people you love most, which are those little kids carrying those backpacks that are way too big.

Matt: There you go. Multiple angles of this that we can take. So

Will: Yeah, we’ll go yeah, come on now.

Matt: We were just talking, Will, before we go on, that our the things that we talk about, our job, for those of you that don’t know, sometimes people don’t know, people are like, why do they why are they doing this show? There’s two guys that aren’t dentists who talk who are talking about money and dentists. We have a business that does this, so it’s dentist advisors. we we work with hundreds of dentists all over the country doing comprehensive financial planning, tax and accounting work for the last almost two decades now. And so that’s why we do the show is to educate on these topics. But we were just talking, Will, about that the things that we talk about and the work that we do is like the ultimate category of, yeah, we’ll get to that later. Like, yeah, I should do that. I know I should do it, but I’ve got a list of other things that are more urgent.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: And then if you narrow it down even more, the things we’re going to talk about today, around specific risk management things, meaning insurance, it’s even more so like, yeah, I should get to that later.

Will: Totally. We did a podcast episode a couple, I don’t know, weeks or months ago called The Cost of Inaction. And it it it feels it’s it’s that, right? Like it doesn’t hurt that bad to just not do anything until it does hurt really bad. And the dentist knows this perfectly where it’s like you could just not take care of your teeth and it’s not gonna probably do anything urgent or immediate for the next year, but then you give it two, three years of not taking care of your teeth, not getting checkups and all of a sudden you got some really bad pain and then you’re gonna go see a dentist. And so a lot of similar parallels with us where it’s like, yeah, you could just ignore your financial situation, specifically, you know, the the broad category financial life or, you know, a couple even even the stuff we’re gonna talk about today is even further on the back burner. It’s the backburner or the backburner. So interesting. Yeah.

Matt: It’s so true. Yep. Yeah, it’s true. And again, our our our goal and our hope of these discussions is if it a well all we we have two goals every time we ever do anything around content or education. It’s all number one, always to add value. And in that sense, hopefully prompting someone to take a step or do, you know, maybe they learn something new or they again some type of action that they can take that improve their life. And then number two, hopefully we have some fun doing it and make it approachable.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: So that’s the goal for today is like you said, I like that you brought up that episode of the cost of an action because there is a high cost of an or there can be a high cost or a high consequence of letting these things sit for too long. and that price only goes up the the longer you wait on a lot of stuff like this. But I think it would be good to take so we’re gonna get really specific today, but I think it would be good to get to start broadly. And to talk like really what this episode is about, and really what our job is, we talked about this as again before we went on, is really risk management. It’s just managing risks in your life. So if we think really broadly for a moment, and we think, you know, again, we could borrow our job. Mean you and me, Will, and our team, our advisors and support team, everything we do is is managing risk. It because if you think about the specifics around that, if you narrow that down, it’s insurance and all the components we’re going to talk about today is risk mitigation or a a method of risk mitigation in the here and now. And then investing is risk mitigation just on a different timeline, which is the future. So again, at the end of the day, it’s like no matter what you’re talking about, whether it be investing, insurance or whatever we you know, all the topics that we talk about. It all comes down to the managing risks and the trade offs of you know that are required for these types of discussions. Any thoughts on that really broadly, Will?

Will: No, I mean you’re d exactly right. Like we talk about liquidity. How much how much liquidity do we need to have in a bank account? What what’s that for? Well, it’s to mitigate risk of like things happening that you need to be prepared for, right? So it’s

Matt: Yeah.

Will: A lot of the a lot of our work is done to help prepare people for things happening in the future, or in the

Matt: Yeah.

Will: short short term or long term, right? And usually it’s things you can’t plan for. Usually thing like there’s a lot of stuff we do plan for and things we hope your life looks like, but The whole point of life is that it could go a million different directions. And in fact, we know it’s going to go a million of different directions. So you plan for your best guess and then you hope for the best. And you you make sure that the stuff that you’ve planned for has lots of contingencies in place if something goes, you know, goes wrong. And that’s, you know, that’s

Matt: Yeah.

Will: the so there’s specific ways to man manage risk all along the way.

Matt: Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because people think like we talk about this avoidance, right? Around the cost of an action or or not not

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Doing this. You are engaging in a risk management strategy, whether you like it or not. So so because if we’re gonna get we’re gonna get nerdy for a second, if that’s okay. Well, we’re we’re both a couple of CFP

Will: Love it. Yeah.

Matt: Nerds. so if we talk about ri the methodology or the methods around managing risk, there’s really three big ones. And one of the biggest or you know, one of them is retention. So accepting risk or retaining the risk. Right. So and we we do that every single day in our life of just like we accept certain risks in our life. Again, jokes aside, you send your kid off to school, there’s certain risks that you are accepting and retaining in your life, right?

Will: Yeah. Right.

Matt: Then there’s avoidance. There’s like avoiding certain activities. Like I will never skydive. I’m terrified of heights. I’ll never do it. But like literally, I will avoid I will avoid that risk. There’s

Will: Right. I know dentists who won’t do outdoor activities ’cause they’re just like it’s not really worth me getting injured. Yeah.

Matt: Yes. Yeah. I’ve talked to multiple dentists who who have who have stopped things like mountain biking or even skiing because they they’re they’re literally just like I’m gonna avoid that. I remember a guy I used to mountain bike with in a whole other life was really good friends with an orthopedic surgeon and they used to ride all the time and then he this this friend of mine who would ride with this guy all the time would this guy stopped a stopped Answering his texts about going riding. And after a while, a couple weeks, he was like, Hey dude, what’s going on? Like we used to ride all the time. And finally the the guy, the orthopedic surgeon, just said, I can’t do it anymore. And he’s like, What are you talking about? He’s like, I see so many mountain biking injuries. It’s like three of four during the summer of the things I’m doing surgeries are mountain biking. So

Will: Crazy. Yeah.

Matt: He started avoiding that risk. So

Will: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: We we see this every single day. then there’s reduction. There’s mitigation. Every time you put your seatbelt on, you’re mitigating the risk of driving in a car. And then the last one being transfer. You’re transferring risk to someone else, which is what we’re gonna get more specific in today and all the things that you brought today, Will, on this topic of insurance. But I just thought it might it might be helpful to just talk about that

Will: Super helpful. Say it again. Rid

Matt: Broadly. Yeah, go ahead.

Will: So the the four are what? avoidance.

Matt: Yeah, so the four well, yeah, so avoidance. So you just avoid the risk altogether. It’s mitigation or or reduction. And then there’s transfer, transferring the risk, and yep, and then there’s the r retaining the risk.

Will: Yep. Rick to someone else. Yeah.

Matt: So I’ll I’ll give a really specific example of retaining that’s pertaining to my life today. I as you know, Will mentioned, bought a house, doing a bunch of projects on the house. I’m exhausted. But one of the things that I did is I got they had all these like really old bushes from like 1960. I call them

Will: Yeah.

Matt: spider bushes, and I got a mini excavator. It was the funnest thing I’ve ever done for well for in my adult life for a long time.

Will: Mm-hmm.

Matt: It’s so much fun. They somehow Home Depot just like hands you these heavy pieces

Will: Let’s you take

Matt: of machinery. It’s like, what the heck? No license, just throw it on a trailer, let’s go. But I I knew, I knew that I was going to. Pull up something that was gonna cause some damage, most specifically and most most likely, sprinklers, like a

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Pipe of some kind or something. And lo and behold, what did I do? Because I’m ripping out like big bushes in the front yard. They’re so

Will: Big bushes. Yeah.

Matt: established, and I just retained that risk. I was like, I’m gonna do this, and

Will: Yeah.

Matt: I have to get these bushes out because I have all these other plans. And lo and behold, I ripped out multiple. Multiple galvanized main pipes for sprinklers.

Will: You gotta love it.

Matt: It cost me like 1500 bucks to get a sprinkler guy to come replace them. But again, I retained that risk. I was just like, I’m I there’s nothing like there was other things I could have done, I guess, but I just knew that was gonna happen. So we do things like that every single day.

Will: Yeah, I like that. I love it.

Matt: So avoidance, reduction, or you know, mitigation, there’s transfer. Which we’re gonna talk

Will: And just

Matt: About more today. And then there’s the retention. You just retain the risk. Anything else that you can think of on that? I am sorry. I had to.

Will: Yeah. No, that was extra nerdy, but I liked it. It’s good. And that and you got you always anytime you take a risk, you’re choosing one of those four things no matter what. Cause if you

Matt: Exactly.

Will: Don’t like if you don’t do anything, you’re just retaining the risk. So not doing anything retains the risk. Everything else you can kind of choose like mitigation, you know, avoidance or transferring it to someone else.

Matt: Yep. Yeah. And I I really do like bringing this stuff up sometimes because I think sometimes just putting it in that framework sometimes leads to more action where people are like, yeah, I am I do have a strategy whether I like it or not, but I I I’d rather control that strategy or have more intention around that strategy rather than just be like, everything that I’m doing is in this r you know, in this bucket of retention or or or, you know taking on the risk myself. So with that said, we wanna talk more specific in the category of transferring the risk specifically with an insurance company. How do you want to set this up or or talk about this, Will?

Will: I mean, I was just thinking, we just got done with mid-year review meetings with our all of our clients. And it’s pr kind of a mainstay topic on mid year reviews. Summer’s always kind of a tough meeting window. So mid-year reviews get spread out across like the end of spring and all the way they’re kind of still going. And so we talk a lot with clients about these these risk topics in the mid-year review. It just kind of landed that way where when we’re trying to cover the entire financial hygiene chart. In a year where we want to go through all of the different pieces of your financial picture. Risk usually lands in in the mid-year review meeting because we’re covering cash flow, liquidity, those kind of things up front. And then we’re doing a lot of tax and investment related things on the year-end meeting. So it just becomes a topic with clients. And it’s usually the only time they ever talk or think about these things for the year. And frankly, for new clients, it’s the first time they’ve talked or thought about these things in years or years and for clients that haven’t met with us in a little while, it you know, it’s it’s it’s these things that you’re bringing up that you just they’re not front of mind. It’s stuff that you can easily, like we said before, kick to the back burner or not think about. It’s never urgent. Insurance is usually never urgent. it’s something that you you only you only want it when you need it. And otherwise you don’t want it. And we hear this from clients

Matt: Yeah, and it just feels like an expense.

Will: It feels like an expense. It feels like just a drag on your cash flow and you know, you’re you you’re you’re trying to r rationalize with the the risk transfer, which means you need to pay for it with the risk retention of like, I don’t I I just I’m gonna just keep it and maybe I don’t ever need it and it’s fine. So that’s where this came from is it’s a just a lot of these client conversations that cause me to think we probably ought to have a chat on the podcast about this and make sure we are, you know, covering all our bases as it as it goes to insurance. We also talk about estate planning in the mid year review. So that’s gonna be for another episode, but it’s another

Matt: Yeah.

Will: Backburner topic.

Matt: Yeah, we talked about putting this all together because they are natural a natural fit with each other being insurance discussion and estate planning. But then we thought, to your point, they’re two big topics. And I think estate planning probably deserves its whole separate discussion. So we’ll definitely hit that. But but again, same thing with the with the estate plan. May even more so. I think estate plan is the number one backburner topic. It’s the number one like yeah, I need that. I know I need that. But well, I’m not gonna think about that right now. So I think these are the two

Will: Yeah. Yep. I hate I hate using a pulling teeth pun on a dentist podcast, but it

Matt: But we should.

Will: feels like pulling teeth, getting the estate plan across the finish line, even with clients

Matt: Totally. Totally.

Will: Who we’re meeting with multiple times a year, like asking them about it. So yeah.

Matt: Yep. Yeah. Well, and I think part of it is so as we talked more specifically on insurance today, but I think it r pertains to both. Let’s take life insurance for an example, which we’re gonna get into here. But I I don’t blame people because one thing that it’s let’s just call let’s just call the elephant out in the room that it’s uncomfortable. You’re talking about catastrophic, uncomfortable conversations when you’re talking about something like life insurance. Right. It’s it’s ensuring you dying. And that’s it it forces you to think about your mortality and think about something that n human nature like we are evolutionarily like you know designed to not think about. So so I I get that. It’s a it’s a tricky topic. It’s a tricky topic for you know, you’ve done been doing this for almost a decade, Will. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years. Like it’s a tricky topic to talk about. So

Will: Yeah. I I had a conversation with some clients who just had had a baby and so we had to have the life insurance conversation and they were both in tears. Like it was like it it

Matt: Yep. Yeah. Totally.

Will: It was a very emotional conversation where they’re where they were like apologizing. They’re like, We didn’t, you know, we didn’t really think about these things before and we didn’t we don’t wanna ever have to think about these things, but that’s why we’re gonna get the insurance in place. So

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s tricky because you don’t want to think about that stuff. You re

Will: Yeah.

Matt: You just don’t. So I I totally get it. okay, so a anything else you want to talk about as far as kind of setting up this topic or just kind of why it’s important or anything else that comes to mind. We get into the more specifics. Yeah.

Will: No, I think we can j let’s jump in. Yeah, we’ll have plenty of time to cover it all.

Matt: Yeah. So I I think the biggest th thing here is just I think another tricky part of this is understanding again the broader discussion versus when you talk to like an insurance salesman, they’re gonna always start with the product. So I think we’ve kind of I think I think and tell me I want to see if you want to add anything else to this will, but I think we’ve s started broadly enough to think talk about we’re talking about the big picture of risk management. And then there’s like the specific tools to help with certain areas again of this like This idea of like transferring risk, there’s the specific products and things like that. But I do think it’s important to think about those distinctions because dentists are sold a lot of crap, a lot of stuff that they are kind of told that it’s the solution to all their problems. Anything you want to mention around that, the distinction there?

Will: No, it’s really sm it’s really good. I I I love what you said, like that we really like doing this the right way feels a little backwards. A lot of times, like when you get fresh out of dental school, you will get the first person you’ll talk to will be a person who will send you sp sell you disability insurance and life insurance. And they don’t really they don’t really start may maybe they start a little bit with the risk of like, Hey, if you get injured, you’re in trouble. So here’s this product. But it’s more like throwing a product at you and saying, like, you’ve gotta have this. This is like the first thing you have to buy out of school. And usually it’s leading with a product that fixes all of their problems, right? And not analyzing the situation and then based on your situation, choosing the right product that fits your life, right? You’re always going to have to buy a product with life insurance. That’s what it is. You’re literally buying something, a contract, a policy, a product. But leading with the product is usually where you get into trouble because you’ve, you know, it’s like, square peg round hole where you have the square peg no matter what. And the h the hole may not always be square. So it’s just you you’re gonna find that insurance salesmen may be incentivized to sell you a more expensive product or one that doesn’t fit your life better. So

Matt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you go to a car salesman, they’re gonna tell you to buy a car. You talk to a real or you talk to a real estate agent, always a good time to buy a house. You

Will: Yeah, it’s always a good time to buy a house. Yeah.

Matt: Talk to an insurance salesman, it’s always gonna be a good time to buy insurance and you’re always gonna need it. And in and from our standpoint, peep you know, a company that doesn’t sell insurance, yes, insurance is absolutely a piece of The overall puzzle for a lot of people, there are certain things that you just you have to have. Like one that comes to mind is like malpractice insurance. Like you have to have that. In most cases, at least early on, life insurance and just like these components we’ll talk about. But I like that you brought this up of just there’s some nuance to it and you want to make sure you’ve got the right people in your corner that are gonna look at it more broadly and with more nuance, rather than just like, I’m a hammer, everything’s a nail. And you’re gonna you’re gonna find that with with people who are selling the actual sellers of insurance.

Will: You’ll feel it. Like you’ll feel that you’re in a sales conversation. You’ll know you’ll

Matt: Yeah.

Will: Know. Like you’ll you’ll realize, I’m getting sold here. I’m getting talked into this or rather than taught like it should feel more like a like a you’re getting taught something as to why

Matt: Yep.

Will: You need this and how it like totally fits in with your life rather than trying to like be convinced that this is a good idea. And if it is con if it’s if it sounds confusing and you’re confused, then that’s that’s usually a red flag.

Matt: Yep, totally. Yeah, I think I I think a key p part here is like an ins someone who s sells you insurance. There by the way, there’s nothing wrong with it. Again, we need we need in insurance.

Will: People to sell insurance. Yeah.

Matt: Just like you use the example we use the example again of buying a car. Like we most of us need a car. You’re gonna buy a car from a car salesman. But

Will: Yeah.

Matt: The the time I think it’s important to understand the time that you would bring that person in is at the point of transaction very rarely is that person going to more broadly look at your situation. So again, come back to the car salesman. Like you you should have you should have done the work prior to going in to talk to that person. You should have done the work in some form or fashion to understand how that fits into the broader picture. Exactly. Yeah.

Will: How much you can afford, what monthly payment fits into your big picture. That person’s not gonna the car salesman’s not gonna sit down with you and pull up your budget

Matt: No.

Will: And be like, All right, this looks like where it’s gonna fit. Let’s get you this car that’s a little cheaper because you’re gonna have

Matt: Exactly.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Yep. Same thing with insurance. Like I think this is what gets confused sometimes is sometimes I think it could be an easy objection that like we’re anti-insurance people or anti-insurance and we’re not. We’re just saying the sequencing and where this place where this should be placed in your life and the time in your life when you should be talking to that person is after you’ve done some preliminary work with some someone or you’re doing it yourself or whatever, but you should there’s there’s a lot of steps that go in exactly what you said, Will, of thinking about where this fits into your life, how much do you need, what like where does this fit into the overall risk, you know, strategy? what type of pol when you get to the point of transaction, then it’s a again, a tactician type thing. It’s like, okay, I know I need it. Now let’s talk about the array of options that are out there and how that might fit. So I think that was that’s an important thing to hit first. Anything else you want to add to that?

Will: Yeah, I like it. No, that’s good. I think that was helpful.

Matt: let let’s talk about the risks specifically now. So risk one being you cannot practice anymore. Do you wanna introduce this?

Will: Yeah. So I mean again, like if we’re leading with the risk and not the product, one of the biggest risks of being a dentist is the inability to practice dentistry. I think that’s obvious, right? And I think a lot of dentists like brains are going off saying, Hey, that’s disability insurance, right? That’s the product that ensures your ability to not practice anymore. So this is a big one. This is one that is technically optional, but it’s probably the first one you bought when you got out of school. Right. because it ensures your ability to make money as a dentist. we use this quote we use this piece of data a lot, but one in four dentists throughout their life that have disability insurance, the ADA posts of this study, one in four people end up making a claim on their disability policy. So twenty five percent of people end up using it. That’s not meant to be a scare tactic, and we don’t want to like claim that you’re gonna get disabled. It’s just the odds are not in your well the odds are much higher that you will make a claim on a disability insurance policy than almost any other insurance policy that you own. Which is why

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Will: It’s more expensive because the occurrence frequency of occurrences is happens more, so you’re more likely to take a payout on it. So it means it’s gonna cost more money.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it’s it’s important to again look at this broadly of your own specific situation. That one of the riskiest possible scenarios is a sole practitioner, you know, single location, you’re the only producer, no associates, and you are the only one in your family making money. It’s like your spouse or partner is is not working. That’s a very risky proposition. There’s so much relying on your hands and your ability to produce dentistry. So that’s very different than many dentists we know, Will, who own maybe one or multiple locations. They are they’ve been able to get to a point in their career where they’ve cut back quite a bit of their chair side work. They still do it because they enjoy it. But let’s say they’re working one day a week, they’ve got four associates. And their practices running basically without them. Those they’re both dentists. They both have certain risks they’ve taken on, but completely different,

Will: Different risk profile.

Matt: Yeah, totally different profiles within this specific segment

Will: Risk. Yeah.

Matt: Of risk and needing disability. So, yeah, go ahead.

Will: It’s no, that’s I love that because it’s not the blanket statement like every dentist needs disability insurance. And as you get more seasoned in your career and as your income goes up, you technically need more disability coverage. And that’s usually how it’s sold is income replacement. So as your income grows, you actually need more disability insurance. So it’s completely ignoring the fact that it what you just illustrated, there may be a unique situation where it’s a dentist who’s actually, yeah, whose income’s gone up, but their clinical time has gone down. And it means that they may actually be less reliant on their hands and body to make money. And so, or their spouse is a situation where their income has gone up, but their spouse makes money. And so it’s kind of a built-in disability policy. So it’s very unique. And every time we talk with clients, we’re looking at the big picture here. And understanding that everybody wants to drop their disability insurance. I don’t think there’s a single person out there who’s excited about paying for this. Everyone complains about it. Everyone groans a little bit if we ever say that you need more coverage. But a lot of people just understand the reason why you would want to have coverage. It’s it’s the it’s the one coverage you would be really thrilled with never having, you know, all obviously all insurance. You’re you should be happy to pay the premium as long as you never have to use it, right? So

Matt: Yep. Yep.

Will: Should be happy about it. But I we I wrote an article about this where it’s like you wouldn’t buy a brand new Ferrari and then not insure it.

Matt: Yeah.

Will: You guys are the Ferraris, you dentists are the Ferraris, right? You have like you have to ensure your ability to make income. So at certain points in your career, it matters, it matters a lot to have disability coverage. This one’s hopefully obvious, and most of you guys know this, but it needs to be own occupation as well. So it covers you to work as a dentist. meaning if you’re disabled but you can work some do some other job, maybe a desk job or bag groceries or whatever it is, then you still get paid out as if you were not able to work as a dentist.

Matt: Yeah, that’s an important one. The own occupation, true own occupation is huge. And again, this is the kind of stuff when you get to the point of transaction that you’d want to make sure you’re figuring out the details specifically. But that’s a big one. I’ve unfortunately seen that get some dentists, where they it didn’t have a true o own occupation and they go to you know, they had something happen where they can’t work chair side, but because they didn’t have the right policy in place They it didn’t get paid out. So they were like, well, you can still make money. So I I I don’t want to assume that mo the dentists know that. I think it’s become more it’s it’s more out there that dentists kind of understand their own occupation is is really critical. But that’d be again as you go to actually put this in place, number one for me. Would would you

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Say that too, Will?

Will: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s gonna be a lot of other riders. So that’s what’s called a rider on the policy. I don’t I mean, I would assume it’s just like it kind of like rider kind of means add-on to the base policy.

Matt: Yeah.

Will: And so that’s one specific add-on that you would want to make a hundred percent of the time as a dentist. You always have to have an own occupation policy. There’s no reason to do it if you don’t have you shouldn’t even have the insurance if it’s not on occupation, frankly, because likely it’s gonna be some hand injury or some arm injury or some back injury Where the disability insurance, if you don’t have own occupation, then it means that you have to be completely like vet completely like vegetable disabled in order to not be able to hold any job in order to get the payout.

Matt: Yep.

Will: So if you have an arm injury, you could go work and, you know, load, I don’t know. You could do something. You could work at the desk with one finger and t type, right? Or you could be a receptionist or a greeter at Walmart or something, and they could probably say, like, you can work, so you don’t get this disability payout. so it’s very important. You’ll pay more to have it, but it’s very important to have that.

Matt: Yeah, and I think you bring up an important distinction here too, and and something to, you know, where again, den no one wants to pay these premiums, it’s expensive, right? But I think if you think about not only or you talk about the data of like one in four dentists are gonna use this, the reason being, and maybe it’s obvious, but I think it’s important to highlight it still, is it doesn’t have to be anything crazy to to have this happen. I think of what happened with me earlier this year, Will, that if I were a dentist, I had spine surgery, I was back at work pretty quickly. Because I don’t my job’s not physical. Like I can sit in a chair, I can sit in a recliner, and I was back at d at work relatively quick. If I were a dentist, there’s no way. There’s no

Will: Yeah. You would have had a couple of months off, yeah. Right.

Matt: Way. I probably would have been out for months, six months at least. So

Will: Yeah.

Matt: I think that’s an important distinction here is. It doesn’t take much a freak accident here or there of breaking a finger or whatever of why this becomes so critical and why it’s dentists are far more at risk than than the average person out there, specifically in today’s economy where a ton of people out there are in the in the just kind of like this this knowledge economy, dentists are still very mechanical and need their need

Will: Desk jobs, yeah. Yeah.

Matt: Their bodies. So

Will: Yep.

Matt: Anything else you want to add? I I know there’s another piece of this specific you wanted to add around the details of to think about on the disability side of things.

Will: Yeah, I mean th we won’t go too far in depth ’cause we’re being long winded on this, but talk to somebody about the riders and understand the riders that you wanna have on there. Of course, like cost of living adjustment rider and there’s some catastrophic that you know, the residual rider residual income rider. we won’t go into too many details, but please meet with somebody before you get a disabil disability policy. And usually it’s good to I mean, meet with somebody you trust that you know is gonna give you good objective advice and not sell you stuff. Last thing on disability is the way for us, this is a financial side of things, is the t kind of the tax treatment of it, right? So if you are a business owner and you pay the disability premium through your practice and you take a deduction for it on your tax return as like a write off because you’re paying it with practice money, then the benefit if and when it comes out to you is all taxable. Tax is taxable income. So for the rest of your life, if you have a policy that pays you to sixty seven years old, you just pay tax on it if it was ordinary income. You don’t pay it through the practice and you pay it with after tax dollars, then your benefit is tax-free forever until you, you know, until it runs out. So this is a risk retention conversation. Is like, do you want to take the risk? I we would say almost every single time pay it with after-tax dollars because the benefit is greatly outweighs the risk of paying it with after-tax dollars. But if you wanted to gamble a little bit and pay it with your, you know, take a deduction for it, you can just know that it’s gonna. It reduces you know, it’ll reduce your disability benefit by twenty five percent. So you look at your benefit, it’s not that’s not your true benefit. You could reduce it by at least twenty five percent.

Matt: Yeah. I think that’s a really important thing to highlight there. And I’d say in most cases I I can’t think of many situations where we’d say you’d want to pay. Yeah. Yep.

Will: No. But I’ve seen a couple where it’s like on the P and L, I’m like, Why is that on there? And it’s like, I just thought I could write it off ’cause it’s a business expense technically. Well, they don’t

Matt: Or

Will: Understand that the back end of that is you end up you’ll end up paying tax on

Matt: Unfortunately, I’ve seen this where CPAs have told them to do it. Cause again, CPAs are trying to do anything possible to reduce your taxable income. That’s great. But what risks are you taking on with that? And so I’ve seen that too. So if that’s if that’s you or you don’t know, you should be looking into that of how you’re paying your disability premiums. okay, the next risk will not talking to stock talking more broadly, and matching this up with a product, but the risk is that you’re gone. That you die. What what w what what are your thoughts on this?

Will: Yeah, it’s life insurance, right? So that’s the product that we talk about. But like this is a massive risk is that you are the breadwinner as the dentist and you make the money and you pass away. And it’s a lot less frequent, obviously. But it repl this the job is that it’s gonna hopefully replace your income for the people who need it. The the little kids carrying the backpacks and the wives, and it’s like we the you can get as emotional as you want on this, but It it’s it’s this is a big one because it’s important and understand when you need the benefit, how much you need the benefit, for how long you need it for, how much you need. There’s a lot of nuance that goes into this one as well.

Matt: Yeah, this is a big one. And again, one that people don’t want to talk about or think about, which we totally understand. And just like we talked about the disability, there’s a lot of nuance around and an important conversation to have. I always I always think too, like erring on the side of caution with stuff like this, when you’re talking about life insurance. So for example, Will, I don’t know about the conversations you’ve had, but I’ve had conversations before with couples where both parties are working, they both do really well. Maybe they’re both dentists. and they have assumptions of how they would behave or act or feel if something like that were to happen, like they were to lose their spouse or partner. And there’s been in those situations times where they say, well, yeah, well, he’ll be fine, or she’ll be fine, because look how much money she makes, look how much money he makes. And I’m like, yes, for sure, you’re feeling like that now while they’re here, and life is fine. Life is good. It’s really hard to know how you’re gonna act or behave or feel when that actually happens. If that were to actually happen. So and I guess that’s just I I say that just to say like that’s just a tricky part of this, and it’s maybe not solvable, other than saying in most cases, err on the side of a little bit more cautious especially with life insurance, you know, when you get it young enough, like it’s not as cost prohibitive as a disability policy. So any thoughts or examples that you have from your conversations?

Will: Yeah. I mean, there’s a time and a place for it, right? So like usually if it’s young people that don’t have children and both are working, then maybe there’s an argument to say you don’t need it because life would go on and there’s no kids to support. but once kids come into the picture, once i especially if it’s like a breadwinner spouse situation, you gotta understand how much you need. And how much you need is usually predicated on how much it’s gonna take like there’s lit different levels here of how conservative you wanna be. I like that you said err on the side of having more than you think you need, most likely. We have a full calculation built out. There’s lots of different ways to calculate it actually. There’s like if you go to an a typical insurance broker, they may show you like three different confusing calculations and then tell you which one they think you should get. We like keeping it simple and we just base it, we actually use our formula for financial independence. And so we’ll kind of back into it using that formula saying, how much money do you need to spend every year to never have to work again?

Matt: Yeah.

Will: We and we figure that out with if the you know this the person getting insured was gone, how much do my spouse and my kids and my family need in the need in these scenarios to make it through the rest of life without ever having to think about money again?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Will: And again again, there’s all t different types of variables that can go at so the spreadsheet we have, the calculator we have has lots of different inputs like well, what if the spouse is making income or what if you want to pay off your mortgage or what if you want to plan for more expensive education goals for your kids or those kind of things. And it will build out a full calculator on how much you how much you currently have and how much you need. The the big side the big part of the calculator there is you you only need this insurance for a specific amount of time because this insurance is the your life insurance need is reduced by how much money you you how much net worth you have, how much money you have, right? So if you were to pass away with a $20 million net worth and you know, you lived a pretty reasonable lifestyle. You don’t need insurance. You sure as heck don’t need insurance because if you pass away, your family and loved ones are taken care of with the money and wealth and net worth that you’ve built. So

Matt: Yeah.

Will: That’s the big that’s the last part of the calculator is life insurance need minus net worth equals actual life insurance recommendation.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And like you said, we we we have this we we have kind of created our own calculation for this. Mainly to just have the conversation and like talk to our client about it doesn’t mean it’s a right or wrong answer. It’s like, hey, here’s what we would say is like the spreadsheet answer based on these factors, but then let’s have a conversation about how this fits for you. And I like that you said that too, around this is the trickiest one for dentists out there. To get confused because again, people out there selling that want to conflate and confuse them and combined this idea of insurance and investing and trying to put them together and be like, insurance is great and investing is great. We should do it together. But in 99 out of a hundred times, when you combine insurance with investing, it just makes the both worse outcomes. And that’s what we see with. Permanent insurance. And so I I’m glad you highlighted that. That outside of some rare cases, life insurance should be for one specific purpose, which is to mitigate the risk of you dying early, an unforeseen death. That’s it. And anyone else out there telling you otherwise, they’re selling you something. I’d say nine out of ten cases. Would you say that’s maybe nine point nine out of ten cases?

Will: Tot totally. Yeah, and I mean going back to the beginning when we were talking about like if somebody’s leading with a product, then that should a red flag should go up. This is usually it. This is usually like

Matt: This is a

Will: the product that gets led with its permanent insurance. So I mean you’ll hear whole life, you’ll hear variable universal life, you’ll hear universal life, you’ll hit you’ll hear what else? Annuities. I mean, there’s lots of different types of products that you know, live in the category of permanent insurance. So there’s Just taking a one quick step back is there’s permanent insurance, which means insurance that covers you for the rest of your life. And then there’s term insurance, and that’s you pick a time period that you want to pay the premium for, and that’s how long you’re insured for. We’re usually big proponents of term, like you said, Matt. Permanent is just where it gets a little messy on the insurance plus the I mean, this is a flag that we’ve planted since beginning of time, I feel like at our firm, right? Like probably episode eight was Reese, like it was like the episode was named like a rant on permanent life insurance, and he kind of goes off. So I think we’re being a little more diplomatic, but this is something that we feel pretty strongly about is permanent insurance is quite the runaround and it’s quite the over engineering of your financial picture to like combine life insurance and investing, and it’s way better from a control perspective from your perspective and a cost perspective to separate the two, separate your investing and separate your insurance. And you do that by investing, having control over the investments that you do and not having caps and ceilings and fees and high floors. and you and then you also do that with choosing term insurance on life side.

Matt: Yeah. Are we being too diplomatic? Should we get should we go harder on this? Yeah. No. We we do. I I

Will: I was sort of thinking when you were talking at the beginning, I was like, Maybe we should go off on this, do the Baker Mayfield, plant the flag in the center of the field.

Matt: Had a I had a client text me recently. It was at a a presentation with an insurance guy and he was text he was kind of live tweeting it to me. And it was kind of funny. But I l I wrote back to him and I said, let me guess. And I I I literally listed the pitch. I typed out the pitch and I was like, this is what he’s saying, I’m guessing. I didn’t know this guy. Just he told me what was like what the presentation was about, that he was a permanent life insurance salesman guy. And I wrote I wrote out what his pitch was. And I just got back, whole all caps. Holy cow. He’s like, you literally like it was like word for word almost. And I was like, yeah, we’ve heard this. We’ve heard the pitch countless times. And again, it’s the ultimate hammer nail. They are hammers. Everything to them is a nail. They’ve got their pitch down really well. They know how to press the buttons. They know how to make it seem like everyone needs this stuff. That’s some new novel thing. It’s just not. If you’re out there listening and you’re like, I need to talk to someone else about because I’m getting pitched this and I don’t understand it. Like we talk what did

Will: Or I have it and I’m like wondering what I did. Yeah.

Matt: I di do and you don’t want to be chastised for it. We rarely chastise anybody. No, but we have these conversations all the time. honestly, and it’s it’s it’s it’s something that having a different perspective could be helpful. So okay, we’ve covered disability, we’ve covered the the so the risk of you not being able to work, we’ve covered the risk of you being gone. The the other risk here, well the other big risk is w I guess I’ll I’ll kind of speak more specific here is something goes wrong either in your your cra while executing your craft or something completely outside your control, like somebody slips and falls on your front driveway or you’re in a car accident. So this is kind of the ultimate like unforeseen risk.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: What are your thoughts on this one?

Will: Yeah. This so this one is freak accident type risk or just like, yeah, big crazy something crazy happens that you didn’t you couldn’t foresee. You could just couldn’t it wasn’t on your bingo card. Morgan Housel’s quote is that this is the risk. Risk is this is the risk that happens when you think you’ve thought of everything, right? And it’s just something that’s like, this wasn’t even on my radar. I don’t even know how this happened and now it’s happened and we’re dealing with it. And it’s The word that gets thrown around a a lot is liability, right? So liability can be a lot of different things, but it’s when you specifically somehow become liable or somehow become at at fault for something that happened in your life, right? Maybe you didn’t mean to do it. Maybe it was somebody else like your child or your spouse or something that didn’t mean to do something. you’re clearly not like trying to mess somebody’s mouth up, but maybe there was something went wrong or a yeah, I don’t know, something broke off in the mouth and they swallowed it. I who knows, but these are all things that you we have to ensure because life happens and stuff goes wrong. So this one, I mean, dentists are really familiar with this. This dentists are usually really good about malpractice because it’s legally required to have malpractice. It’s

Matt: You have to have it.

Will: Front of mind and it gets renewed every year. And MedPro is like the behemoth of the industry, and everyone’s got a malpractice coverage. so that’s not one we wanna spend a ton of time on today, but that is a good one to review and make sure that you’ve got enough coverage and it’s you know. You’re gonna be able to be protected if you mess up in the dental chair, that’s covered and that’s like you know, you won’t be liable for it. So that’s part

Matt: Yeah.

Will: One. What else?

Matt: Yeah, the reminder there would just be like you said, everyone has it, needs it. just maybe review it. Reach if you have Med Pro rep or whoever you’re working with, it’s it’s always good to review as you get into your career. the the one thing I’ll say on that, Will, is depending on the stage of career you’re in, occurrence based versus

Will: Claims.

Matt: Claims based, there’s certain times of your life where you in your career you’d want one versus the other. So that’s always good to review. I think the other one that’s definitely a big blind spot outside of malpractice is just general liability, both on the business, but more specifically on the personal side. This is a big one that we don’t see or that that we see a lot of dentists not think about. A personal what we call personal umbrella policy. And this is connected really or interacts with your home and auto policy. Your home and auto pa auto policy that everyone has to have own a home or to drive a car, you have to have these insurances. And part of those insurances is partly liability. So if you have something that happens, there’s gonna be a liability portion. But for a dentist, let’s say a dentist who’s 10 years in, 12 years in, 15 years in, and they’ve built up a a sizable net worth, well, those home and auto policies only have a liability portion, often let’s just throw a number out, but it’s pretty close, about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Meaning if

Will: Yeah. And that’s it. That’s the max.

Matt: That’s it. So you get you hit someone or someone, yeah, someone decides you get in a car accident and someone’s like, you’re a dentist, my neck hurts a little more today. Like, you know, if as opposed to getting hit by some other profession, that happens, unfortunately. And so if you only rely on a home or an auto policy and don’t have an added something on top of that, well, again, in this case, a personal liability or an umbrella policy, your net worth’s at risk. Yeah, if they if they were to sue you. So that that’s a big one. And and the good thing here, Will, is these policies are generally pretty cheap. They’re they’re kind of like for us, it’s like you should have this in place

Will: Right.

Matt: Because it’s not a cost prohibitive risk or or insurance to have.

Will: But the flip side of if something does happen is such a massive, massive

Matt: Huge.

Will: Like hit to your life and net worth. And I mean, think about it. Dentists dentists are public figures in a way. Like I think people know people know you’re a dentist, right? And people know you practice dentistry. And I think it leads to a l a s kind of a status symbol, maybe. Like that’s that person’s a dentist and they make a lot of money or drive nice cars or whatever, right? I know not all of you are feeling that way, but I think just the general public feels that way. And so if something were we live in a society where people like to sue people. That’s just the reality of it.

Matt: Unfortunately.

Will: Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in. So I think dentists generally have maybe a a target on their back. They become a little bit more attractive to target in a lawsuit. and you know, then then there’s just a variety of things that could happen. It’s a trampoline, it’s a swimming pool, it’s a dog, it’s a car crash, it’s a teenager driving, it’s a who knows, right? Like there’s just so many different things that could happen that could cause millions and millions of dollars of damage. If you don’t have enough pol if you don’t have enough umbrella coverage, then that then all that’s gonna happen in a settlement is they’re just gonna ask you to, you know, either pay monthly payments the rest of your life or liquidate some chunk of some asset to pay out the, you know, the settlement that you’re gonna have to get there. So could be millions of dollars. And that would be just not worth not worth the risk. It’s just not. So this is a really easy one to transfer. Seems kind of but like a no brainer to transfer.

Matt: Yeah, this is the epitome of low frequency, high consequence event, which is the definition of the retention or what you should

Will: Right.

Matt: Are sorry, that you should transfer. Life insurance fits that category as well.

Will: Right. Is another one, yeah, right.

Matt: And so totally agree. And yeah, it is unfortunate that and it I’ll also say it depends on the state too. Some states are far worse than others. If you’re in California, it is unbelievably more risky in these kind of things if you have anything that happens, car accident or like all the things that you listed. California’s just known for this. People make livings off of suing people in California, unfortunately. And so there’s depending on the state, you’re at higher risk than others. So this is just one we’d say, again, y you probably need more than you think. And it’s you generally pretty cheap to implement if you don’t have a policy The best place to, I mean, we again we’re here, we talk about this these these things all the time. But if you decide you need one, the best place to start there to actually transact in that business is your home and auto provider. They they

Will: Right. Yeah.

Matt: Generally will be able to add umbrella on top of that. And the the key there is the reason you’d want to do that too is these two things interact. So meaning you have to have a base level of home and auto before an umbrella policy even kicked in. And that can get people in trouble too if there’s a gap there. So anything else you want to add to this, like rules of thumb or just anything else you’d add to the the umbrella policy discussion?

Will: No, I mean maybe just the sizing, like matching it up with your net worth at the start and then as your net worth grows in balloons, then you know, getting a reasonable amount of coverage in place that should cover most lawsuits that come your way. I mean, I I would just say you you can cap it at some point, you know, but tracking it with your net worth as your net worth climbs into the seven figure range is makes a lot of sense.

Matt: Yep. Yeah. That’s a that’s a good thing. Just just matching that keep ’cause people ask us that all the time. How much do I need? Really simple. Match your net worth. That’s it. Just

Will: Yeah, you’re gonna want somewhere between one to five million dollars of coverage throughout your life, most likely.

Matt: Yep. Yep. And then if you get above five million is usually the amount the general the general liability will cover, personal liability. And then you’re gonna have we’ve we’ve done this where you have to go into like specialty type coverage when you get up to the

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Above and beyond that. But for most dentists, mid career getting up to that five million is gonna make a lot of sense. you

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Mentioned this earlier, Will, as we kind of get near the end of kind of these last couple of d discussions here. But you mentioned this around Okay, when can I actually drop coverage? yeah, is there ever a time

Will: Yeah, this is the fun part.

Matt: I guess I’ll I’ll just ask specifically, is there ever a time where we say to dentists, Yes, you should drop these coverages? What are what are your thoughts?

Will: All the time. All the time. That’s the whole point of insurance. This is the optimistic ending of insurance is like insurance should be temporary by design for most people, right? Like you need it for a certain period of your life to insert a short specific set of risks. And then at some point you’re not gonna need it anymore. Life and disability are kind of the same, right? Where like your well life we’ll we’ll just quickly hit life. Life insurance decreases. We said this before is your net worth increases. So As l as long as you could liquidate the ass if if someone were to die and you could liquidate enough assets to survive and be fine and get to the end of your life, then you don’t need life insurance anymore once your net worth crosses a certain level. Disability too, like this is one that people drop frequently. And you said this earlier, where it’s like if you would work in a larger office and you own the office and you have three associates working under you, and those associates could cover your like kind of phased out clinically a little bit, you You theoretically aren’t relying on your body anymore. So you could just collect the non-clinical income as a disability policy for the rest of your life. If you broke your arm, you don’t have to be clinical. So there’s a lot of dentists on the second half of their career that choose to start dropping disability. And we just it’s a risk retention strategy that we talk about and say, Hey, your net worth is big enough to where if you ha got disabled, you probably could ride off into the sunset. Or you’re in a position where you could bring home non clinical income from the practice or your spouse is working and you’re fine. Like you can drop it. So those are both temporary. They should be temporary. The the the ones we just talked about kind of go the other direction. Liability, umbrella, those actually get you should probably be increasing those as your net worth grows, but they’re cheap. So

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s again, I like that you framed that or you you mentioned that last part. It’s it’s what risks are we mitigating? What risks

Will: Dealing with. Yeah.

Matt: Are we trying to transfer away? And do some go away and others don’t? You just said it perfectly. Disability depending on the situation, that risk can eventually just be retained and go away. and then life insurance the same, and then the liability one, that never goes away. In fact, to your point, you could argue that it gets worse.

Will: It probably increases. Yeah.

Matt: The the more established you become, the maybe more well known. And and again, this is all nuance. This is all context of your situation. where do you live? How how truly the scary thing is is how well known are you in the community? You it it’s sad to think, but that that you become a target the more well known in your area you you are, or depending on the state you’re in. So that risk doesn’t ever go away. Things like malpractice obviously doesn’t go away as long as you’re practicing.

Will: Right.

Matt: So I just but I like that you said that. The the point of most insurance is a temporary risk. It’s to mitigate temporary risk. And so yeah, we have these conversations all the time of of dropping coverages. some

Will: But it’s a bit that’s this is I mean, it’s a big decision too. Like it shouldn’t be treated lightly, the dropping

Matt: No.

Will: Coverage decision. Like it should be something that you really can put pen to paper on numbers and have like a very clear plan of action as to why it’s like this is okay, green light, go for

Matt: Yep.

Will: it.

Matt: Yep. Yeah. And I I’m glad you said that because I’ve had some clients that have gotten to a place where on paper they don’t need something let’s say like life insurance. like I’m thinking of one in particular. He was in his mid fifties, he had built an incredible amount of net worth, and and big practice, making a ton of money, done an amazing job. And he’d gotten to a point where it’s like, You don’t need this anymore. You’re covered and he had a decent amount of life insurance. He had another, I can’t remember the exact time frame, but he had another 10, 15 years, to probably 10 years on it. And he was like, Well, it’s I don’t even think about it. I’ve been paying it for so long. I’d rather just have the extra. And if

Will: Yeah. Just yeah.

Matt: Something happens to me, it’s a legacy for my kids and my grandkids. I

Will: Totally. Yep.

Matt: Was like, Great. So like on paper, he could have dropped it if it was just purely a risk discussion around like you don’t need to mitigate this anymore. But he just thought. I don’t care. I’d rather just pay it and have the extra the extra liquidity if something happened. Awesome. Like like you said, that just needs to be a conversation. Same with disability as well. Disability, I’d say most dentists are are eager to drop if it becomes something they’re able to, because it’s just more expensive. Exactly.

Will: Well, ’cause it gets more expensive as you get older too. Like your age matters more, you know, and so like you’re all of a sudden you’re in your fifties, you’re like, Holy cow, this is so expensive. So

Matt: Yep, exactly.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: Okay, la I think last little bit of this would just be like, how are we actually thinking about this specifically, Will? Like how how are we you mentioned this earlier. I think it maybe it makes sense to kind of bookend this and talk about this a little bit here at the end of how are we like the science behind this, if you will, actually looking at this.

Will: Yeah, we I mean, our financial hygiene chart that we use with all our clients has a s has an insurance score there. so we, you know, we it’s one of our twelve key indicators of your financial help health. And we wanna make sure, you know, it’s kind of like a ratio where we divide how much coverage you need by how much coverage you have, and then we tell you how how secure you are. So we’re gonna make sure that we hold your feet to the fire. This is an accountability partner action item is like Have somebody in your life who’s helping you get these things that stay on the back burner through the finish line. And, you know, it doesn’t have to be us, but it is something that we do with all our clients is like making sure that these things get done and these boxes get checked because they’re things, again, that are so easy. There it’s nothing that needs to be done urgently because you’re not you’re never gonna die tomorrow and you’re never gonna get disabled tomorrow. But you you’re gonna be dang glad you’ve had, you know, gotten your ducks in a row when When if something like this does happen.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s good to have the that again I mentioned like the science piece of it. Like I think it’s always good to have a foundation of even you know, we approach this in a simple fashion, but a very consistent methodology of at least showing you what you need based on our based on our calculations, and then begins the conversation. It’s like here’s what the calculations are showing based on your life, and now let’s have a conversation about nuance and the different aspects.

Will: And those those things change every year. They do. Like every time we

Matt: All the time.

Will: go through it, it’s like, all right, we d I feel like we just talked about this, but this is now different because you either have another kid or your income’s changed or your spending’s changed or you have a new business partner or something like it changes so often that if you just get an insurance policy and close your eyes for ten years, it’s it’s probably not gonna be the right policy or situation that you intended to have it happen at the beginning of the the term.

Matt: Yep. So true. Such a good point. So Will we always want to kind of take away or or give people kind of a what should I do with my hands type of type of approach of kind of bringing in the practicality. Someone out there listening thinking, I need to do I I okay, I don’t even know where to start. Like I feel overwhelmed

Will: Yeah.

Matt: now. where where would you say people could start with like not eating the whole elephant, but what’s the what’s the one thing or a couple things they could be thinking about? Action wise.

Will: I mean, I think this is like hopefully kind of obvious, but I would hope that you would have like a folder on your computer somewhere where you’ve got a really clear picture of all your insurance policies that you have. So like if you have a couple of life insurance policies, a couple of disability insurance policies, you should have the policy document that has the premium and the renewal date and all of the writers and all the specific things. I would hope you’ve got that organized somewhere. That’s step one. We do that for all our clients. We have a box folder where we organize like part of the onboarding process. We’re organizing, we’re asking for these policies and we’re we’re making sure it we can see the whole picture. We we know all the both policies. We have listed out in a nice spreadsheet. That’s step one is just ha knowing where everything is, right? ‘Cause I think as you I I think that’s probably it. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, that’d be a good action step. Just go find That’s it.

Will: And then if you want to look at them, you know, and see like does this confuse me, whatever, like it’s probably a trigger to say I should probably talk to someone about this stuff. But

Matt: Yeah.

Will: Yeah.

Matt: I think that’s a honestly, it sounds simple, but I think that’s a great action. It’s just like maybe even

Will: Organize it.

Matt: Even before that is ask yourself, when’s the last time I even thought about this? Was it longer than and it’s always longer than you think? And I I liked what you said. Like the action today is go find your policies. Just take a look at I like that. It’s it’s really

Will: Yeah. Love it.

Matt: Good. Maybe this is maybe this is prompting people to go take it from the back burner, bring it forward and

Will: Mm-hmm.

Matt: Say, you know, I should be thinking about this. So and if you’re out there listening and thinking, I know I need to do this, I just am not doing it and I need help, just like anything else in the financial planning kind of umbr under the umbrella of financial planning or taxes and accounting, there’s something out there nagging you. We hear this all the time. We talk to people every single day who finally kind of break through that inertia and think or and get to the point where like, I need to talk to someone. We are here. Dennisadvisors.com. You can book the free consultation button. If you’re lucky, you’re gonna get Will or one of our other amazing advisors to talk about this and just honestly hear you out, hear what you’re dealing with, and point you in the right direction at the very least. and so if you if that’s you, check out dentistadvisor.com. Will, anything else you wanna add, final words of wisdom for the people.

Will: No. Go team. Let’s go. Have a great week.

Matt: Go fight win.

Will: Go go go find your insurance policies, people. Go dig up. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. It was fun.

Matt: Go find your insurance. There you go. I like it. Well, well, thanks for being here as always. Everyone, thank you for listening. Till next time, take care. Bye-bye.

Keywords: risk management, insurance, dentists, disability insurance, life insurance, liability, umbrella policy, risk mitigation, financial planning

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