Fresh or Rotten? Rating Dentists’ Biggest Financial Decisions

With the Oscars just around the corner, Matt, Jake, and Christine borrow a page from Rotten Tomatoes to rate some of the most common financial decisions dentists make. From 401(k)s and brokerage accounts to the often-overlooked importance of bookkeeping and financial organization, they break down which strategies actually hold up over time. They also dive into big-picture business decisions facing practice owners today, including marketing investments, expansion opportunities, DSOs, and the pros and cons of owning your practice building. Which financial strategies are fresh and which ones do we think deserve a thumbs-down? Listen to find out!

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome to the Dentist money show where we have Dentist make smart financial decisions I am Matt and I am so happy to be joined here by hot take Jake and Yet to have a nickname, but the wonderful brilliant Christine Uhen Hello everyone. Welcome

Jake: Hey guys.

Christine Uhen: Good to be here.

Matt Mulcock: It’s always fun. This is the fun dream team and this is a fun topic we’re going to talk about today. ⁓ we, call Jake hot take Jake because clearly he’s got hot takes. ⁓ and he’s already started throwing out some hot takes before we even jumped in here. So he, he, I’m excited to hear this. We’re bringing together the, we’re going to talk about the intersection of movies, entertainment and financial topics. This is only we can only we can. ⁓ so.

Jake: That sounds lovely. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Like only we can.

Matt Mulcock: Oscars are coming up. I’m not sure when, but my, but the team told me that it’s cause they’re coming up. I, I have a first hot take confession. I could not care less. Like there’s. Okay. So why not talk about it? We couldn’t care less, but we’re to talk about it. It’s still going to be the catalyst. There’s.

Jake: They are. Yeah, I think that’s most people. I think 90 % of America could not care less.

Christine Uhen: I’m all about the fashion and seeing everybody at the party.

Jake: March 15th is the Oscars for anyone who is wondering. It’s March 15th. It’s always on a Sunday. I am part of the 10 % of people that actually cares and watches funnily enough. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. March 15th. This is why you’re here. This is exactly

Christine Uhen: Hot take.

Matt Mulcock: why you’re here, Jake, because you do care. You I don’t know many people who are more into movies. ⁓ And truly all jokes aside, I love discussing movies with you like our whole team. We all have these conversations. ⁓ Because I think again, you you are kind of like a pseudo critic, like you you really get into these movies and have like different takes on them. So it’s we love about it. So today, We thought it would be kind of fun with the, with the Oscars coming up. Jake’s the only one that cares. ⁓ I could not, I think it’s literally probably like reality TV and Oscars are like fighting for that lowest spot of things. I could care less of, I could not care less about these things. However, I do care about this topic. These topics we’re going to talk about today. And we thought it’d be kind of fun to, ⁓ again, with the Oscars coming up, do kind of a rotten tomatoes of financial topics discussion.

Matt Mulcock: Jake, you want to share the first thing you said about Rotten Tomatoes as we got into this?

Jake: Yeah, it’s funny. think Rotten Tomatoes is like the most trusted when people look up a movie. I think Rotten Tomatoes is the first thing that pops up on Google, right people? Yes, they’ve done a really good job. It’s come on. The reason that I would just say I don’t like to pay attention to the Rotten Tomatoes score for movies. We don’t need to get into the whole backstory and things, but you can become a Rotten Tomatoes critic fairly easily. I think that’s what people it’s like. You can kind of apply for a process to become a Rotten Tomatoes critic if you write a couple of.

Matt Mulcock: They’ve done a great job of branding, yeah.

Jake: reviews for movies types of things. are thousands of people within the program. So essentially it’s just like it’s other people’s opinions on the movie, which I guess are good to take are good to take into account. But I don’t think it’s like some ironclad like if it’s an awesome on tomato score, it’s an awesome movie. It’s a bad one. I’ve had plenty of experiences where it’s been a bad score and I love the movie and great scores and I did not love the movie.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I want to, I want to get your take on this really quick. Both of you. Christine, have you ever used rotten tomatoes?

Christine Uhen: It pops up. guess I’ve never let it be a decision for me. I’ve agreed with it and disagreed with it after having watched a movie. And then so I’m with Jake. I’m like, it’s about 50 50 hit or miss for me if it’s aligned with me and my style, which might say something about my style of what I enjoy in movies, which is, you know, probably unique to me. But.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So let’s break this down a little bit because anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know what Rotten Tomatoes is, I’d imagine most people listening know somewhat familiar. To your point, Jake, it is a way to review movies. There’s two scores on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s the tomato meter and then there’s the popcorn meter. The tomato meter is the critics, as Jake has highlighted, barrier to entry there is probably not as high as we would want it. Yeah, define critic.

Jake: Yeah. No. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: You define critic.

Matt Mulcock: And then the popcorn meter is just the audience score. So people just going in there and, you know, getting on just like they would good reads or, you know, any other rating system and rating the movie. Here’s what I’ll say. I actually tend to follow the popcorn meter. Like if the audience generally liked it, I’m like, I’ll go see that movie. If it’s over a certain amount, I give zero credit to the tomato meter. Zero. I don’t really care. So.

Christine Uhen: Mm.

Jake: There’s a divergence there sometimes right this is as I’ve gone more into movies There’s kind of the movies that are the more artsy fartsy right type of things Which is why the Oscars tends to appreciate those movies Which is why a lot of people don’t care because it’s like these are some artistic movies that they haven’t really heard of they played in a few theaters I don’t even know how to watch these films compared to like your Jurassic Park right Dominion or whatever that you watch the past year, which I Yes, and

Matt Mulcock: Yes. Amazing movie by the way, incredible. Yeah, incredible.

Christine Uhen: Yeah. Talk about, talk about popcorn meter. Yeah. Anything Jurassic park, but would you say, would you guess that the Oscars are aligned with the tomato meter then maybe? Would you say that those kind of align as we’re like, you know, linking that back into our Oscars coming up, we should, we should try that. See what the scores are compared to what the tomato meter said to the Oscar winners. Stay tuned part two.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, more so than the audience, probably.

Jake: Probably.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, we should, we should. ⁓ I’ll, I’ll rely on Jake for that. Cause I will not be watching the skirts at all. ⁓ okay. So with that said two different scores, we thought we would do the same thing rapid fire with, ⁓ as many financial topics as we could come up with, ⁓ and maybe more will come as we start talking through this kind of stuff, but we want to kind of give again, two scores and we’re guessing a little bit, but just from our experience, what is our score as advisors on this topic versus what we think the dentist would score this. So I will give an example and we’ll just get started here. ⁓ So the topic of the ultimate boring artsy fartsy equivalent of a movie, they would win Oscars that the audience wouldn’t care about. is getting organized and tracking progress on a regular basis. That’s the topic. What would be a score? Let’s start with Jake on that topic. What would you score that from an advisor’s perspective?

Jake: I would score this 150 % if I could, but let’s just do 100 % as my top. I think this is as high as they get for me. I think being organized and tracking progress is like the baseline of everything that you do in financial planning. It’s the whole going back to you can’t know where you’re going or where you need to go if you don’t know where you’re currently at. It’s high as it comes. Huge fan. think I will speak for Dentist advisors as a whole. are big on organization and track.

Matt Mulcock: You

Christine Uhen: Hahaha

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, could not agree more. Christine, you have thoughts on this from a practice strategist perspective?

Christine Uhen: Yeah, I’m with him at the 150%. This is exactly what he just said, right? If you don’t know where you’re at, you don’t know where you’re starting from to where you even want to go. And how do know if you’re on the right track? So 100 % all on board.

Matt Mulcock: And then the question is, do we, so I agree 100%. This is like foundational. We’ve said this before, the equivalent of like, your vegetables of the ultimate, eat your vegetables topic, which is financial planning. But cause it’s so obvious, I know I need to sleep more. I know I need to exercise. I know I need to eat my vegetables. This is the ultimate like boring of boring topics. It is so realistic of, or so real of like, you got to get organized. You have to know your numbers both in the practice. and in life and track your progress. ⁓ we all are on the same page. I this would be, this is where I started with this easy, easy scoring here. What do you guys think dentists would score this as far as level of importance or value in their life? Any thoughts?

Christine Uhen: ⁓ yeah, avoid it like the plague comes to mind. Please don’t make me. What do that? So again, a score is, ⁓ no, I don’t want to anything but. whatever score, negative 10%. In terms of joy, mean, in terms of the important, know, they just, whether it’s true or not or accurate or not, that is the emotional response I get.

Matt Mulcock: So you’re saying like a 10 %? Negative percent.

Jake: We’re going outside even the Rotten Tomatoes score us here.

Christine Uhen: Whenever I talk about, let’s start tracking things. So.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Jake, what about you?

Jake: I agree. The first thing that came to my mind was 10%. What’s interesting, Chris, is from my experience, I think doctors know more about their practice cash flow and budgeting what their collections are and their net income numbers than even the personal side of things. I don’t know if that’s true across everybody, but in my experience, I just get a sense people are more in tune to the practice and maybe what’s going on personal finance-wise. I’m talking about knowing how much they spend. which pretty much every doctor I talked to does not know their personal spending amount. So that’s going into my 10 % ⁓ declaration there is because people just don’t know what their spending is. They don’t know what their retirement number is. A lot of them do not know what their net worth is. They just don’t really have a sense of where they stand on the personal finance side. But usually when I ask them like, what is your collections? They know that what your overhead they know that type of thing there. Does that ring true to either of you?

Matt Mulcock: ⁓ I would say I’m going to get Chris in here, but I would say I’m with you. If there’s one or the other more likely it’s going to, they’re not graded either, but I’d say they’re more in tune with the practice because they’re just more like a practice owner is going to be at least by default, more exposed to those things than they would where you got to force it on the personal side. One thing I will say, I think
most dentists, if you asked them walked up to on the street or at an event or something, you said, what are your collections?

Jake: but not graded either.

Christine Uhen: Yeah.

Jake: Yeah, it’s more pressing in day to day.

Matt Mulcock: I think most dentists know within a pretty close range of what that is. If I said, now, what do you make an income? I’d say one out of 10 actually know what that is. Like their actual take home pay. But let’s get Chris in here.

Christine Uhen: Pretty close. Well, and not even take home pay their revenue from the practice, meaning what’s at the bottom of my P &L? What does my net income say? Which again is very different than what’s actually going into my personal spending account, much less than how much of that am I spending and where. So I think because it feeds everything else, they’re probably more likely to know their bottom line or their business than they are the bottom line of their personal spending.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, your net income. Yep, yep, I think that’s probably true. ⁓ Okay, that was our example. ⁓ I have a feeling we’re not gonna get through all these topics. We’ll see, we’ll see, we have a lot. Rapid fire here. I added one to the top here, because obviously we wanna take advantage of having the expertise of Chris here. So expanding to multiple locations. So adding locations, what would a score, let’s start with Christine, ⁓ what score would you give this in general? Obviously this is general, but. What score would you give this?

Christine Uhen: Well, I will say this is becoming a bigger topic than it has in the past. So I’m going to give it a 65%. I’m going to give it a up. It’s more on their mind than ever. It’s more than half the time they’re thinking about that. More so than ever. It’s becoming popular.

Matt Mulcock: So from your perspective… So let me just clarify, what is your score of that being something that a dentist should be thinking
about? Like your personal score should be.

Christine Uhen: Should be or is? Oh, well, that’s about an 85. Higher, yeah, I think it should be higher. This is a great opportunity right now in our industry to think about expansion, whether that’s multiple locations, adding providers, adding time, all of that. This is a great way to compete against the big corporate groups that are out there.

Matt Mulcock: You’re saying higher. Got it. groups.

Christine Uhen: I think this is something that’s becoming more popular as a topic and should continue. I’m strongly in favor of growth as a defensive strategy, which turns into offense. And if we know anything, defense wins the game.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. We learned that recently in the Superbowl. Tie that into the yeah, go Seahawks. ⁓ Jake, think you, you, you have might have a differing opinion on this of what your score would be.

Christine Uhen: to tie that into the recent year.

Jake: Yeah, I hate this. I don’t I don’t really want to disagree with Chris because she will prove me wrong. Right? If I if I do that. My first reaction of what I think was probably around 50%. I kind of wanted to walk the line of this can make sense for you. You know, it’s kind of my like, answer non answers this can make sense for you. Maybe it doesn’t. So I was gonna say 50%. I’m actually less favorable towards adding multiple locations just to my experience and maybe Chris’s, but I think that’s okay.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, would again from an expertise and experience standpoint, just so people don’t know if this is your first time listening, Christine has forgotten more about this topic than Jake and I will ever know. And so just to give some context there. ⁓ So my first reaction was somewhere down the middle as well, of saying, and I think it’s more anecdotal. I think the key nuance here is just ⁓ being intentional with it. I think sometimes

Jake: Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I think a lot of times we’ve seen, and maybe the stories that we’re looking back on Jake would be dentists who do it just to do it because they think they’re supposed to do it. And they’ve given no thought to the big picture of what does this actually mean for my life? ⁓ they haven’t put that time and effort and work into yet. So I done intentionally, I think I’d favor more what Chris is saying, but the caveat just being we’ve seen some, some of these situations go bad. Go go wrong.

Christine Uhen: We’ve seen a lot of these situations go bad. Let’s not downplay that. But when done well with intention, with a strategy, with enough time and cash flow, you know, and understanding what it’s going to take in time, energy and money to do this, it can be a great growth model. More so, and again, I’m such more in favor of keeping that private than I am thinking about selling as I need to do something else. Selling versus keeping this

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, for sure.

Christine Uhen: growing your own asset, adding to your asset class with another location, possible real estate, all of that is just, ⁓ that’s my happy place.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, and I think maybe this comes back to, in all our conversations about this kind of thing, like internally and externally, I think maybe what we’re talking about is we’re talking about intention, but I think another part that we’ll receive this go wrong is sequencing. So messing up the order of things. It’s kind of like right decision, wrong time. I think dentists, ⁓ Jake, tell me if I’m wrong. I think this is what you and I are getting to when we see this is where dentists say, I’m bursting at the seams.

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Or I have X, Y, or Z problem with whatever hygiene’s booked out, whatever, you know, six months or whatever. So I must need to get another location or I must need to expand. And this is what the beauty of having Chris on our team is we go to her and say, Hey, here’s the situation. Oftentimes, exactly. Oftentimes, Christine, you say, well, there’s some sequencing here. We need to like look into over here instead, before we just immediately go buy a $2 million building and go expand our practice. So.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Christine Uhen: Do they? Mm-hmm.

Jake: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Jake, get it.

Christine Uhen: Optimizing location one has to come first, or you can’t, if your systems aren’t in place with the first one, why is it gonna be
better with the second one? I appreciate that perspective, but I also, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: There you go. Sequencing matters.

Jake: Yeah. And my anecdotal experience, I just don’t know if the second location is really offering what the doctor thinks it’s going to offer. Or I think they want to expand where it’s like, I want to increase my practice. I want to increase my income. Unfortunately, being a dentist, you make the most money chair side, right? Kind of the production that you do for any associate led production. Like if you’re opening up a
second location and having different providers in there, the margins on that production and collection is far smaller that you personally are collecting. Right. For example, like let’s say you can get to a 10 percent profit margin for a second location, which is pretty good. So that location needs to be doing a million dollars in collections for you to take home that extra one hundred thousand dollars that you’re wanting. Whereas if you just wanted to work a little bit more chair side, you can do, you know, four hundred thousand dollars or so right in your own dentistry to make home that say one hundred thousand dollars. And so I just wonder if like I’m using broad numbers here, just very general numbers. But like is an extra one hundred thousand dollars that you’re getting pre-tax worth the stress and the headache and all of the
things that can go wrong with a second location. And also acknowledging that doing a second location may not work because you can’t replicate yourself. Like if your one location is awesome, oftentimes it’s because you’re just an awesome doctor and you can’t copy yourself, unfortunately. And finding the right associate and getting the right people and expanding your team is always hard. We always hear about staffing issues. And so it’s just a lot of work and stress and things added to your life. And I don’t know if the cost benefit analysis always aligns with what people are thinking. Would be my two cents.

Christine Uhen: Well, and you’re going back to their why, why are we doing this? Right? And that’s such a key point of everything that we advise on here from where are you investing to, and if this is another investment, do you know what you’re investing in time, energy and money? So why are they doing this? And is it satisfying something that is worth pursuing? Then again, it goes back to doing it the right way.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, love it. These are big topics. We’re going to keep the train. We’re going to keep the train moving with a, with a big topic kind of along the same lines, ⁓ selling to a DSO, selling to a DSO. ⁓ Jake, let’s get your score and then what we think the dentist score would be. What’s the, what’s the tomato meter, the advisor meter.

Jake: I guess I’ll take a stance here 25 % selling to a DSO just in general. We’re not super big fans over here at Dentist Advisors while acknowledging that there are a lot of cases where it can make a lot of sense depending on your practice size and career stage and where you’re at. But in general, I’ll go 25 % my personal opinion there.

Matt Mulcock: And then what would you say the dento meter would be? I’m making this up as I go, the dentist, the dental meter and the visometer.

Jake: I don’t know. ⁓ 75 % Does that sound accurate to you guys? think most in this are at least interested in it and whenever you offer somebody the biggest thing with the DSO and a lot of reason for selling to a DSO is They are showing you those big Numbers for your practice yourself price, right? It’s hard to look at those multiples and those dollar signs and say no I’m not interested in that I think a lot of people are interested because they built this practice blood sweat and tears into it They want to get the most out of it as possible And so yes, like a big DSO offer I think is interesting for most dentists.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think that number has probably come down a little bit over the last couple of years for the Dento meter. But Chris, what are your thoughts on this?

Christine Uhen: That was what my thought was. It used to be, know, from the dentist side, 80 % are like, oh my gosh, it’s the hottest thing right now. And then their whole FOMO of I want to know what that’s like and I don’t want to miss this and the consolidation wave and all of that, where I think it has slowed down in the last definitely 18 months for sure with the macroeconomics that are happening and questioning what’s going on in the all around market, all of that. And I think it’s also still on dentist mind. So is it still good to get an offer? You’re gonna feel good about that. That’s great. Take that as a win. So I’m still at the 50-50 point that they’re seeing, dentists are seeing this as something I should still pay attention to. Now, again, on the advisor meter, it is definitely something you need to pay attention to because there’s, if you’ve seen one offer, you’ve seen one offer and you need to really look at and there’s a… podcast we’ve done before where the three of us went through and looked at an offer in particular and went, so much. So the answer of it depends, is it right for you? Again, it’s back to the why. Why are you thinking about this now? It’s a great idea if you’re close to retirement to pay attention or if you’re physically looking from a disability, sometimes that’s what’s causing some of these exits. So I think it’s on their mind about half of the time for sure.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: And it’s still, again, I want to do the performers. If you kept your asset now, kept the cash over the same time period, what
is the difference? And sometimes it’s not.

Jake: This is a big thing. Yeah, like these DSOs are not running a charity, right? I think this is an important point to bring up. Like they’re paying you a lot for the equity in your business and in your practice because it’s worth a lot, right? They are not losing on this transaction here over time.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Right. So feel great that they the offers there. What a great compliment. Yay. You know, someone wants to invest.

Jake: Yeah. But it’s one of those things where you make sure like the equity that you’ve built up in your practice is valuable. And that’s the reason that they want it. And so make sure that whenever you’re parting with that equity, make sure you understand all the strings that are attached and all the nuances of it because it is valuable.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I mean, I don’t agree or disagree with anything. I don’t agree. I don’t disagree with anything you guys are saying. We all are on the same page here. I would have actually given it little bit of a lower score, Jake personally for the advisor meter, probably 18%. So we’re going to get super, super, super precise here. False, false precision. Exactly. yeah, but somewhere in that range, as far as what we see, these deals actually work out. It’s, have a pretty strong belief here.

Christine Uhen: Like an advisor.

Matt Mulcock: at Dentist advisors that private practice ownership is the key to freedom, key to financial freedom and fulfillment with your money and career and maintaining that asset a lot longer than you think. and I think Dentist are actually, I would have said today it, and this is probably selection bias with a dentist that we talk to in our community. I would have said like 60 to 65 % at this point. We’re seeing, I’m talking to a lot of dentists now that are pretty negative. on that route. I would have said far less, far less for sure. So it’ll be interesting to see where this year goes and beyond as private equity adapts and DSOs adapt to the changing landscape here. So go ahead, Chris.

Jake: Getting far less questions about it for sure than a couple of years ago. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: But their growth model right now is all about same store growth. If we’re looking at what the bigger group, DSO, private equity bank, they’re looking at creating profit per location rather than from mergers and acquisitions. So that means each office could do better. So as a private practicing dentist, the same thing they’re focusing on is exactly what you should stay focused on, increasing the cashflow and profitability within your own four walls or

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: eight walls if you’ve got two locations. But that’s what it comes down to. Managing your own private practice more efficiently.

Matt Mulcock: Well, this paradox that’s created by this single success of your location is yes, you become more valuable to a DSO for sure, buit it becomes more difficult to make the case as to why you’d give up that asset. Like if you are like, that’s the problem is you become this highly profitable, efficient systems driven practice. And like, yes, every DSO is knocking down your door to get it, get, get it. But it’s like, as advisors, we’re sitting here being like, what are you doing?

Christine Uhen: Exactly. Keep it.

Matt Mulcock: You like now you’re reaping the benefits. You’re finally getting the, you’re finally being able to harvest. you 15 years. Exactly. So congratulations. Keep your asset, keep your asset. It’s like the key to your freedom. So, uh, we digress. We could keep going on the DSO. I will say this is a good opportunity. mean, this is a, if you’re a dentist out there thinking like your face with this, or you’re questioning this, like this is what we do. Huge part of what we do. We have these conversations all the time with, with.

Jake: Took you 15 years to get to this point. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Congrats. Keep it.

Matt Mulcock: with dentists helping navigate these big decisions. Super simple to set up a consultation and we’d be happy to talk to you. You can go to dentistsadvisors.com where we’d be happy to talk to you about this and everything else going on with any of these topics that we’re talking about. Uh, next topic, uh, 401ks. Jake, I want to, uh, get your, your take on 401ks. Where is the advisor meter versus the Dento meter?

Jake: I’m going to give my second 100 % of the podcast. I think 401ks are underrated at this point. think this stage of, I don’t know, investment cycle, capitalism, wherever we’re at, as a tax strategy. 401ks are awesome. 100%. I love them. Most people I know want to save on taxes and they know they need to plan for retirement and save and invest for retirement. A 401k does both of those for you at the same time. We talked with clients about tax strategy all the time and people are wondering about what about this or what about this thing or that. The 401k is one of the only places that you can put your money, still hold on to it and keep it for the long run and get a tax deduction for. All of the other tax deductions are buy this car, buy this piece of equipment, donate to a charity, give away your money and then get a tax benefit. A 401k you get to keep it and grow it and get the tax benefit. I’m all in. Love a 401k.

Matt Mulcock: I love it. What would you say the Dento meter is on this?

Jake: 50 % 40 % I think most people know Oh yeah 401k I need to contribute to that I know I need to do this but it isn’t super sexy it is very known right it’s like oh yeah I’ll put my money away and grow for retirement yay you know type of thing so I think people know they need to do it but there’s all these tick tocks or different advice or brother-in-law’s talking to you about have you heard of this tax strategy or this thing there and so as far as a tax strategy goes I think it’s pretty low for most dentists but they just don’t understand how awesome it is

Christine Uhen: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, agree. Chris, any thoughts on this one?

Christine Uhen: So not my area of expertise other than I, the word that came to mind was, this is one of those unsexy topics we need to talk about. I’ll say tax strategies are probably, you know, high on 75%, 80 % on the minds of dentists, but using this as one of the ways to have a tax advantage, I don’t think they lean into that as much as they should.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally agree. I, the scoring Jake gave is exactly what I would give a hundred percent for our meter, 50 % for dentists. ⁓ I, I just to echo what you said, I think it’s become so boring. It’s kind of like the stock market as a whole too, has become so boring for people that it just becomes like this thing of like, yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay. But like, yeah, but it’s such a powerful underrated tool at this point.

Christine Uhen: If I gotta.

Matt Mulcock: Not to mention what people are, know, all the tick tock crap going around of like 401k is a bad investment. That’s kind of made this even more of an underrated tool for, for dentists to use. So it, it cannot be repeated enough Jake to what you said is, 401ks and retirement accounts as a whole are the only deduction you can take and keep the money. The only deduction. So 401ks, IRAs, HSAs. Those are the three places you can deduct the money and actually keep it. That is huge. Cannot be overstated. Okay. Moving on crypto cryptocurrency. was going to say just Bitcoin. Bitcoin is part of the overall umbrella of crypto. ⁓ Let’s get Chris in here. I know this is not an area of expertise for you, Chris, but from your perspective, give us your crypto take.

Jake: Let’s go. Give us your crypto takes, yeah.

Christine Uhen: gosh, Chris, the advisor, Chris, the consumer, just Chris, the consumer is like, I don’t know what this stuff is. Is it real? I’m like, OK, so but then, you know, it is a part of our family’s investment portfolio. You know, we do have some and I know it’s it’s one of those I’ll say on the dental meter. was a hot topic. mean, several years ago, it’s all I was hearing about was

Matt Mulcock: Give us the No one does.

Jake: No one does, Chris. No one does.

Christine Uhen: Did you buy? Did you not? Did you see what it’s doing? And it’s been less popular, at least in the conversations that I have with my clients who are friends, that it’s like, that’s not something that’s come up as much anymore. So I think it’s here to stay. I think it’s something we do need to know about. think it’s probably, I’d give it a seven out of 10 on the dental meter in terms of the interest level that they have.

Matt Mulcock: You’re saying the dentometer 70 % of dentists are into it think it’s important. Got it.

Christine Uhen: Yeah, yeah. And are still asking, you know, still are invested in it and should I continue and how much should I be in it?

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Um, Jake, I’m to let you go last on this one. Uh, I, I will agree on the dental meter. I’d say it’s, it’s, it’s softened for sure. It’s, less, people are less interested overall now than let’s say 2021 when things were just out of control. I’d say 77 and 5 % is probably still a good number for the dental meter. Um, this is totally, I’m admitting this is a personal bias of mine as I say, advisor
meter, um, 0%.

Jake: Yes, you go.

Matt Mulcock: Like for me personally, the Matometer crypto has, okay, there’s zero place for crypto for me in my life or ever advocating for it in a dentist’s life. ⁓ However, why we have clients who push back and say, we want this great. Just let’s build some guard rails around this. Like anything, if a dentist said I’m going all in on the video.

Christine Uhen: So the mat-o-meter.

Jake: I back it up. I’m there too. I was gonna say 5 % but just yeah, okay, zero.

Matt Mulcock: or Bitcoin, or I don’t care what it is, there’s always going to be rules you want to follow. But for me personally, ⁓ crypto could not, I mean, as low as it gets on my meter, as far as importance and placement in a portfolio. Jake, let’s get you in here.

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Jake: I’m with you. ⁓ If people want to come at us, that’s fine. I would welcome it for the crypto fanatics out there. The hard thing about crypto for an advisor to recommend to a client to implement in your portfolio with any significant asset is it doesn’t do anything. Like it is online currency. It does not provide services. It does not have like a board of CEOs. There’s no tangible physical location. Like it does nothing. So like most of the time when you’re investing in a company in the stock market,

Matt Mulcock: It’s digital gold.

Jake: It’s an actual company that provides goods or services and improves the world in some way. Right. That’s what you’re investing in. Crypto is not that it is not based on anything. So it’s hard to value it. Right. Crypto like Bitcoin right now is recording. This is around seventy thousand right or so. Is that the right number? Who knows? There’s no way to analyze this because it goes up and down based on the whims of what people think it should be worth. ⁓ So yeah it’s just hard to

Christine Uhen: Yeah.

Jake: really have as a serious big portion of your portfolio long term because we just don’t know how to value it and we don’t know how just to expect it to perform in the future. It’s all just a crap shoot.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Can I, can I, can I bring in a sports analogy really quick and selfishly defend? Wouldn’t be our show if we didn’t, if we didn’t bring in a sports analogy, but, and, selfishly going to the heels of the super bowl. And I admit a horribly disappointing season for the
Eagles, but still going to bring in a defense of my, guy, Jalen hurts. Jalen hurts was getting a lot of crap this last year about his value and how good he actually was.

Christine Uhen: Well, you’re making me feel better. Well, it would not be our show without one.

Jake: Yes. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: And Jake, you and I had this discussion. The only argument against Jalen Hertz ever is always been a hypothetical. Well, if you traded him for X guy, he wouldn’t be as good. And I said, the only argument is hypothetical. I think of this same thing with crypto. The only argument for it is completely hypothetical of what it could do at some point or the idea behind it. And look at Bitcoin. How many use cases have people spouted about? now it’s this. now it’s this.

Jake: Yes, yeah.

Christine Uhen: Mm.

Matt Mulcock: And none of it’s ever come to fruition. Maybe we’re just naive and not as, you know, we don’t have the foresight that all these other.

Jake: No, we’re right. Like it could go up 200 % but even if it does, that’s not based on anything. Like it’s we just don’t know. Like if it does, that’s great. And if you’re in it, you made money. And if you’ve been in it for the past 10 years, you’ve done really well and you’ve made a lot of money. But it’s just hard. Like you can’t analyze it as a serious investment really as part of your portfolio.

Matt Mulcock: It’s their digital labooboos. That’s what they are. Digital labooboos. You know what saying? ⁓ Okay. Moving on. ⁓ Chris, I
want to bring you in on this one ⁓ from a practice business perspective, ⁓ marketing. And, and we maybe want to get more nuanced here around maybe like giving the caveat of like strategic intentional marketing, but we could just keep it broad. Like marketing in general, what is your business consultant meter when it comes to marketing for a dental practice?

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Huh! ⁓ That’s a 90 for sure in terms of the importance of it. And again, the idea of understanding what marketing is, is the
nuanced side of this. If I had a nickel, if I had a tenth of a Bitcoin for every one one hundredth of the current Bitcoin of every doctor that said, I need more new patients when really do you? That’s not necessarily the case. They’re looking to increase.

Matt Mulcock: Ha ha ha!

Christine Uhen: productivity, increased revenue, so they thinking they need more new patients. And again, that’s not always the case. So marketing is necessary for any business in terms of bringing in new revenue, bringing in new patients, bringing in new clients, right? So that’s necessary. It’s highly competitive. It’s highly specialized. It is something I say never go in there alone. Definitely getting advice on this. You are an excellent dentist. You’re probably not an excellent online marketer. Neither am I, but I know enough to say get professional help with this. So I think it should be 90 % if not 100%. I think it is on the minds of dentists, 90 to 100%. And I think again, huh, yeah, I do. But again, I think the disconnect is what problem they’re trying to solve with marketing and where they think the answers are is also very different.

Matt Mulcock: You think that matches up as for my level of importance dentists think 90 to a hundred. Got it.

Christine Uhen: If you’re just driving new patients coming in and not realizing that your system’s in-house, like your phone’s ringing off the
hook and you can’t the call into, if you can’t convert the call, then your marketing is working because all external marketing does is make the phone ring. But if you don’t understand what’s happening within your four walls, as we were saying, how the phone call is being answered, do you have places to put them in your schedule? What are you doing with those patients in terms of diagnostics and treatment planning and case acceptance? Are they staying in your practice? So back to, you know, what problem is marketing solving? That’s the real question versus is marketing important or not?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, love it. Jake.

Jake: I don’t think I have anything to add again. Chris is the expert here. I think you did mention the other day, Chris, though, that ⁓ gone
are the days of just hanging a shingle and expecting patients to come in. We live in a more online society and marketing probably is more
important than it ever has been before of getting patients in the door. so, yeah, I think 90, 100 % put it all the way up there. Really important to do.

Christine Uhen: Where they’re at in their business cycle as a business all depends on what kind of marketing and how much. Would I say it needs to be a consistent budget? Yes. Would I say it needs to go up at different times during growth opportunities? You bet. And that is something that is an investment, not an expense when done well.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: That, sure, yes.

Matt Mulcock: Done well. So there’s a couple of new, I’m totally with you. And again, I would, I’d rely on you, Jake and I both would in this specific category of like how low, how important this is. But you said something earlier around a private practice, ⁓ owner, ⁓ competing with the big groups and one area that they’re at a huge disadvantage a lot of times is marketing. They just don’t have the budget or the, the, the, the money right to, compete. So I think a lot of times This is one reason why dentists sometimes show their hands up like, well, can’t do it. not, I’m just not going to do it. Cause they can’t compete. I think that’s a huge mistake. think the other problem that dentists face that I’ve seen Chris is, ⁓ we talk about our industry as advisors, financial advisors being this opaque, like the, how, like, how do you even describe what an advisor does? Like you talk to 10 different advisors, you’re going to get 10 different answers where they’re going to say, I’m an advisor, but they just sell insurance, that kind of stuff. I think it’s even worse with marketers. It’s like, I do marketing. It’s like, well, what does that mean? Do you just like do my SEO or are you doing a story brand marketing? Like there’s, there’s so many. So I’ve seen a lot of dentists have bad experiences because they’re like, they hear this like, okay, I got to do marketing and they go find a marketer and start, and then it goes horribly. So I think there’s a lot that goes into this because you’ve already highlighted and you’ve talked a lot about. that yes, this is important, but it’s, and you should be investing in this and looking at it as an investment, but you got to get it right. Otherwise you’re going to be throwing a lot of money at crap that doesn’t do anything.

Christine Uhen: Well, that’s the scary thing with marketing. Everything works. And at the same time, everything fails depending on what business plan you’re, what business problem are you trying to solve? Who are you working with? Where is it breaking down? There’s probably eight different places in the life cycle or in the patient journey that I could say, Hey, here’s where your marketing is breaking down if you’re not paying attention to it. So again, that idea of marketing makes the phone ring and that advertising makes the phone ring. And it’s different. Advertising can be different than marketing. Fred Joyle, many two dozen years ago said, everything is marketing. It’s a great book. So that is how you compete against other larger advertising budgets in the community is what are you doing internally? In your community, outreach, relationships, stories, all of that.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, things that the DSO might have more money behind, but they can’t be as personalized as you. There’s
advantages that you have as an individual owner. Huge. Okay. That’s great. okay. Moving on, ⁓ back to the basics of boring financial planning, ⁓ auto saving into a brokerage account specifically into a globally diversified portfolio of equities. That’s a mouthful, but let’s just go auto savings into a brokerage account.

Jake: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christine Uhen: which can be marketed.

Matt Mulcock: I’ll start with this one. I’ll give my advisor meter a hundred percent. I talk about underrated, ⁓ as an advisor, think building liquidity in a brokerage account is one of the, one of top three, top four or five, whatever most underrated things that dentists can do to get them to retirement readiness faster, ⁓ and reduce their stress along the way as they see that portfolio growing. I would say a dental meter, ⁓ If they’re listeners of our show, if they’re clients of ours, it’s much higher. But I’d say the typical dentist out there, it’s probably like 40%. I don’t think maybe even lower. I don’t think a lot of dentists even think about this, but Jake, let’s get you in here.

Jake: Yeah, for those who may be listening who are not sure what a brokerage account is, it’s a regular investment account. I wanted to talk about the brokerage account piece, like you just said here, Matt, where so a brokerage account is just a regular investment account. There are no rules on putting money in. Everyone who’s of age can put money into there. You can put a million dollars a month into it if you want to. There are no rules on taking the money out. You can take the money out at any time. There are no penalties. You do have to pay capital gains tax and whatever gain is in there. But it’s essentially to say flexible. place to put your money to get it growing in the market without having stringent rules around it like a 401k IRA Roth IRA HSA right things like that. I think it’s underrated to Matt. I think brokerage accounts are awesome and maybe we don’t talk about them enough even amongst our clients like a brokerage account is a perfect place where if you have an emergency fund and money in your practice to cover overhead and you’re set cash wise I think you should be moving kind of everything else left over into a brokerage account. You might as well get it growing with the market. You can still access it if you need to. If there are big projects or things coming up that you know are maybe coming in a couple of years, but you don’t have a firm timeline for. It’s like, let’s might as well put this money into a brokerage account, get it invested, get it growing. We can always access it if we need to. I just think it’s a really cool account. Underutilized, think honestly, I think people tend to hold more cash than they even need to. You can almost view a brokerage account as an emergency fund because we can access those funds almost immediately. Anyway, brokerage accounts are awesome. And part of the benefit of being an investor in 2025 is we can automate contributions, which is another big thing that we’d like to hit on.

Matt Mulcock: Out of sight, out of mind. Go ahead, Chris. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Set it and forget it. One

Jake: Yes, huge.

Christine Uhen: of those. So am I, would I be correct or accurate to say this might be a high yield savings account? No.

Matt Mulcock: So a high-old savings account would be in the cash category. Uh, that is more on the, it’s still, mean, it’s kind of in this gray area of like, is it an investment account? It, it’s not, but it’s getting you better returns than let’s say theoretically. And now right now it is with rates, then it is like your checking account for sure. But it’s separate than a brokerage account that would then be, those assets would be invested in, let’s say, you know, individual stocks, mutual fund, ETF, something like that.

Christine Uhen: Right, a group, mutual funds.

Jake: A high yield savings account is a money market. It’s a guaranteed fixed rate of return, right, for your cash that you have. You’re not
investing it in the stock market.

Christine Uhen: no, I am using my brokerage account as a high yield savings. I am using it that way that it’s not a set account. I want it in there. I’m like, make more money with money. don’t have to have my hands on right now for a couple of years, easy withdrawal, a couple of days to get it out kind of thing. I’m like, I’m all in. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: Which you can do too, you can hold.

Matt Mulcock: And that’s okay. Yep. So that, that’s step one. and, and where people get confused on this is step one is set up an automatic saving somewhere out of sight, out of mind. That’s outside of your regular day to day checking account. Like that’s step one. Step two is then invest it properly based on your timeline, your risk tolerance, your goals. And that’s where I think sometimes Chris, you’re highlighting dentists sometimes we’ll get I’m confused on is like, well, I’m doing this. It’s all, you know, I have $2 million sitting here in my high yield savings account. It’s like, well, you know, and this isn’tf for, this isn’t till retirement. I’m 45 years old. It’s like, well, let’s turn the dial up. Let’s actually get that invested and grow this asset to get you again, the ultimate goal, getting you to retirement readiness. So there’s a difference for sure between a high-yield savings account and a brokerage account and investing it there.

Christine Uhen: But that is a key point to make the difference of that, you know, definitely putting it into an investment account that’s going
to be a better yield is again, that set it and forget it idea of putting something away and knowing it’s growing. That is what I think, again, one of these unsexy things that we talk about and yet such a great tool that if it’s not a part of a conversation, definitely get a hold of your financial planner. it so.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: Also great for people who are looking to retire early, right? You want to utilize different types of investment accounts. If you’re like, want to be done at 45 or 50 and you’re on pace to do so, you can access 401k or Roth funds or things until you’re 59 and a half until you’re 60. A brokerage account is a way to give you more flexibility, more liquidity at different stages of your life.

Christine Uhen: Mm.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, an insurance salesman will sit out there and try to tell you about being your own bank. And they try to tell you that a
whole life policy is the only way to do it. But a little nuance here, brokerage accounts are an excellent way to be your own bank. And this is what the super wealthy do. They build up a ton of assets in things like a brokerage account, liquid assets that are invested. They set up what’s called an S block security back line of credit. It’s literally being your own bank. You can take money out of that tax free. and use that.
There’s obviously a rate attached to it like any line of credit, but there’s a lot of advantages to something like a brokerage account that doesn’t feel sexy at all. And certainly when we’re like globally diversified portfolio, long-term growth, like it doesn’t feel sexy, but they are an incredible tool to use for dentists who are making a lot of money and have the ability to put away a lot of money. So a hundred percent on the advisor meter. All right, moving forward. Next topic. And my guess is we will maybe have to do a part two of this. We have a lot more left. ⁓ Budgeting. So we can talk about personal budgeting and then also maybe budgeting in the practice. Let’s start with budgeting on the personal finance side. Jake, what are your thoughts on this?

Jake: Budgeting can mean a lot of different things to different people and there’s different ways to do budgeting. In general, budgeting is
fantastic, about 90 % I would say for this. I mean, you could argue for 100. I’ll make the case for why there’s maybe a 10 % buffer, but 90 % at least. Budgeting is very important. At advisor meter, 90%. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: That you’re saying advice-o-meter. What, and let’s get nuanced here. What do you do? What do you, what do you define as
budgeting? What would you, how do you look at budgeting?

Jake: I would look at it as from the base level is tracking more than anything, which we talked about our first one, at least knowing where
your money is going. I think traditional sense we think of budgeting is like, I’m going to have these different envelopes or different buckets
for different things. Here’s my food bucket. Here’s my laundry bucket. Here’s my house. I kind of before the month starts, I can allocate to
all these buckets. What I would really think is important to do is just track more than anything, like know where your money’s going. First of
all, like how much is going towards debt payments? How much is going towards spending or housing? How much are you saving? How much going towards taxes? All of those things there. I’m less of a believer in getting really granular buckets for everything. Like don’t think that’s absolutely necessary. For example, like we are big believers in set to really aggressive savings rate, talking to our last point of automation and putting money in a brokerage account. If you can be aggressive,

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep.

Jake: put away 15, 20, 25 % of your income consistently every month. I’m of the opinion that you can kind of do whatever you want with whatever’s left over. You don’t need a super specific budget with the funds left over. You’re already taking care of your future self with your savings rate. Go crazy with kind of the rest of it. Now, some people really do love budgeting and it helps them just frame, keep their spending in check. If you do have a spending problem and that’s an issue, that’s when a budget can really come into play when you break down exactly all the different categories on the personal spending side. But in general, 90 % awesome. I think on the Dento meter, I think it’s one of those like people know what’s important and they should be doing it. Very few people actually are doing it because it is tedious and hard. So like 40, 50%, you know, it’s kind of what I’d say on the Dento meter there.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, Chris, let’s get you in here and maybe have a more of a tilt on the practice side.

Christine Uhen: I’m with Jake though on the the on the personal side too. I don’t think it’s as aware as it probably should be. And I think that’s it. The awareness, the number one of spending. So the history, you know, if you’re tracking that for a while and knowing where it’s going. But I am of the big bucket that if I have X amount, I can spend it how I want as long as I put my money aside for the savings and
investing in taxes, that sort of thing debt. knowing my my spend bucket, I can do whatever I want with my spend bucket kind of thing. once I know what my trends are and my averages are. So that I think is, I’m very aligned with Jake on that. From the budgeting on the dental side, this I think has a little more need to be observed, managed and budgeted for. So there are healthy benchmarks that we do help doctors work within from different categories of spending. I think it’s also impactful to know that when I spend more on one side, it’s going to positively impact something else. For example, if I invest more in marketing and increase my revenue, my fixed expenses on facility go down because just because my my production goes up, my percentages on team goes down because I’ve increased my productivity. So I think the impact of spending on the overhead overall profitability is where it’s really fascinating. So I do think keeping a tighter eye on that. knowing the benchmarks for that and working within that framework is necessary again to feed and create more on the spending side personally.

Matt Mulcock: Love it. got nothing to add. guys, you guys said it all. Perfect. Okay. Moving on doing your own accounting tax and bookkeeping work as a dentist. Uh, this, this one’s easy for me and I’ll throw it to you guys on the advisor meter. Zero percent. If you are a practice owner, do not be doing your own accounting tax or bookkeeping. There’s so many more things you could be spending your time, energy and focus on.

Jake: That’s great.

Christine Uhen: Mic drop. Thank you.

Matt Mulcock: This is a 0 % for me from an advisor perspective, uh, on the dentist, deno meter. I it’s like 50%, maybe fish. I think there’s a
lot, maybe it’s less, but I think there’s actually quite a few dentists out there that think they’re like saving money. Um, cause yeah. They
sure. get it. I totally get it, but it’s, you actually saving money? And I agree with you. It’s usually on the younger side because

Jake: Yeah, mainly young practice owners who are trying to save some money, which is understandable.

Christine Uhen: Mm.

Matt Mulcock: It takes time for you to understand for dentists to realize how valuable their time is and the opportunity cost of that trade off of like, if I’m doing my own tax accounting and bookkeeping to save whatever a a couple hundred bucks a month, thousand bucks a month, whatever it is. ⁓ you know, I’m, but I’m spending the time to do that. Where else could I be spending my time? That takes some time, usually for dentists to kind of like wrap their mind around. I don’t blame them, but just saying this is a 0%. You should be outsourcing this as quickly as you possibly can. I’ll give it to you guys. Chris, any thoughts on this one?

Christine Uhen: You had me at opportunity costs. That’s exactly what it comes down to is no one else can do certain things that you do. Delegate everything else. I’ll take that outside of, know, get somebody to help you with marketing, get somebody to help you, know, chair side when you can. Delegate, delegate to things that you can, anything you can delegate, do it because the opportunity costs within your own two hands as a dentist are immeasurable.

Matt Mulcock: Build your team. Build your team. Yeah. Yeah. Jake.

Jake: Nothing to add, you guys are on top of it.

Matt Mulcock: Love it, moving on. ⁓ Okay, this kind of goes, maybe we skip a couple of these here. ⁓ This one will be quick, I think. Picking individual stocks, Jake.

Jake: I so meet our like that we’ve come up with this term. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Dysometer.

Jake: 70, I mean, no, visometer, it would be, I was thinking about it wrong way. 30%, is that surprising to you, Matt? I’m not against picking
individual stocks. I guess like my baseline theory about investing is there’s no one right way to do it, honestly, right? There’s a million different ways to invest. Obviously there are ways that are more proven to be more successful over time. Individual investing typically is not
that way, right? There are triple PhDs on Wall Street.

Matt Mulcock: Little bit.

Jake: who like do this nine to five for decades and try and pick and choose the best stocks that are going to outperform the market. Yes, they like this is their whole life and the smartest people on planet Earth, right? Dedicated to doing this and study after study shows, yeah, Rabih here, that 95 % of those professional money managers do not outperform the overall market over just a five year period, right? It’s like really hard to do to sustain for overtime. So it is like in the long run, it is a losing game.

Matt Mulcock: or seven to seven.

Christine Uhen: Rabih.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, a professor.

Jake: history and research has shown us as a losing game to try and pick stocks over the course of a career. Can you be successful at doing it in the short term, maybe for a few years in a row type of thing like that? Sure. Again, but that’s not how you build wealth. You build wealth over decades and it’s just really hard to keep up over the long run. So we believe I guess like as a firm, know, buy like Back to our previous point, we want to own more of a globally divorced portfolio, take what the market can give you, have good behavior like compound and just work in your favor. But I’m not opposed to some people saying I just want to have a small section of my portfolio that I want to try and get some more returns and maybe buy some Nvidia or buy some Tesla or MicroStrategy or whatever type of word you want to use and they get some enjoyment out of it and I’m okay with that. so yeah, I would say 30%, I guess on the advisor meter, I think there’s a time and a place for certain picking stocks, especially if like you’ve already built a backbone of good market based returns and you have enough money and you’re kind of financially independent and you want to do some of it for fun. I don’t know. I think there’s nuance in this. I’m blabbing here. Anyway.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. No, I think, I think you’re total. So can I jump in here, Chris? And then I, so, ⁓ it is higher than I would have expected,
but, but I think you, you add some, some good caveats there. I have told many dentists this many clients, this, that if you have an itch that
needs to be scratched, if you’re like, I need to do this because it’s just for whatever reason it’s fun, or you just know that like,

Jake: Yes.

Christine Uhen: Please.

Matt Mulcock: I’m going to get on TikTok or Instagram or I’m going to talk to my buddies at the water cooler and like, I’m going to act on this. If, if the way to keep your core portfolio invested and not mess with it is by having this little game account for you, I’m all for it. Do it all day long. Just know Jake, you already highlighted the probabilities of success go way down, especially as a dentist. Let’s just be honest because you’re You just don’t have the time or energy or the.

Jake: But that’s the funny thing is even by putting in more time does not mean that you’re gonna have more success.

Matt Mulcock: Well, for sure.

Christine Uhen: Which that’s what bothers me. It’s like, where’s this time coming from? If it’s two o’clock and you’re checking the stocks, I’m like, why aren’t you checking hygiene?

Matt Mulcock: For sure. Yes. Yeah. Well, so that’s, that’s maybe it. That’s, that’s maybe it is that you, the time spent, talk about opportunity costs, the time spent and ROI on time invested is far and away better on your skillset and your business than it ever will be on your stock portfolio. The, the, what, where I struggle with this is the behavioral side. So one of the greatest, there’s a famous saying, one of the greatest tricks that Wall Street ever pulled is making you think luck is skill.

Jake: That is a problem. Yes.

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: And the problem with the last couple of years has been that a lot of dentists think they’re skilled because, not just dentists,
everybody thinks they’re skilled at investing. One day, at some point, that’s going to come back to fruition of saying like, ⁓ maybe that wasn’t so skilled. So my problem with picking individual stocks, it increases the odds of you thinking you’re more skilled than you are as
an investor.

Jake: Yeah, everybody, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: And it increases the odds of blowing yourself up when you start to think, to start to believe that. And so that’s where I struggle. And especially if you’re treating this like a casino and you’re trading stocks as opposed to long-term buy and hold investing with individual stocks. So to your point, Jake, there’s definitely some nuance there for sure. I would give this a lower score for most dentists. I’d probably put this at like 10, 15%. From an advisor perspective, I would More people than not should not be messing with individual stocks, in my opinion.

Christine Uhen: And if they do, it’s this much, right? It’s that small amount. It’s, I loved it. In addition to my long-term strategy kind of thing. Hey, I just got a bonus and it’s a, you know, it’s an extra thousand dollars. Go play with that, but not during work time.

Matt Mulcock: It’s rules-based. Yes. Yep. So.

Jake: If that’s what you like doing. Yeah, but there’s an argument to me too of like if your investments are taking away valuable time, not even from your practice, but maybe from just enjoying life, right? Like hobbies or yeah, like, like if you’re at the beach with your family and you’re checking your investment portfolio on Robin Hood, because you’re wondering how the market’s doing. like that’s probably like you can invest this in a way where it doesn’t have to take too much mental capital for you is also one of the benefits of not picking stocks. ⁓ Anyway, yeah.

Christine Uhen: life.

Matt Mulcock: hobbies, kids, Yep. Yeah. Love it. ⁓ yeah, that’s a good one. ⁓ okay. We’re going to go broad on this one tax secrets. So things like, ⁓ R and D tax credit. just talked about this this morning in a meeting, ⁓ conservation easements, opportunity zones. there’s, are there more coming to mind for you, Jake, from the tax secret side, you know, putting your car on your practice, you know, in the business and

Christine Uhen: Mental capital, I gotta write that down. That’s a good one.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: buying up a bunch of stuff at the end of the year, just tax, chasing tax deductions. Yeah. 179. mean, there’s some things that
are legitimate. Yeah. Short-term tax loophole, this kind of stuff. Tax secrets as a broad category. ⁓ Jake, let’s start with you. What’s the advisor meter on this topic of level of importance?

Christine Uhen: 179.

Jake: Yeah, this rental properties, yeah. ⁓ I want to say 0%. Maybe that’s a bit aggressive. 1520 % I would just say this. And they’re like, as far as like the Dento meter, this is like 100%. I mean, I can’t even tell you. It is just like every conversation is how can I pay less tax, which I get I understand the want and the need to pay less taxes. I would just say this when looking for an accountant in general, like there are no tax secrets really, especially in today’s teenage like we all know the tax code.

Matt Mulcock: ⁓ good. Off the charts. Yeah.

Jake: Every accountant knows a tax code. You’re not hiring someone for advice. Like how does he know the top super secret things that my other accountant didn’t know about that he’s going to get deductions for me. That’s not really it. And so I actually like to encourage people when they’re looking for an accountant or someone to do their taxes. It’s far less about that. Almost nothing about that and far more about like organization and responsiveness and communication and customer service and getting things done on time. Like that’s what you should be looking for with your accountant because there’s not these secret accountants out there.

Matt Mulcock: Communication.

Jake: We’re just saving people hundreds of thousands of taxes because they know the secret and other people don’t.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Chris, I want to get you in here. Any thoughts from your side? SOS.

Christine Uhen: Get help. This again, think it’s I think, yeah, well, I think it’s obviously people are asking about it and anybody that is bringing in a lot of revenue. Again, if I got for every time I helped a client grow and got yelled at by the accountant, well, great, they’ve
got more taxes. I’m like, I’m sorry. They’re making more money. So I understand, you know, that that’s a it’s a part of business growth, that
there are taxes in it.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Christine Uhen: anything I can do to reduce them is something that is important to any business owner. But it is it is beyond any individual. You’ve got to get help. And again, it’s I’m I’m a pretty straight shooter, so I don’t I don’t bend too many rules.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I mean. Well, and I’m with you, Jake. ⁓ We come across this all the time. You’re right. Dentometer, it’s off the charts.
⁓ There’s a huge difference between these tax secrets that don’t exist and like actual strategy. And we’re not downplaying strategy and
planning. Like there is things, there are things. We talked about the 401k earlier. Like there are things that you should be doing. ⁓ There
are, there’s a checklist of things that most practice owners should be focused on. It’s just that when we go beyond those things that feel
boring, And when they hear like tax planning, they immediately think, well, you’re going to have something that like no one else knows about. And that’s just not the case. anyone who’s telling you that is usually lying to you or trying to sell you something. So yeah, I’m with you. There are no tax secrets. are.

Jake: And there’s a limited number of things right in like the dental profession that you can take advantage of. Maybe there are like R &D tax credits and things that other industries can take advantage of that don’t really apply to dentists in your unique profession. And so

Christine Uhen: And even the work to get those credits can be, again, the lost opportunity, right?

Matt Mulcock: or the risk that happens, Yep.

Jake: This is where the tax planning comes in too, where like when we talk about tax planning, it’s less of here’s the things like there are a
list of things you can and maybe should be doing, but then it’s like, should you be doing those things or like should we be putting kids on
payroll and paying a lot of money? Well, if you don’t have a lot of cash in the practice and we’re looking to buy in a piece of equipment, maybe your money is best used there instead of doing the kids on payroll type of thing. Or if you want to buy a truck at the end of the year, donate to charity, whatever that looks like. There are other options like maybe your money’s best use elsewhere instead of trying to maximize your tax reduction, your tax refund or whatever. And so that’s what I like to call tax planning. It’s not just what should you be utilizing, but even if you should be looking at these things this year, it doesn’t even make sense for you.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: See, that’s what I’m saying. Get professional help.

Matt Mulcock: Yes. Love it. Guys, we’re powering through next topic, ⁓ owning your own owning your practice building. Chris, you want to? Okay.

Jake: I love this one.

Christine Uhen: I’m all, yeah, I would say 100 % it should be if it’s possible that it should be on the doctor’s mind and I can imagine as an
advisor meter. I think it’s a great advantage. I recommend it when I’m talking to clients to a hundred percent. If it’s a possibility, they can do that.

Jake: gets so many questions about real estate and my first response is like, is there an opportunity to buy your practice building? I honestly think that’s like the first place you should look. That’s like a 99 % success rate. feels like you’re already in the build, especially in different building types come into play here. Like if it’s a standalone building is mainly what we’re talking about here, like part of the bigger complex and whatnot. But you’re already in the building day to day, like you’re not essentially adding landlord duties, you have to pay rent. at least every month. So you might as well switch that to equity if you can. For most buildings, it doesn’t make sense. I just think it’s a great place to put your money. Again, you have to pay rent anyway. Most of time works out because you’re already in there using this space. You’re wanting to keep it nice as possible. I’m a fan. 100%.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. ⁓

Christine Uhen: Especially if you’re looking to grow too, that buying a facility to grow into is another great investment.

Matt Mulcock: I’m a fan, I’m a fan with the caveat that this should always be led by the business, like what’s better for the business than
it is just to own real estate. And I think where these can go wrong is dentists at the expense of their business going, switching locations, let’s say, you know, and getting a worse location in a worse area with less parking and all this stuff, just because they.

Jake: Yeah. or too big of a building we see that sometimes Matt where it’s like I want to expand and I’m buying a $4 million building for my practice and that’s a whole different beast. Yes.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. And then you become a landlord, right? The, dentist, well, the dentist is like, I’m to go buy this big commercial building and I’m going to rent this part of it. But then I have five tenants and that’s where it gets a little tricky. Exactly. But all us being equal. agree with you guys. If you want to get into real estate, let’s start with the business or the practice real estate first and see if that makes sense. Just again, not at the expense of your own practice.

Christine Uhen: Well, and landlocked, yeah, stuck there. Jake (1:00:30) That’s a different business. Not a necessity. I have a lot of people ask if like we have to. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Appropriate caveat. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Not, not a necessity, not a necessity. And this whole notion that like I’m renting, so I’m throwing money out, you know, down
the toilet. That is the most overused, ridiculous term. It is just not accurate. You are paying just as if you own the building, you know, different mechanisms, but you’re paying just like a home. If you’re renting a home, you’re paying to live somewhere, have a roof over your
head. There’s different ways to do it, but it’s not throwing money on the toilet. It’s just a different mechanism.

Jake: That rent payment allows you to collect all the money that you’re collecting. It allows you to have your $1.5 million business by paying that check. Yep.

Matt Mulcock: Let’s go. Exactly. It allowed exactly right. Part of doing business. ⁓ okay. Let’s, let’s see. We’re, we’re, we’re, let’s just do it. What’s the rapid fire? We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. ⁓ back to Roth conversions, rapid fire, Jake hit it.

Christine Uhen: Hard to do in business, yeah.

Jake: Let’s just hit all of these. Do we just go rapid fire, Matt, and just have a long podcast? Pfft. Incredible. Yes. There’s kind of a lot of nuances to this that we don’t need to get into like in the weeds. Can you or can you not type of deal but back to Roth conversions are awesome. Most dentists should be taking advantage of this. Again, there’s situations where you may have IRAs or different things pre-tax money where you can’t do rollovers whatnot but in general, 100%. This is great.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Totally agree. Chris. Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. A hundred percent. If possible, a hundred percent on the, the visometer for sure. All right. Next topic. This is bigger, but we’ll go quick. Uh, the idea of fire. So financial independence, retire early. The idea of a dentist being like, I need to get done. Like the 35 year old that’s like, I want to retire in 10 years. Uh, Christine Uhen (1:01:55) What he said. Yes, please next

Matt Mulcock: Chris, let’s start with you. Any thoughts on the advisor meter side? No. ⁓ don’t start with you. Okay, we can, we don’t have to.

Christine Uhen: No, don’t start with me. Oh, oh,

Jake: No. ⁓

Christine Uhen: oh, I. I don’t see it be, okay, walk me through this a little bit more. Tell me a little bit more what you mean by financial independent retire early. Is this because I’m gonna flip my business and buy another one? Just I’m gonna work super hard?

Matt Mulcock: So this is a. So this is more broad. This is more broad than that. So this is a movement that I, this is a movement in the financial kind of world. ⁓ it took hold, I don’t know how long ago it got really popular. I’m going to say about 10, 15 years ago ish. ⁓ like a huge movement of like, I’m going to save every single dollar I can save. I’m going to live off rice and beans and cut every expense I possibly could cut to be financially independent as early in life as I possibly can.

Christine Uhen: Okay.

Jake: But like 40. Yeah, it’s not gonna be done with 40. I think it’s a big Gen X thing, honestly, Chris. Gen X, I think it’s a big deal.

Christine Uhen: Is this a generational movement, would you say? OK, yeah, this is so not being one. I don’t relate to this. Call me a boomer. Go ahead. OK, what? It’s kind of a tough way to live for 15 years. Is it healthy? Is it OK? Did he just say no?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, Jake nailed it. Jake nailed it. He just said it’s lame.

Jake: It’s kind of like the whole thing of like, am going to not get any coffee for 15 years. So I can at some point down the road, splurge and get myself coffee, right? Type of thing where it’s like, I’m taking away all the things that I enjoy right now for 10 or 15 years or whatever, just to hopefully enjoy those things down the road. I think that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. Yeah, it’s, think it’s a lot of people are just very unsatisfied with work and going into work, which I think sometimes can happen with dentists where they become disenfranchised with the industry and things like this isn’t super fun to me.

Christine Uhen: Well, I hope nothing happens to him.

Jake: And they’re like, I just want to be done and you know, get out of the rat race type of deal. ⁓ But in general, I just don’t think it works a lot to logistically. There’s a lot of issues with it, like building a portfolio to last you 60 plus years type of things like that 70 years, the loss of purpose by not working. ⁓ Really restricting expenses and lifestyle. I just think there’s a lot of issues with it. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: We have the loss of life while you are working is just as much as the other way around. Okay. Okay. Yeah, me too. Uh-uh, not doing it.

Matt Mulcock: I I’m with you. think this is one of the most under or sorry, most overrated concepts in finance. ⁓ everything you just said, Jake, ⁓ I think this ends in disaster for most people more than anything. I understand it. I really do. I understand that this can serve as a proxy for purpose for people of like, I don’t, I don’t know what I even want out of my life. So, ⁓ I’m just going to say like, Like it’s an easy goal to have and to articulate to be like, I’m going to retire. Like I think a lot of like super type a people, this fits really well personality wise of like, here’s a very specific goal that I can achieve. But I would dare say most people, even if they do achieve it, it ends up being such a far and away disappointment at some point that they’re like, wow, this is actually not that cool. I would. I would dare say most people have that disappointment with something like this. So I’m with you. I would give this a, we’re all about retirement readiness and making work optional all about it, but there being balance over burnout type of approach to this type of thing as well. So.

Christine Uhen: Yeah, life, full life, rich life, life now, cashflow now, retirement later, all of that seems much more logical, achievable, doable, and enjoyable than suffering for 15, suffering, doesn’t need to be suffering. And you can still have financial readiness, retirement readiness at a fair and manageable time.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Yep, totally agree. Yep, totally agree. ⁓ We didn’t give a score to that, but we’re gonna say, I think we’re all saying at visometer, we’re gonna give it a zero, 10, 15, I don’t know. All right, moving on, whole life insurance. Jake, rapid fire.

Jake: zero percent. There are very few black and white, like in the personal finance space, very few black and white, like you should do this, you shouldn’t do this type of decisions and things. If there is one whole life insurance is as close as it gets. I honestly think it is just a general no for me. ⁓ The exceptions are so few and far between that it’s just it’s a no, not great.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. I’ll give one exception that’s come up personally for me and with a couple of clients of mine, um, not buying it upfront, but most term policies. So I guess really quick definition we’ve talked to us before, but if, if just to refresh, um, life insurance, you’re either
doing term or permanent term insurance. You have a certain term, certain amount of time you’re going to be paying premiums 10, 15, 20, 30 years. Once that term is over. You no longer pay premiums and the death benefit goes away. Permanent is as it states permanent. You’re paying usually building up some type of cash value. They’re usually quite expensive, but the life, the death benefit goes for, you know, for your whole life. most term policies have a convertible like ability to convert. ⁓ I’ve had a couple of cases come up recently with clients with health issues that they cannot get. ⁓ additional life insurance and their situation would would Like they we do want to make sure they keep that in place. And so we’ve talked about converting it ⁓ But I’ve done this for almost 15 years I can literally think of maybe two or three situations that we’ve even had I’ve even brought that conversation up So to your point Jake, it is really rare that we think a whole life insurance policy and the way it’s sold is the problem. That it’s some magical thing. That’s a 0 % for sure. Any way
that it’s sold, come talk to us. We will debunk all of them. So Chris, don’t know if you have anything to add on this one. Okay. Moving on. But you, will on this one, ⁓ disability insurance specifically on the business side, business interruption insurance or a business overhead policy. Let’s talk about that one for a sec.

Christine Uhen: Not a one. Nope. Yep. I think for solo practitioners, this is a very important topic to address. I think it should be at 80 % on their mind. I think as an advisor, it’s something I bring up a lot, one or both of those, and it needs to be addressed. Life happens. And depending on, I’m thinking about those actuarials, what do you do for fun? If you swim with sharks, you’re gonna need some protection against that. So I think it is a risk mitigation policy that needs to be addressed and is not talked about enough.

Jake: dentistry. I know that’s the downside. Yeah. Christine Uhen (1:08:46) It’s not inexpensive. No insurance really is inexpensive, but the minute you need it, it’s you’re much happier that you have it. And I have recommended it to most clients.

Jake: Sneakily one of the most physical professions out there, right? And you just have to have it, have that disability insurance. It isn’t cheap like Chris said, sorry. Just comes to the territory of being a dentist. need it. The general rule of thumb is get enough disability, at least on the personal side to cover personal living expenses, right? Is an easy way to think about how much coverage you need. If you spend 10 grand a month, you know about a $10,000 policy is going to make sense for you.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yeah. Nothing to add there. I think it’s a hundred percent. If you can part from the advisor meter, ⁓ you need it for sure. Especially Chris, to your point, if you’re a single producer, solo practitioner, you’re going to need some type of risk mitigation there. So big. okay. Two more here. ⁓ rental properties. We kind of alluded to it on the short-term rental loophole and the tax secrets, but just rental properties in general thoughts on this.

Christine Uhen: solo practitioner.

Jake: 60 % advisor meter 65 70 % somewhere in that range. Mainly for if this is your personality kind of goes back to I mean, we would recommend this more than individual stock picking but we have a lot of clients who like rental properties real estate is something as humans I don’t know why this is we love rental properties we love real estate the tangible something of a disturb something deep within our bosoms we love it we love the idea of the income coming in right every single month it just

Matt Mulcock: ⁓ higher than I thought you’d give it. Hahaha.

Jake: We stay awake at night just dreaming of some rental income apparently. ⁓ Not a bad thing at all. Real estate is a great place to park your money to grow your wealth over time. It is a long term investment. What I would debunk for most people is it’s not a place to put your money and you’re going to be making three grand a month and just passive income. No work on your end immediately. That is a myth. ⁓ But if you are the type of personality who’s okay being a landlord and you want to invest in a property that you feel like is going to be around for a long time. ⁓ and it kind of fits well within your practice and your other investments. Go for it. Let’s have a conversation about it.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Uh, Chris, anything you want to add to that?

Christine Uhen: Again, balancing the portfolio, real estate is part of that. I will say passive is a false term. So thinking that this is not going to take any time. So I’m going back to what are you doing with your time, right? If this is affecting you, is it stressing you? Is it worth? Because it’s not, it’s not a set it and forget it like many other investments are.

Jake: Yes. Yes.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah passive income along with fire one of the most overrated misused terms in finance for sure Passive income I think is number one most misunderstood You know phrases that people use so I totally agree I’m with you Jake. I guess the one thing I always remind people of is Like any asset class I Jake you said it earlier. There’s no there’s no one way to invest or build wealth. There is no one way So I acknowledge that. think more times than not, this trips people up, trips dentists up, because they think it’s something that it’s actually not with rental properties as a whole. The biggest reminder here is that building wealth takes time. Any of these investments, any of these asset classes, it’s a grind. It’s a mental, emotional grind because it takes a long time, whether that be in the stock public markets, whether that be building your practice in the private market or whether it be real estate. And I think for whatever reason, Whatever that stirring deep in our bosoms, Jake, as you mentioned, people think real estate is some fast track and it just isn’t, it just isn’t. So if you’re willing to have that personality to do, be a landlord for the next multiple decades.

Jake: No, it is not. Nope. It’ll take you 15 years before you start seeing a consistent money coming. I feel pretty comfortable saying yeah or
longer.

Matt Mulcock: Yes, or longer.

Christine Uhen: And who knows what the rates are going to do over time too, right?

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. All right. Last one should have started with this one. The Dentist money summit. Go ahead. Go ahead. We’ll start with Chris Dentist money summit. What’s the advisor meter?

Christine Uhen: Advisometer, a hundred percent must be there. And again, I would advise any dentist, if you’re not thinking about a great place to go to get CE and meet the people that you’ve only seen on zoom for years and really have some great camaraderie and a little bit of fun along the way, top of my list.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, Jake?

Jake: 100 % nothing to add to what Chris said. That’s awesome.

Matt Mulcock: Every night I put my kids to bed and we have a routine and, as we’re, as I’m going to shut the door, they yell to me, dad, and they have to go through this list of like, I love you to Jupiter, to the moon around at infinity times and back. It’s the cutest thing ever. That is how much I think this is on the charts of coming to the dentist money summit. And that’s, ⁓ is how much my kids say they love me at night yeah. ⁓ yeah, but, ⁓

Christine Uhen: ⁓ Now that just touched me deep within my soul there, man, within our bosom.

Matt Mulcock: Honestly, we would love to have you there. It’s going to be a great time. Practice on your terms is the theme this year. All whole slate of new speakers. ⁓ the professor himself, Rabih Dimachki is going to be speaking, which is going to be great. If you want more
dentistmoneysummit.com we would love to have you guys. covered a ton. That was a jam packed episode. Amazing. If you’re still listening,
you’re one of the cool ones and, hopefully you got a lot of value out of this. Jake.

Christine Uhen: Amazing session here in studio.

Matt Mulcock: Christine, thanks so much for being here. Everyone, thanks for listening. Until next time, take care. Bye-bye.

Christine Uhen: Bye everybody.

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