The First Financial Question We Ask Every Dentist – Part 1 – Episode #548

Will Gochnour
I feel like it’s counterintuitive for a lot of people that this is how we start. I hope it, I think it sets us apart a little bit as the way that we view financial advice. as this is the number one call that we want to start with. it’s, we say discovery, but it’s like a getting to know you. It’s a vision. It’s a preferences. We’re trying to figure out all of these things about yourself. And so we’ve always said there’s two parts to a financial plan, the quantitative and the qualitative.

And we’re going to get to the quantitative, that’s the numbers and the tax returns and the profit and loss statements and the bank account balances. Obviously that’s important. I think that’s what most financial plans lead with. We care a lot about the qualitative side of a financial plan. And that’s this, that’s the discovery call. That’s what makes you, client, different than any other client that we’re working

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, totally agree. it, don’t know how you guys feel, but what I have sensed sometimes from clients when they first come on and we present this discussion of saying like, this is going to be the first call we have. I tend to sense a little bit of hesitation sometimes that people kind of, because they’re, kind of like, what is this? Cause they’re not really expecting it. Do you guys have, what has been your experience with

Victoria Ferguson
I feel like a lot of people are like, when can I retire? Why are we talking about this? So I don’t know. I always explain it like this helps us cater that financial advice to help you get that much closer to retirement or your financial goals. it very much matters because at the end of the day, we want to know what you can stick with for a really long time. And that’s like part of what I try to get out of these conversations so that I can meet you where you were we can do something that’s actually realistic for you.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, I love that. So even though there’s hesitation on the front end, I’ve also yet to ever have someone come out of these discussions and not be like, Holy cow, that was actually amazing. That was really helpful. Jake, what do you feel you get that same response?

Victoria
yeah.

Jake Elm
Yeah, I feel like you have to start in this place with not talking about the numbers. This is the biggest cliche we talk about all the time is that personal finance is more personal than finance, right? We say over and over and over again, but it really is true. Every person has different goals and things they want to accomplish in life and there is no one size fits all financial plan, right? Like making as much money as possible is not a financial plan. It’s really just what do you want out of life? What makes the most sense for you? What’s your ideal lifestyle look

And how can we make the money that you’re making work in that favorite work towards accomplishing those goals? And so we have to start with just what do you want? And then once we know a little bit of that answer, I know it’s hard for people to answer that question. You we’re not going to know exactly what we’re going to want over the next 50 years of our lives, but we can start somewhere and say, this is my ideal life. And I want to try and make my money work towards that goal. So I think you just, yeah, it’s like counterintuitive to start from that place of like, let’s just talk about your life. But I think you have to in order to do proper and good financial planning.

Victoria
Well, and to piggyback, I was just gonna say, to piggyback off of that, feel, if you think about all of the questions where the answer is, depends, it depends on this stuff. That’s why we start with it. Because if you ask us, well, when can I retire? Well, it depends when, how much do you wanna spend, what does it look like? And that’s, for me, why we have this conversation first, so that the rest of,

Will Gochnour
Well, I think I… Yeah, go ahead.

Victoria Ferguson
you know, more of that quantitative stuff doesn’t lead to, depends, you know.

Matt Mulcock
So true. Will, what were you going to say?

Will Gochnour
I think this is one of my favorite things that we do. I think it establishes a level of maybe trust just immediately with the client. I think it’s therapeutic for a lot of people to go through these questions. You’re never talking about this stuff with anybody else in your life, maybe other than your spouse. I’ve gotten on multiple of these where it’s like even the spouses haven’t talked about this stuff before. You’re sure as heck not talking about it with family and friends and those kinds of things.

Victoria Ferguson
Yeah, you don’t think about it.

Will Gochnour
It’s the first time answering a lot of these questions for a lot of people. And so I think it puts some effort. makes them, it gets them a little bit out of their comfort zone. But I think at the end of the day, it’s really therapeutic to go

Matt Mulcock
I totally agree with that. It’s my favorite discussion. And what you just said is so spot on. I love so much when I hear a couple together, we’re having these conversations and I love when I hear from someone, man, no one’s ever asked us this or holy cow, we’ve been married for 10 plus years. We’ve never talked about this. To me, that’s what makes our work the most fulfilling and most satisfying is these types of discussions. So, all right, let’s jump in. think we’ve set the stage just to, just so really quick.

As I was mentioning at the very beginning. So people often ask us, what does this look like? So you have a consultation, a client’s like, okay, we’re ready. We want, we want to come on board. we send out a client agreement client. Again, their very first engagement with us with the advisor is this call this, we, call it internally. A discovery call. I think we’ve started calling it Victoria. were just saying, I think we’ve started like calling it to the, to

client, the get to know you call, I think, or something like that. just, we, well, we just, thought you said this. we, maybe that was Will. I get you too confused sometimes. Sorry. very similar. okay. So we thought again, we’re, we’re to do this in a two -part series, because there are quite a few questions that we ask it through this discussion. And sometimes we kind of like riff depending on the answers that we’re getting.

Victoria Ferguson
wasn’t me. That was Will. I know, yeah, one of us is 6 ‘5″, the other is 5 ‘4″.

Will Gochnour
We’re pretty similar, yeah.

Jake Elm
Hahaha

Matt Mulcock
but we have kind of a go -to set of questions that we start off with. And we just thought it would be helpful to share what these questions are and kind of share also the answers that we get and how we kind of dig into these deeper. And then probably along the way, share our insight from our own personal lives with these questions as well and share those things. let’s just start first question. We always start

there’s kind of two ways to phrase this. I’ll go throw out both and then I want to get your guys’ thoughts and what you hear the most. again, two ways we phrase this, but we always start with some version of why is money important to you? Another way to phrase this is what is it about money that’s important to you? What are, what are you guys getting when you, when you ask this question again, I assume we all start, I think we all start with this question. know I always do. What are some thoughts, your initial kind of like responses you’re usually getting?

Victoria Ferguson
I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 80 to 90 % of the time security pops up as a big one.

Matt Mulcock
Almost every time for me,

Will Gochnour
Yeah, I feel like there’s a, I feel like it’s like a ladder is kind of how I look at it. And the bottom rung is security and the top rung of the ladder is freedom. And we get those two questions the most, and then there’s always something in between. But those are the two themes that I hear is like, again, security is covering all your bases, paying your bills, not being evicted from your home and like taking care of your kids, putting food on the table. And freedom is another, like the kind of the highest level of money where when you have

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Will Gochnour
enough, you can do whatever the heck you want. so depending on where they’re at in your life, and I feel the same way, know, like my answer at certain points in my life was security, like putting food on the table. And then, you know, as I’ve maybe grown up a little bit, it’s shifted away from that because that is somewhat taken care of at this point and moving more towards like, how do I get to more freedom and, you know, making my money work for

Jake Elm
Yeah, I think that’s what you get freedom or security most of the time. Sometimes it’s interesting where if we are talking to a couple, you’ll get one spouse who will say one thing and another spouse says another thing. And that’s a good conversation to have sometimes of what do mean by that? I do think it’s helpful to to dive deeper into, you we all you’re talking about. What does money mean to me if I have enough of it, then I have the freedom to do what I want. I always like to ask, well, what do you want to do? Then it’s kind of a natural next question for me is, OK, let’s

Matt Mulcock
Jake, what do you think?

Victoria Ferguson
Mmm, I like

Jake Elm
It’s the classic if you won the lottery tomorrow, you know, like would anything in your life change? Would you do anything differently? Are you tied to certain things right now solely because of the money? And that always leads to an interesting conversation. And more often than not, I actually have people who will say, I’m not sure. I don’t actually know if my life would change all that much. And I just find that that interesting.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, I mean, we are, we all hear the same things. and, Jake, love that follow -up question. was going to ask you guys too. When you get these answers, cause I’m the same way I get these answers all the time. It’s I could probably write out what most people say on the surface, but I think that’s where we, think the importance of this is digging even deeper on all these types of questions. And if you’re doing this again, I guess, maybe as a side note, if you’re listening to this,

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Matt Mulcock
Go through these questions. Like we’re going to give you all the questions that we ask. Go through this with your spouse or partner. Like think about these, reflect on these questions. I think it’s really important, but so you guys here, okay, freedom, you hear security, you hear whatever that is. Do you just leave it there? Do you leave it there and move on? Jake, you already kind of gave some follow -up, maybe a follow -up question. what else do you guys

Jake Elm
Yeah. I think the hope with all of this, right, broad strokes is we want to just try and get some intentionality behind your money. think a little bit more than maybe, I think all of us get caught up into, go to work and I try and my money and I’m kind of on this hamster wheel of just doing that and I buy stuff and there’s just no intention really behind your finances. And I think that’s a big point of this question and all the questions. Again, they’re intentionally broad because we just want to hear what people think about money, but it’s what does money mean to you?

now that we know maybe freedom or security or something else there, then it’s okay. Well, how can we use money best to get what you want here? so, yeah, my natural next question is usually, okay, let’s play this out a little bit. Let’s say money wasn’t an issue in your life currently. How would your life change? Would you go to work as much? Would you not? Would you vacation a little bit more? Would you not? Would you pick up a different hobby? And then you can even go from there of, well, is there anything?

then let’s forget the money part of this. Is there something that’s keeping you from those things already? we just actually without stockpiling a huge amount of money at the end of 30 years, can we start doing some of those things currently when that make you a little happier, more fulfilled, right?

Will Gochnour
Trying to live your rich life, that’s one of our goals. This is the reason we do this call is because it’s less about the spreadsheet and more about how do we get to your optimal life and those answers that you’re answering it when you’re talking about this stuff. so one question that I’ll ask as a follow up is how are you raised around money and how has that shaped your relationship with money? And that’s one that I love because it’s something usually it’s like they’re connecting all the dots as they start answering it.

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Will Gochnour
Because it’s again, it’s like I don’t really think about my parents and how they raised me in relation to our finances But I know that if I look back on my life, there’s things that they did that have shaped the way I think about money and whether I’m ultra frugal or a massive spender it has a lot to do with how you were raised so That’s one. like a

Matt Mulcock
I love that too, Will. And you mentioned this earlier, we’ve kind of alluded to this of like, unless you take the time to have these conversations, you’re often not thinking about that kind of stuff about what it was, the impact of how you were raised or truly like even something as simple as like, I don’t know what is important about money to me. I do think it’s so interesting. get the same answer again, some, some version of like security and freedom, but I’m going to ask a follow up to this, to the group. Do you believe.

that financial freedom is the goal. Like just generally speaking, is that ultimately what people are going for is financial freedom? Like that’s the ultimate goal.

Victoria Ferguson
No, I think people just, they just want to know they’re going to be okay. And I feel like that’s, that’s where a lot of this comes from, especially with that question and, being the first question out of all of this. And for a lot of people, it’s their very first time even thinking about any of these things. I feel like a lot of it is just like, no, I just want to know I’m going to be okay that I’m going to be able to live the life I want to live. But then Jake, to your point, it’s like, well, what is that? And they’re

I don’t know. I think financial freedom is just a buzzword and it sounds nice, but I think at the end of the day, like people just want to know that they’re going to be okay and they can live the life that they want to live. Um, and will to give you a study that kind of goes off of what you were just saying. Most of our money habits are actually developed before the age of 10. So your kiddos are all watching you guys and

Matt Mulcock
boy, boy.

Victoria Ferguson
They’re already gonna solidify. You start learning it, I think by the age of seven, but before the age of 10, like they’ve kind of already developed a lot of their financial habits.

Will Gochnour
a lot of pressure.

Matt Mulcock
So as a side note, I’ve seen these various types of studies that not even just about money, but like the level of impact you have on your children before certain ages. Like I’ve seen a bunch of stuff. I’m terrified, terrified, terrified, terrified. Yeah. Jake, it seemed like you had some thoughts there when I, when I said that, I asked that

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Victoria Ferguson
Are you guys not terrified of that? Like, that would, that would floor me. is this a bad idea?

Jake Elm
Don’t tell me that. I just don’t listen to it. I just don’t listen.

Jake Elm
think it’s an awesome question. was just really thinking as I didn’t, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about it. So, well, your question is, is financial freedom the ultimate goal? think no, right?

Matt Mulcock
Yeah. So yeah, to back up, I’m saying it’s almost sometimes like a rote response we get from people. It’s almost like, well, duh, financial freedom or duh, when can I retire? That’s what I’m calling you. I think that’s so ingrained in this, like financial planning kind of like world of like, I’m engaging a financial planner to answer, when can I retire? I’m just wondering like, is financial freedom the ultimate goal? I want to hear your thoughts. I agree with what your first response is, but I want to just kind of hear.

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Matt Mulcock
your thoughts on

Jake Elm
Yeah, I don’t think so. Obviously I could be wrong on all of this, but I don’t think that when we get to the end of our lives, we’re to be like, man, I’m super happy that I was financially free, right? That was the first thing I think of when I get towards the end of my life. I think life is probably a lot more than money and becoming financially free again. Maybe not. Maybe it is all just about earning a ton of money.

But I do think there are other more things that are more important to people than just money, like family and friendships and experiences and all these different things, spirituality, whatever it may be. So I think we answer that question by saying financially free. It’s coming from a good place, but I do think it’s important to say that because we all, think we ought to say, hey, I’ll become financially free and then I will have the time

have a better relationship with my kids or do the things that I want or whatever they’re like. I think we think it’s that we do this first and then we can have all the other things we want in our life. but I think it’s nice. I like your question, Matt, because it makes us pause and step back and say,

Jake Elm
I think it’s an awesome question because it causes us to step back and revab and be like, yeah, money is not the end goal. It is just a tool to get all these other things that I want in my life,

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, I totally agree. We actually just talked about this a little bit on the money circle review, Victoria. don’t know. I don’t know when these will come out at like in succession or whatever. but I could not agree more. have become more and I, again, I reserve the right to change my mind as things develop in my life and clients and all that. But I, I have become pretty, I have a pretty strong belief around this now that financial freedom is not the goal in my opinion.

I think it is a worthy goal. It’s great to be thinking about it. I think a better way to look at it, at least in my own life and what I try to share with my clients and when we do content and all this is financial peace, finding financial harmony. Like I think you can very easily have financial peace and financial harmony and not be financially independent. And equally, I think you can be financially independent and never have peace with your money. I’ve actually seen

Will Gochnour
Love

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Jake Elm
Yes, all the

Matt Mulcock
I have seen so many people, clients, people in my life, whatever, you hear stories about this of people that are filthy rich who are been financially independent for decades. And they are, they have the opposite of financial peace. All they have is chaos and strife and stress. So I don’t, and everything you just said, Jake, as well, like I don’t, I don’t think financial independence is the goal. I really don’t. So, and for most people, it’s also decades away.

So you’re telling me you’re creating an environment when you, this is your main goal, basically saying, all right, I’m choosing to not be content and happy with my money or my life until I achieve this equation, this math equation. Like I’m not, I’m not down with that. Will you have thoughts on

Will Gochnour
Yeah, I just think it’s, it is a funny, I love that working towards financial peace over financial freedom is, the goal. And I just think our, our culture is so ingrained in like grind for 30 years and then retire and go do stuff when you’re 65, when your kids are all grown up and not like it’s, mean, I wish there was a way you could retire at age 30 and then go back to work at age 55, 60 and work for the rest of your life. you know, but it

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, totally. We might have it backwards here, yeah.

Will Gochnour
It seems a little backwards, right? Like, shouldn’t you enjoy the years where your kids are young and you’re healthy and you can travel and yeah, you need money to do all that stuff. But what if you just had the bare minimum amount of money?

Victoria Ferguson
Yeah, we should get social security now. Can we reverse this? Like, can I have social security now and then later on I’ll feed into the program?

Matt Mulcock
Yeah. Social Security now.

Will Gochnour
I just think that’s what clients are, I think that’s what they’re saying when they say financial freedom. They’re like, how do I get done working as soon as possible because I don’t want to work anymore. But it’s like, I think, can we find a life where you work and you have financial peace and you spend time with your kids and you have time for relationships, or are we so engulfed in work and trying to get to this arbitrary finish line that we ignore all that stuff for the bulk, a good bulk of our like happy, normal, healthy lives?

and then we do it later, I just think it’s kind of funny.

Matt Mulcock
I totally agree. We could probably spend the entire podcast on just this one question, which this is a whole bigger topic. have so many thoughts, but we can move forward. I totally agree, Will. I guess last word to Victoria, any other thoughts you have on this specific, just that specific question. I want to make sure everyone got their thoughts out of just that, like the idea of like, financial freedom the goal?

Victoria Ferguson
from this alone.

Victoria Ferguson
Yeah, no, I like this commentary because for the biggest reason is because you can have financial peace whenever. I feel financially at peace right now and I’m nowhere near retirement. I’ve got a few decades on me, but I feel financially at peace. So that’s a lot more attainable and you can live most of your life feeling peace with your money. You’re going to live a very

relatively small portion of your life being financially independent and which space do you want to live in for your life, right? You get to decide that, you really do. But yeah, think last thing I’ll say about the question, it’s the warm up question, so it is the one where I feel like the walls are up the most and then the rest of the questions are really meant to dig into like what that means and our follow up questions and what not.

Matt Mulcock
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Including the one Will brought up, which I think is such a good one of like share with me how you were raised around money. So yeah, love all that. okay. So we’ll go to the next question that we kind of follow up with. And again, as Will already pointed out, and we’re not saying that every conversation is like, we’re following a script. We, a lot of times it leads to other conversations or follow up questions. We’re just kind of giving you the outline of what we use. next question we often ask is something along the lines of how financially secure do you feel?

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Matt Mulcock
at this point in your life? What thoughts or questions or answers do you, sorry, what answers do you guys usually get?

Jake Elm
Yeah, sometimes I like to I like to give them a scale like give me a let’s do one to 10. Like where do you put yourself on that scale? I find that to be helpful sometimes. You’ll get a wide variety here. We have some people come to us. We’re like, this is a two. The reason I am reaching out to you is I just have no clue what’s going on with my money. I feel stressed about it today and I just worried I need a plan in place. But I do guess I have talked to quite a few dentists who are like, you know what, Jake, I feel pretty good right now. Like if you’re asking me, they they splice up the question.

They will say day to day I can pay my bills. I’m not worried about it. Things are fine. Like that’s like an eight or a nine on that scale. However, when I think about my future, that’s like a three or a two. And that’s why I’m reaching out to you guys because like day to day I feel great, but I know that maybe my practice is successful and I’m building a money and I need my money to start growing and doing things for me. So I’ll often have people kind of answer this in two parts. Like how do I feel right now? Or then how do I feel about other things happening? Does that make sense?

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, totally. Victoria, you agree with

Victoria Ferguson
Yeah, I agree with that. Or another way I’ll ask it too is just like, tell me how good you feel about your money right now. Scale of one to 10, kind of similar. I used to track this with my clients like every meeting, like, hey, on a scale of one to 10, how are we feeling today about it? Maybe I’ll pick that back up, I should. But yeah, I think this one is very specific to the person. Sometimes it’s like, I really don’t feel good. I’m not financially secure. This is why I have you. Or some people are

Yeah, I’m chilling. I have all this cash. I don’t know what to do with it type of thing. this, I mean, for any of these, there’s really no right or wrong answer, but this one I get the most variety.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, yeah, I would agree. Will, you have thoughts?

Will Gochnour
Well, yeah, I just think it gives you a look into the person a little bit. And I think about how I would answer this question. And I think, you know, depending on maybe the level of financial anxiety that resides inside that person is maybe how they’ll answer the question. So, you know, I have some clients that now in hindsight, knowing how they answer the question, it makes a lot of sense. And some that it just it’s a starter to be like, are you a stress ball or are you like a go with the flow type person?

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Will Gochnour
and

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, because you’re saying you see objectively how their balance sheet looks and their cash flow looks and then you’re comparing that to their answer and you’re kind of like, this is just a personality thing. Is that what you’re saying?

Victoria Ferguson
Mmm.

Will Gochnour
I, in a way, I think that it gives you a good insight. It’s a good, like, a little bit of a stress test into the mind of the person. Like, because most people calling us aren’t like living paycheck to paycheck, are needing to take out loans to Dollar Tree loans to survive. Most people are in a broad sense of the word financially secure. They can pay their bills.

Matt Mulcock
Mm -hmm.

Will Gochnour
But some people just feel so anxious about it for whatever reason, whatever it ends up being. And that client is a certain archetype that, you know, maybe has a little bit more stress around everything going on in the financial plan, as opposed to somebody else who’s a little more just whatever, go with the flow. I’m good. It’s chill.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, it brings up an interesting point and something we talked about before we even jumped on, I think it’s easy for us to look at the global numbers, right? We were just talking before, national numbers around how much does someone have saved for retirement or the median household income or whatever, and then to compare that to people who are calling us. And if you compare those two things, you’re kind of like, how are you stressed right now?

But I think what you’re pointing out, Will, and what we see all the time and why we have empathy a lot of times in these situations is it’s not that easy. It’s not that simple. I think a lot of these people who are calling us, like we only obviously only work with dentists, their reference groups are other dentists. It’s their peer group. And so they’re just comparing to what they know. And so, and this is why I tell people all the time, like the feelings of stress or insecurity, some of my biggest clients have.

Like those feelings are the same as an associate who just started their first job out of college and they have mountains of student loan debt. Like the stimulus is different, but the feelings are the same. So that’s, I think it’s really hard when someone’s like looking at someone else’s situation and being like, how are you stressed right now? It’s like, I’m, cause I’m projecting on that person and saying, if I was in your situation, I’d feel different. It’s like, well, you know, you might not, cause we’ll wait to your point.

You’re saying maybe that’s just, they’re just a stressed, anxiety induced person. It’s just a personality thing, but the feelings are again, what they’re feeling is exactly what we’re feeling for different reasons. So I think it’s helpful to have empathy in that situation.

Jake Elm
Yeah, there was

There was this awesome like regional manager that worked for Dunder Mifflin who once said, money, mo problems. And it’s really true. do think is again, for a lot of the dentists we talked to is you’re making more than the average American. What’ll happen is you start making all this money, but you don’t feel any less stress because there’s a lot more things to manage. There’s a lot more things that can go wrong. You got to worry about estate planning and taxes and all this different stuff. It just becomes a bigger load to manage, which is why a lot of people want to talk to somebody, hire a financial advisor.

Yeah, it’s really true. mean, funny story. When I first started working at dentist advisors, I remember coming to the office one day and Ryan Isaac was in there. Shout out Ryan. He’s not on this podcast, but we love you. And anyway, he I came in and he was like, hey, Jake, how’s it going? I’m like, I’m good. I’m kind of stressed about money and things right now. It’s kind of early in my career. I’m stressed. And he says, well, get used to it because it never goes away. And I’ve always remembered that. And it’s like, I thought Ryan was kind of, you know, he had worked

Dennis Riser for a long time. Yeah, I think he was doing better financially than I was. And I was like, wow, if this guy is still worried about money, that just kind of, it’s always stuck with me is like, just get used to it. That’s, think, something we kind of just have to live with no matter our income level or stage of life that we’re at, is that it never really does get easier. We just got to try and learn to balance and manage it

Matt Mulcock
So one thing I will say to that, shout out Ryan, love you. That’s a great story. The only, I don’t know, I would even call it pushback. I would agree. I would agree with that, but I would say it’s not, I don’t think that’s the fate you’re stuck with in the sense of like, it’s just like, it never gets better. I think it can get better. But what I would say to Ryan’s point is, and to what I think what you’re saying, Jake is it’s not going to get better because you’re making more money.

Jake Elm
Yes.

Victoria Ferguson
Yes.

Matt Mulcock
Like it’s not getting better based on the dollar, the balance you’re seeing on the screen. It’s going to get better with a shift in mindset perhaps, or like.

Jake Elm
It’s yes, that’s what I think the meaning is more. It’s like you’re realizing that you’re never going to feel like you have enough right type of thing. I think that’s more of the intent of it’s like no matter what income like you’re always like, I could do this or I could do that. Or there’s people make more money. It’s just shifting your mindset around it of like, I’m never going to hit a dollar number and feel great about where I stand. Usually there’s, there’ll always be more to push to and more to

Matt Mulcock
This is why I think the final boss of money, the final boss of the game is knowing when you have enough. Like the enough, the enough boss is, the final boss in my opinion. like what Morgan Howell says, like the greatest risk is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Like if you can do that, I think you’ve, you’ve achieved that financial piece. So, Victoria, what are your, what are your thoughts on

Victoria Ferguson
It’s yourself.

Victoria Ferguson
Well, I think as you all were talking, like what came to mind was the key word in this question is how do you feel? financial security do you feel at this point? Notice that the question is how much cash do you have on hand? Or like what’s your investment balance? This is not like a nominal amount we’re asking. We’re asking how you feel about it because it doesn’t.

Yeah, cash levels matter and you wanna have your emergency fund and whatnot, but at the end of the day, can you sleep at night? Are you just riddled with anxiety over this? And how can we get you to a better place of feeling financially at peace, right? So, key word, how do you feel specifically?

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, it’s actually really funny. said that Victoria, I have a story, a quick story as well. one of my longest standing clients shout out, know who you are. When I tell this quick story, he is the dentist. She is, she really helped. She was like really involved in the practice, managing the practice day to day and was really, really involved day to day with the money. And she would call me, and I love her. love them. They’re like really dear friends of mine now.

But she would call me on a regular basis and was so stressed out of her mind, literally multiple times crying to me because she was so involved in the practice and so stressed around their money. Cause she was like seeing things every day and like they were doing fine. They were doing great and they were growing and all by all objective measures, they were, they were doing okay. Like you’re doing good. but she was so stressed. Like you’d ask her this question and she’d be like, I feel zero security on all I feel is stress.

So Lidia got to a point where I told her, said, because she was working in the practice, I said, you have to quit. You have to move out of the practice. She finally did stress levels dropped by 95%. Nothing changed other than her perception and what she was seeing every day and being involved every day. And now she’d answered this question way differently. Uh, so again, sometimes it’s not even about making a change or like saving money or doing something different. It’s just changing your perception or

this like the salience, like how often you’re seeing numbers, perhaps something like that. So, will any other thoughts on this at

Will Gochnour
No.

Jake Elm
That’s kind of why I sometimes I think budgeting can backfire on people where it’s like if you’re in your money every single day and you’re in your checking account every single day, I do think there’s a point where it’s kind of the ironic thing. The goal of doing good personal financial planning is to get to a point where you don’t have to worry or think about it as much. Anyway, so I love that point, Matt, where sometimes it’s maybe we just need to take a step back or not get too detailed about certain things. I think good advice.

Matt Mulcock
Here’s an idea. It’s pretty simple. I’ve done this in my own life. I’ve told my friends this. I’ve told siblings this. I’ve told some clients this, turn off social media, delete Instagram. Like seriously, that alone can be leading to a lot of this feeling of insecurity is comparisons, a thief of joy. So that could be a simple change in your life. I’m not saying for everyone, I’m not going to be this grandpa. Like what’s wrong with a younger generation, but I do think there are like environmental changes you can make to your life that

that again, nothing’s changing objectively and like to the balance sheet, you’ve just changed your perception by some environmental changes, perhaps.

Victoria Ferguson
I agree to that. just deleted my Instagram like a week ago and it’s been great. You know, I feel kind of attacked by that. I am not insane. I am not going to disconnect from the entire world, but it’s a step in the right direction. Thank you for calling me out on the podcast.

Matt Mulcock
Did you delete TikTok?

Jake Elm
No one does.

Matt Mulcock
I’m only joking

Okay. That was actually, that was actually more of a call out to our girl Sthuti. We love you, Sthuti. because she tried to walk around the office for a couple of months being like, Hey y ‘all, you know, I deleted TikTok and trying to act like she was

Victoria Ferguson
She deleted TikTok and then she switched to Instagram and DM’d me a bunch of Instagram reels. No, Instagram’s worse because you can see all your friends and people you used to talk to 15, 10, 15 years ago. I’m like, I don’t want to see your life. I really don’t. So I don’t

Matt Mulcock
Yep. Yep. See, there you go. See, and you’re probably happier for it. So, okay. Next question. I love this question. What needs to happen in the next few years for you to feel like you’re making good progress? Who wants any thoughts you guys have on

Victoria Ferguson
I just like how we shorten the timeframe on this one. think we were talking earlier, like lot of people’s focus is retirement, retirement. And we want to know what does the next three to five years look like? Let’s not be too far -sighted with this and potentially put off your happiness for decades. What needs to happen now? I think it’s a little more empowering.

Jake Elm
I get a pretty universal answer with this one. I have most people just tell me, that I just need a plan. I like I don’t have specific details like I want to pay off my house or I want to do this or reach a certain collections point in my practice. Most of the time they’re like, that’s why I’m here is I just feel like I need some sort of a plan. You know, it’s like I feel pretty good about finances. just I have no idea where I’m going five, 10, 20 years from now. And I would like a road map. And so I get that pretty often. I think that’s what most people want is

I need to know what’s happening and where we’re going.

Will Gochnour
Yeah, it’s an interesting one because I think again, it speaks to the type of person. you a planner? are you like, can you do it for me? Because I’ll get some people who like, got to have my second, I want three practices by the age of 30 and I want to have a million dollars in my brokerage account. you know, it’s just totally all over the map of who has the knack to.

put these steps in place or is somebody coming to you to say, Hey, can you kind of just help me and hold my hand and let’s do this thing? And so I think it doesn’t really matter how anybody answers this question. It’s more just like, what does progress mean to you? What is, is progress having an emergency fund over the next three years? So be it is progress making a small dent in your student loans. Great. Any sort of progress is good. And we’re going to quantify the progress, but it helps knowing what is important to them, right? Because that is shaping the financial plan. It’s giving the first.

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Will Gochnour
It’s like hot start out of the gates to say, here’s what we want to try to get to. And here’s how we’re going to use your money and the tools that we have at your disposal to get there. So whether it’s buy a house or whatever they want to do.

Matt Mulcock
I love this and that goes right along with what Victoria was saying, right? I think a traditional financial advising approach is let’s run a Monte Carlo, you’re 40 years old, let’s run a Monte Carlo and plug in all these variables to see how we make the numbers work for you in your retirement in 30 years. And it’s like when you’re 70, and it’s like, not only is that not motivating, it’s also like not real. Because for you to pretend like you know what you want in 10 years or 15 years or 20

Jake Elm
Great point.

Will Gochnour
and you’re 70, yeah.

Victoria Ferguson
All right.

Victoria Ferguson
or for dinner tonight, I don’t know, no clue.

Matt Mulcock
Or for dinner tonight. It’s like, uh, again, we’ve mentioned this before on the pot, another podcast and other ones we’ve done of Barry Schwartz talking about, and there’s a lot of data behind this that we are really bad at knowing what we want in the future, like really bad at it. Just me, we as in humans. And so I do think it’s a little bit disingenuous and not exactly helpful for financial advisors to be like, Hey, four year old dentist who’s like has young kids and is just like trying to build their career. Let’s talk about what you want in retirement in 30 years from

So to your guys’s point, Victoria, you said it and Will, you reiterated this. I love this idea of just saying, what are we working on in the next few years? Let’s live for that. Well, of course we’re going to save and we’re going to keep saving in our 401k and saving in our brokerage account. We may not know what that looks like down the road, but we still know we need to do it. I did want to come back to one thing you said, Will, that I thought was interesting.

You were highlighting the difference of like, some people are super precise in their goals and other people are just more like general. I just, I’m curious from your guys’s perspective, do you think there’s any correlation to Will, what you were saying earlier of like, sometimes people are just anxious with their money or unhappy with their money. Do you see any correlation to those two things? And maybe I’m leading the witness here with this question, but I’ll, so I’ll just, give you my opinion and then I’ll let you guys respond.

I sense there’s a little bit of correlation between the precision and anxiety, meaning the more precise someone is of like, I need this by this date. I need this by this age. That tends to be directly correlated to their high levels of anxiety. I want to know what your guys’ thoughts on that

Will Gochnour
Yeah, I just think, I agree with that very much. So, it’s, you get fixated on this goal that may not, again, even in five years, like if you want to be a multi -location practice owner in five years, but you really like dominate your first practice that you open. But then you still have this goal of like opening more practices when you could just. I already said it’s my goal. have to do it. I have to do it no matter what. And it’s like, in a way, why can’t you just be.

Matt Mulcock
And you’re like, I already said it. I said it. I gotta do it. Yeah. Yep.

Will Gochnour
I don’t know this person, that type of person is like, I’m going to do this because I set my mind to it basically. Where some clients are like, I just want a good practice that’ll spit out some income to me and put some money in a rainy day fund and put it away for the future and live, live life, right. And work three days a week. And so there’s just different personalities, but the, and it’s not, there’s not a wrong or right here. That’s great. And the person who does, you know what I mean? Like it doesn’t really matter, but it does change the way that advice is given because the person who wants to open multi.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, no,

Will Gochnour
location practice, maybe he’s going to need some more liquidity to do this and like not want to put money away into a 401k for, you know, they can’t show your 60 when they’re going to go through a lot of building and transitions over the next five years, as opposed to somebody who’s just more one practice three days a week, hanging out with my kids.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, totally agree.

Jake Elm
Yeah, I like the idea of being precise with really short term goals and really broad in general. think with longer term goals makes a lot of sense to me. This is how we like to do our planning where okay, it’s January of the first year. Like let’s be really precise for the next 12 months, right? What do we need to do over the next 12 months? Let’s get concrete goals. It’s just like working out or doing something right. You don’t start out by saying, hey, I want to become, I want to go ride in the tour de France, you know, with I’m cycling, but it’s like, Hey, can I get to a 20 mile bike ride this year or 25 mile bike ride, you know,

thing and might work my way up. So that’s great. I don’t know why I used a biking analogy. But yeah, I like that. I’m like, we just like you said, the future is so unpredictable, not only like how we will feel, different presidential regimes and different economies and like so much is if you just look at how much has changed over the last 20 years, that’s going to happen again over the next 20 years. And

Matt Mulcock
I wrote the stationary bike today for 15 minutes. felt pretty good about that. Yeah. I liked

Jake Elm
Let’s be precise with the things we can control today, but I agree. just don’t think it’s realistic to set really concrete super specific goals 20 years in the

Matt Mulcock
I love that Jake, I think that’s a good general kind of approach, precise in the short term, general or broad in the long term. Being fluid and flexible in the long term, I think is a bit of a superpower for people. The more fluid and flexible you can be with your long -term goals, I think the more you’re setting yourself up for success and fulfillment. But I love this idea of saying, don’t just throw precision out completely. Like you should be precise with the more known timeframe. Exactly,

Will Gochnour
Yeah, with whatever is important to you. Yeah. Whether it’s opening practices or hitting a certain savings number for the

Matt Mulcock
Yep. Yep. Exactly. Victoria, any other thoughts on that at

Victoria Ferguson
Not on that specifically, but I think part of what I’m trying to do with this question too is find things that we can do to get you more financial wins. know, retiring could be off, you know, decades for people, but for all of us, and I know you all agree with me when I say a big chunk of our job is behavioral.

So what can I do in more of the short term to get you those wins so that you feel more motivated to continue to save for retirement or these like bigger goals? Because that feels it’s a lot like dentists have to retire with millions and millions of dollars to be able to continue the lifestyle They want to live right? That’s such a huge goal. So what can I do? To kind of start building healthy money habits for you because I know that sounds

Maybe even a little woo woo, but it’s really true. You are your biggest risk. And so what can we do in the short term to get those wins to keep you going over decades?

Matt Mulcock
That’s such a good point though. Like I think the biggest, I think the most underrated part of tracking progress is the momentum it helps create. And like it’s so easy to adapt. We were just saying earlier, like your reference group, I also think it’s just easy to adapt to your situation. All of a sudden, if you’re not tracking your progress, you forget what it was like to be broke in dental school because you’re now 10 years into a practice and you’re a multimillionaire.

Matt Mulcock
But if you’re tracking that progress along the way to your point, Victoria, you’re filling those wins, you’re building momentum. I think that’s a huge part of finding peace with your money is like, think it brings a lot of gratitude to your life of being like, Holy cow. Like, like, Holy, like I’ve come so far and I can see it on paper. think that’s a huge part of it too. Love that. All right. All right. I know Will’s got to go change some lives here pretty soon. So, we got to hit the last one of part one. So question number four, we hit.

Victoria Ferguson
yeah.

Matt Mulcock
usually some form of fashion is what money mistakes have you made in the past that you’re trying to avoid in the future? I love this

Jake Elm
I know we didn’t want to get too super personal here, but I really am curious on your guys, like what you would view some past money mistakes. I’m interested if you want to

Matt Mulcock
Let’s do it.

Matt Mulcock
Our own mistakes? Yeah, Victoria, go ahead.

Victoria Ferguson
I’ll share a stupid one.

Jake Elm
Yes.

Victoria Ferguson
All right, I don’t think I ever told this story. Well, I mean, for one, I had to pay my own way through college. I did not have much. My parents helped me a little bit, I don’t know, a few thousand or something, which I’m really grateful for, but I had to work full time and cover the cost of everything. It was awful. But I did not know anything. I remember getting my first employee handbook and I was like, this is in English, but I don’t understand a word of what is going on.

Just know that that’s where I came from. So that’s why I’m very.

Matt Mulcock
It’s like when I talk to any Gen Z -er, I’m like, you’re speaking English, but I don’t know what you’re saying.

Victoria Ferguson
It’s like that one scene in Nemo where the little turtle is trying to tell Nemo’s dad, you gotta roll it, stick it, or punch it. And he’s like, I don’t know, you’re really cute, but I don’t know what you’re saying. And then Dory’s like, go, go, go, go. Yeah. Anyways, I was working at a different company at this point. I

Matt Mulcock
I don’t know you’re really cute

It’s so true. That’s a great point.

Victoria Ferguson
just had a really huge financial expense. It was my wedding at the time. And then the following month I had gotten laid off. So my cash levels were like super low because I decided it was a really good idea to rent a ski lift. Whatever you guys, it’s fine. I’m blessed. Worth it. So I did that. So cash levels were super low and then I get laid off the next month and it was a really spooky time.

Matt Mulcock
It’s worth

Victoria Ferguson
but part of my offboarding or exit was stock options. And I’m like a CFP at this point and I did not understand stock options. And I thought that I would get this money by buying the stock option. And so I did it. So I think I was low on cash levels and then I decided to put three grand into stock options.

Jake Elm
Beautiful. Beautiful.

Victoria Ferguson
I had no idea and I was a CFP at this point, so I’m getting real vulnerable here.

Jake Elm
No one understands. No one understands stock options. No one does.

Matt Mulcock
Stock options are so confusing, yes.

Victoria Ferguson
They really are. it’s funny because the company I worked for after that, like that was my whole job was to guide people around stock options. So anyways, I do that. And then I realized like my big mistake and I just called the company and I was like, I am so sorry. Like, is there anything you can do? I full out just like did not understand this. And luckily they worked with me and they were really, really nice and gave me my money back. Yeah.

Will Gochnour
They gave me a refund.

Matt Mulcock
They’re like, poor girl, poor girl, yeah.

Victoria Ferguson
You guys, I pull the dumb card all the time, like, I’m so sorry. Like, I just please give the dough eyes. But yeah, no, it was, it could have been bad. Like luckily I got a job, you know, a couple months later, but it got, it kind of got spooky. So there’s mine and I was a CFP at the time, barely.

Will Gochnour
Thank

Matt Mulcock
Well, now she went, we have to share ours.

Jake Elm
Yeah, we’ll do it,

Will Gochnour
Yeah, mine, the one that comes to mind is a funny one. went to, we were newlyweds, Olivia and I had just gotten married and we decided to go to Europe and, you know, kind of thinking we’re going to go travel and go see some places. And I just remember being so stressed the whole time about how much everything costs. we, had money, like we weren’t, we weren’t like living paycheck to paycheck at the time. We had a little bit of a savings. We weren’t necessarily like obviously wealthy and by any means we didn’t get like a big trust fund when we got married. So was like, had a couple grand in the bank account.

But I would like, for whatever reason, my mentality was like, how can we do this trip as cheap as possible? So we would like go walk up to Big Ben and be like, oh, it’s 20 bucks to go up at the top. Yeah, we’re probably good. We don’t need to go. Or like this cool chapel that, you know, we can go see the stained glass windows, cost money to go do it. And, you know, I wouldn’t pay to do it. I just, regret it so much. I’m

Matt Mulcock
that’s so interesting. I love this one. I love this one. This is so good.

Jake Elm
Yeah, it’s a one.

Victoria Ferguson
That’s a good one, actually.

Will Gochnour
I regret it because it was like the one time and like we didn’t, we didn’t rent a car and go see the Cotswolds in, in like England, whatever that is, the kind of like the English countryside. just stayed in London because we were like, and we just rode bikes around the city. Cause like that was the cheapest thing. And again, it was fun and it’s fun memories, but looking back, I’m like, I’m to go to Europe, like maybe two, two, three times in my life. And I’m never going to be a 25 year old in Europe with my newlywed wife. And anyways, it was fine. It was a good trip. Looking

Matt Mulcock
Spend the

Victoria Ferguson
Mm

Will Gochnour
I would have done that so

Victoria Ferguson
Mmm.

Matt Mulcock
That’s a killer example of a mistake because it’s the opposite of what you’d think.

Jake Elm
It’s a great

Victoria Ferguson
opposite of me.

Will Gochnour
I would have stayed at a nicer hotel. I would have done way better excursions. I would have gone to like cooler places. We would have paid more money to do stuff and it would have probably cost me another two grand. And you know, it’s, I don’t know, looking back, it’s like, what is, what’s two grand in the grand scheme of things in the time I’m like super stressed about it,

Matt Mulcock
Yep. Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s really good. I don’t want to follow Will’s. Okay.

Jake Elm
Let me go and then you go, Matt, because mine is very lame. I don’t have any good ones either. I think this maybe just goes more to personality of like, I just maybe don’t regret a ton of things that don’t stick in my mind. I’m sure I’ve made a lot of dumb financial decisions, but I hate my car that I bought about 10 years ago. It’s a Volkswagen. I am kind of like anti Volkswagen. Now I just both was going to get it out on a podcast. It’s just caused me a lot of problems. It’s broken down a lot. I still have it because I can’t quit this. Anyway, that’s why

Victoria Ferguson
Heck yeah.

Matt Mulcock
Landon would agree.

Victoria Ferguson
I think they suck, right?

Jake Elm
I kind of don’t love it. for, know I think Matt has a Volkswagen, but for other people, sorry, you don’t. Okay, good. I didn’t know if I forgot. Yeah. No, I just, that’s my, that’s my funny stance, I guess, is I’m never going to buy another Volkswagen again, but I just haven’t loved my car and I’ve put way more money in it than it should. It’s not even a nice car. It’s a crappy car anyway. that’s about

Matt Mulcock
No, I don’t. No, heck, don’t call me out like

Victoria Ferguson
Does he seem like the type of person that would try

Will Gochnour
Ready and does.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, no, Landon on our team does.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. I’ve had, man, I have a laundry list of mistakes I’ve made. But the one that comes to mind is a relatively recent one within the last few years. And I will say, I’ll tell this one because I think it, it has definitely helped me be more empathetic to advice to our, to dentists who come to us and do this all the time, which is getting distracted by shiny objects or falling away from like your long -term plan, like investment plan.

I was, have a very close connection. I will say, I’m going to keep this very, ambiguous, very close connection who has access to like private investment type deals. And he has come to me on multiple different situations. Do you want to put some money in? Like I’ve got a slot for if you want a spot. And I’ve always said no. And then for whatever reason, one of them just he, whatever he came to me and it just caught me in a wrong time or whatever, whatever. And I was

All right, I’ll do it. And I put in like, not life -changing money, but I mean, we’re not talking small amounts. It’s all relative. And, I put in some money and I ha it has, it’s not to zero, I don’t think, but I don’t think I’m going to get my money back. I’m not totally sure. And so it was such a good reminder, honestly, for me, not for two things. Number one, truly having empathy for when dentists, cause this happens all the time. So I will say it’s made me a better advisor. I feel like it’s truly been an investment in being

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Matt Mulcock
All right. I’ve learned and I also have more empathy for what it’s really easy to get distracted. It’s really easy to be like, well, what if this does pop? What, what could this look like? You know, I could go buy a Volkswagen with this money or something or something. So that that’s, that’s the one that comes to mind. Yeah. Subaru’s all

Victoria Ferguson
We’re Volkswagen haters.

Jake Elm
We are just brand ourselves that way.

Victoria Ferguson
We’re in Utah, we love Subarus, right Will?

Jake Elm
Matt, you’re telling me that when I have a brother -in who comes to me with an investment opportunity, he’s not just going to 10x my money over the next year. What the heck? That’s news to

Matt Mulcock
It’s sadly, it’s

Will Gochnour
Here’s the funny thing about that is it’s so true. We get that so much and usually that is the answer to this question for a lot of clients. And it goes back to what we have, think Ryan maybe coined this, but the random acts of finance. I love that. And I, every time I say that to somebody, they’d laugh and it like hits them in their core. Cause they’re like, yeah, that’s exactly what I did my whole life. And that’s usually when you do something that you regret financially. It’s like, I just didn’t even have a plan. I didn’t know what I was doing with my money. I’m like throwing money at my student

Matt Mulcock
So true. Yep.

Matt Mulcock
Yep. Yep.

Will Gochnour
throwing money at some investment because I didn’t know what to do with it.

Matt Mulcock
Yep. And here I am to Victoria’s point, we’re all getting vulnerable here. I’ve been a financial advisor for over 10 years now. I’ve been in this industry for over a decade and we’ve talked to how many people about this kind of stuff. And guess what? I fall prey to it. I have fallen prey to it. So again, it’s a good learning experience. And that’s why when dentists come to me and say, I got this deal or this happened, what do you think? I do approach it now with far more empathy to be like, I get the temptation.

Will Gochnour
Ehh

Victoria Ferguson
Mm -hmm.

Matt Mulcock
I totally understand it. and I just do everything I possibly can now to not go back and run the numbers on what if I just want to put that on my brokerage account and what that would look like now. I’m going to go ahead and not do that. Keep my sanity. So, guys, this was an amazing conversation. I love this. Hopefully you guys had fun with it. Any final words, for part two of our, or sorry, part one of our discovery call discussion. Any final words from anybody? Yeah.

Jake Elm
Never do that.

Jake Elm
Are we invited back for part two or we have a different panel? Okay. Okay. Okay.

Matt Mulcock
Well, no, we’re doing part two. Yeah, no, we’re doing part two together. See, I’m just testing to see who does. Whoever is not on the next one, know, yeah, you know how poorly they did.

Victoria Ferguson
That was a soft launch for part two.

Will Gochnour
This was a tryout for part two.

Jake Elm
Okay.

Victoria Ferguson
If it’s not the same people, you know who got cut.

Jake Elm
Yes, yes. Yes.

Victoria Ferguson
And we asked this question, whoever had the worst answer to this, me. I won’t be on the next one. I’ll get cut.

Matt Mulcock
Yeah. I won’t be on the next one. It’ll just be you three and everyone’s going to be like, this is awkward. yeah. So Jake, it will be us again. Any other final thoughts though, from anybody? Final words.

Will Gochnour
Yeah.

Jake Elm
Lovely.

Will Gochnour
Find your financial peace. I like financial peace. That’s got, gotta like put it that on a shirt or a bumper sticker or something. dang it. Is it?

Matt Mulcock
I like that too. It’s not a Dave Ramsey thing. That’s unfortunate. That’s a Dave Ramsey. I’m pretty sure. Doesn’t he have like financial peace university or something? gross. He just, he just ruined it. He just ruined it for me. they, there you go. Financial serenity. So tranquility, guys, this was awesome. Thank you guys for being here, and being vulnerable and sharing this everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you are out there listening and you’re thinking,

Victoria Ferguson
It can’t be.

Will Gochnour
man, okay. Okay, okay.

Victoria Ferguson
it’s like the opposite. Tranquility.

Will Gochnour
Financial serenity we can do, we can spin it.

Matt Mulcock
Man, this is cool. would love to have this conversation. Love to go through this, or you just want to share your story and get some questions answered. check out dentistsadvisors .com click on the yellow button. We used to say green now is now yellow. Book free consultation. We’d love to talk to you. I could talk to someone on this panel or one of our other friendly advisors. We’d love to have a chat. So dentistsadvisors .com, but again, as always, thanks for listening till next time. Bye bye.

Keywords: client discovery questions, what money means, financial peace, financial freedom