Why Does Everyone Think The Economy Is So Bad?

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Jake explore the surprising disconnect between how people feel about the economy and what the data actually shows. They discuss inflation, housing affordability, wage growth, the labor market, AI, stock market performance, and consumer sentiment, while examining why so many Americans remain pessimistic despite strong economic fundamentals. They also consider the role of social media, negative headlines, and comparison culture in shaping our outlook and discuss what these trends mean specifically for dentists and their financial decisions.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome back to the Dentist Money Show where we help Dentist make smart financial decisions. I am Matt and I’m joined here today by hot take Jake. Jake, how are you?

Jake: What’s up guys? I’m stoked to be here. This is awesome.

Matt Mulcock: We’re always fun to do this. And I’ve actually started to find that when we do this with different advisors, like there’s kind of different vibes or themes or like things that we’re going to talk about, depending on the advisor. And I saw I’m excited about, I’m excited about this show and the data that you brought and some shocking data we’ll start off with, I’d say, Jake. Should we just go? Should we have no preamble?

Jake: Yeah, personalities. Yeah, do you want to just jump into it? think… Yo!

Matt Mulcock: Other than, other than, this show is brought to you by Dentist Advisors and we have our second cohort of Dentist Money Launchpad coming out September, early bird special. You can check it out, dentistmoneylaunchpad.com Michelle, that was for you. Well, let’s just jump in, Jake.

Jake: Yes. There we go. So I brought this topic to you to talk about on the podcast mainly because I’m having a lot of conversations about this, like in my own personal life anecdotally with not only clients that I’ve been working with, but family, friends, just talking about, you go to any event and you kind of just talk about how’s everything going in your life. And usually the conversation will lead towards, like economic stuff, right? Like, how do you feel about the economy? I can’t tell you how many gas price conversations I’ve had. I have a group of uncles who seem particularly concerned about the gas prices, a group of uncles.

Matt Mulcock: A group of uncles, sounds like it could be a band or maybe a blog or something with the title of a blog, just a group of uncles, I like that.

Jake: They’re fantastic. We actually have a family sports chat. It’s hilarious where we all just kind of talk about sports and it’s kind of where I get it from, just family really love sports. But the conversation will do sports, but oftentimes we move into like politics and economics and it’s hilarious.

Matt Mulcock: Do you have a diverse group of different, it’s all just homogenous political leanings? Okay.

Jake: Yes. And everyone kind of lives close to us here in Utah type of deal. No. So we do not have a diverse group of opinions there, ⁓ which makes it funny. Yeah. It’s a lot of piling on and agreeing and just like wanting to complain to each other, which is great. ⁓ But anyway, so I’ve had a lot of conversations about people feeling like we’re going to get into the data here, but I think it’s true. For as many people as I talk to, I get a lot of just like complaints about where we are.

Matt Mulcock: opinions. There’s a lot of piling on. It’s a lot of piling.

Jake: as an economy, right? Like no one feels awesome. Like I’m not walking out to anyone like, man, this is like the labor market and the stock, everything’s going awesome. And I feel great about my financial situation. It’s a lot of, I’m a little uneasy. I don’t know how things are going. I feel like we got to turn something around types of conversations, right?

Matt Mulcock: Or, or as far as the conversations I have with some of my siblings and friends and whatnot, or Dentist, ⁓ it’s even more than that, Jake. It’s like, kind of like the, in this economy type attitude. It’s like, wait, what do you mean in this economy? Like we’re not in a recession, but there’s a lot of that sentiment going around for sure.

Jake: So tying this into what we want to talk about today, the University of Michigan does this consumer sentiment survey that they’ve been doing since it’s like sometime in the 1950s, 1952 is when they started this where they just survey a group of Americans and they just like tell us how you’re feeling about the economy and like buying conditions and expect like, what do you expect for the future? And this is kind of a good reading of just how are people like getting some data behind how do people feel about where we are economically? ⁓ They do it every single month. And this past May, they had just very came out with the lowest consumer sentiment reading. Since the survey started in the 1950s over.

Matt Mulcock: I think by a wide margin, Jake, I’m just looking at the chart here. It feels like the lowest again by a pretty wide margin. It’s like a crater.

Jake: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it’s been taking what’s interesting we can get into. It’s been cratering since COVID, which we can talk about as a possible reason for why this is. since COVID, there’s really been a drop off in consumer sentiment. I just want to reemphasize that. Lower at any point since they’ve been measuring this since 1950. So essentially what they’re saying is people feel worse about the economy right now than they ever have over the past 75 plus years in America.

Matt Mulcock: wild.

Jake: I just so what I want to do now with you today is I just want to interrogate this a little bit like that. This like that jumps off the page to me of people feel so bad today about where things are. I don’t want to interrogate why that is, so I want to go through some data, some different points, just genuinely curious about why people are feeling this way.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I mean, and you highlight here just to emphasize this more lower than COVID lower than 08 09 lower than 9 11 lower than the dot com bubble lower than the 80s when we had double digit inflation of the 80s.

Jake: Yeah, there’s like double digit inflation in the 80s that people don’t know about. They’re like crazy inflation times. You’re like 70s. The stock market got cut in half and big inflation there too. lower than any, think of everything that’s happened to the U S over the past 75 years and people feel worse today than through any of that stuff. Even COVID like the people feel worse today than during the height of COVID I find stunning.

Matt Mulcock: Wild. Yeah, yeah. Maybe because I mean, COVID, let’s be real, lot of people get insane checks. So they felt they felt better. Let’s try that again.

Jake: Maybe. Yeah. And significantly worse than actually when the movie was dead during COVID. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: You had some more data here around like the poll, like because the first thing I think of is just political. You want to hit that?

Jake: This is funny. Yes. Oh, yeah. So they did a poll to like diving deeper into this sentiment and how people are feeling. So a poll found that Republican voters that is 43 % of them feel like the economy was good, like excellent or good. And then 55 % said it was fair or poor. Right. So 43 % was awesome of Republicans and then Democrats only 5 % said that the economy was in a good place compared to 94 % that said it was bad you fair or poor.

Matt Mulcock: So we do need to highlight this. There is a political aspect of this. Yeah.

Jake: There is a lot of co-op, which happens, like whatever party’s president is in office, the other side of that aisle tends to think that things are going badly, right? Regardless of where you are. But 94 % of Democratic voters, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: 94% of Democrats, 94% say that it is poor. Wow.

Jake: Fair or poor. Yeah, which is funny. there is some like if we want to talk about some of the reasons for why people like politically I could be right. Like if people are just sick of the current administration or Trump or whatever they’re right that that does play into some of this.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, and should we highlight this at the beginning? Like, that this is not going to be anything that we know the answer. Just, guess maybe we’ll say that right.

Jake: I want to ask questions. I’m asking questions today, which I’m hoping people listening to this are like, I just want to like, let’s talk through this together. Right. Let’s just have a conversation. Because I’m not even saying I think that’s great. I’m not even want to shame the people who feel that we’re in a bad spot. That’s not my point here. There people who feel bad. I’m just genuinely curious as to why. Let’s just talk through this more. Maybe we can get more concrete because I feel like sometimes in our society,

Matt Mulcock: Let’s explore it together, Jake and I do not have answers. No, no, no, no.

Jake: We just echo some of the things we hear from social media friends. And I want to like get down to today if we can, as best we can, maybe some reasons why people are feeling this way or why the economy might be better than you think or worse than you think. Just talk through it. That’s what I want to do, Matt. Let’s do it. Yeah. So should we start? I kind of broke this down our outline here into different categories, like broad categories of, think some of the biggest issues that people are thinking about today. So let’s start with.

Matt Mulcock: Let’s peel back the onion, if you will. Let’s peel the onion back. Yeah, this is great.

Jake: Can we do like jobs, the labor market, unemployment is where I want to start. Cause that’s usually the first thing if people are feeling bad about their situation, it’s like, okay, are people employed? Do they have jobs? Do they feel like they’re making a meaningful wage here? So.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, the fact is we still have 70 % of our GDP is still attached to consumer to consuming and consuming all comes from do I have money to spend, which all comes from do I have do we have a stable labor market? So most of our economy still hinges on are we producing jobs to produce income to then make or to spend money? So, yeah, I think that’s a great place to start.

Jake: So as of today, the unemployment rate in America is 4.3%. That’s where we stand. For some context, is that good? Is that bad? That is the lowest mark in 55 years. 4.3%. Now, again, there’s a lot of things that can go into that unemployment number of who are they tracking one another. We don’t even get into that. My main point is it’s the lowest it’s been, regardless of the percentage. It’s the lowest it’s been in 55 years.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. It’s low. Regardless, it’s low. Yeah.

Jake: which is a pretty long time there. Again, since you say like 96 out of every hundred Americans has a job or like working Americans, adult working Americans there. So pretty much everyone who wants a job has one. Right? Like kind of, there’s kind of a floor to unemployment. He’s never going to be, we’re gonna have a hundred percent employment rate and zero percent unemployment. There’s always a bit of a floor there. I feel like pretty much everyone who has a job, I mean, wants a job has one currently.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. We shouldn’t, yeah. Yep.

Jake: Which is kind of like the first thing we’re looking at, like how well is the economy doing? Is unemployment low? Yes. I kind of the first box we can check there. Anything else we need to add or we can move on there, Matt?

Matt Mulcock: No, I think to your point, there’s some nuance here around and I don’t know if you have it in here, but talking about like, you know, obviously the okay, everyone has a job, unemployment’s low. Wages is another big thing to be thinking about. again, I don’t know if we have this data in front of us, but you do have it. Okay.

Jake: We’ll get into some wage stuff here. We can, I want to hit the wage stuff as we talk about inflation. Inflation is coming people. I know if you’re like screaming at you’re like listening to this, you’re like inflation is the first thing we’re going to get there.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. Yeah, we’ll talk inflation. Well, and if we and just really quick, if we talk about specifically make this dental specific as much as we can, and if we’re going to get into inflation and wages later, like we can kind of add a nuance to that in dentistry, because I think dentists are feeling specifically a lot of squeeze around wages and inflation within the dental space, especially with like hygienists and staff.

Jake: Okay, I want to just talk about that at the end, people listeners. Hold on for a second because I think that’s a bigger discussion. I want to kind of check through some of these initial thoughts and let’s get to the big tingly inflation thing ⁓ as we go along here. So there’s unemployment. ⁓ Kind of with that, people are worried, maybe, okay, well, we’re not losing jobs right now, but might we lose some in the future because of this whole artificial intelligence AI thing that might have people worried. We’re like, how much of our concern about the economy is not what’s happening now, but what could happen? right, five, 10, 15 years from now, which is, think, where inflation comes into play. I know talking to a lot of younger people, even younger dentists, but younger people, AI is pretty big concern, I think, of just what does that mean for jobs and my career path and all of that there? ⁓ Which again, think neither of us are AI experts. ⁓ We might know just talking about this enough to be a little bit dangerous. Anyway.

Matt Mulcock: I wouldn’t.

Jake: My only point here with AI is like, sure, I think that could be a valid concern in the future of what AI does to the economy. But we both follow a guy called Torsten Slock, who does these economic graphs every single day. It’s awesome. He’s mentioned AI a couple of times. And currently, if you look at, are we seeing any AI effects right now? Let’s forget about what’s going to happen in the future. But right now to the economy. You know, lot of tech companies are spending on AI. And if you read every kind of memo from every business, like we’re incorporating AI into our business, right? This is the big thing here. But as of now, we are not seeing any AI impact on jobs or job loss, right? ⁓ No negative impact. ⁓ We’re actually seeing like this, like people spending in AI is actually stoking employment and things a little bit there where there’s more jobs and AI experts and people can go into there. So this.

Matt Mulcock: No negative impact at least.

Jake: We have a graph here that shows like as of May, there’s like 95,000 more jobs than expected that were created kind of here. And there’s like graph here show like all the jobs and weekly employment. And it’s actually been going up in recent months rather than declining due to AI there. So anything you want to talk about on the AI front?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think the AI one’s a big one. ⁓ And I think it has shown something we’ve warned against for a long time, is ⁓ narratives with no backing becoming kind of uncontrolled based on people that have misaligned incentives with you. And I think this is just the latest example. So meaning I think there’s been so many people out there clout chasing around the hottest topic, this one being AI, and making statements that are not backed by anything other than vibes and getting everyone really scared. And so I’m glad we brought this up because we’ve, Jake, you and I specifically, I think have shared a view on this around like, I don’t really think AI is going to be as big of a deal as people think when it comes to like specifically the negative impact. Like for example, Jake,

Jake: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I was literally seeing things at beginning of this year that people were posting articles and tweets and whatever, making YouTube videos saying that like something ridiculous, like no one’s going to have a job by the end of 2026. Like this was the sentiment. Like it was taking over the entire economy by the end of the year. And I guess we’re not at the end of the year. We’re halfway point, but, maybe it still will happen.

Jake: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: But I actually what Torsten is saying and I really like this is not only is it not happening, it’s actually quite the opposite. It’s actually having a positive impact on the economy and actually creating jobs. It’s shifting jobs from one maybe sector types of jobs to another, but it is certainly creating jobs at right at this point.

Jake: Yeah, we’re not seeing any negative impacts currently. I am not immune to like the AI worries right about the future. I’ve always, you know, I’ve thought about this a lot of what does this mean? I think that’s the hard part. As you mentioned is we’re still in the infancy of this technology and I think it’s pretty cool and it can change. Like we’ve talked about this before of I think the likelihood of what AI is going like what’s going to happen in the future and I’m probably going to be wrong on this in a lot of ways. But it’s like it’s an awesome innovation, just like all the other innovations we’ve seen throughout human history, like we were talking about the Internet or railroads or different things there where it’s going to change jobs and maybe create some and take and get rid of some jobs. And some industries will blossom and others will go away. But everyone’s still going to have to have a job and it’s probably just going to change things a little bit, but not wipe out people’s jobs entirely. I’m actually starting to see Matt more like think pieces of people saying, hey, this AI might be a good thing. Actually like I like this could create a lot of jobs or make our jobs easier and increase capacity and increase demands I know Torsten he gave an example like radiology is something that was really disrupted like a few years ago like over the past 10 years or so like the ease of getting what are they where you get scanned what is that called the an MRI like the ease like doing MRIs to become like the cost went way down

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Like an MRI.

Jake: And some more people are ordering MRIs. It’s like radiology jobs have actually blossomed and like, wages have gone up and there’s been more radiology like need for that when people thought it would go away because there’s just more demand for MRIs as the cost has gone down. That could happen to a lot of different industries.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, should we hit this really quick? Cause he references something specific that I think people could go check out if they wanted more, but he, he references this concept. I heard this on a podcast a few weeks ago for the first time. And then Torsten Slack mentions that again, but this Javons paradox, ⁓ that was in the late 19th century, an English economist, it comes from William Stanley Javons. ⁓ am I saying that right? Javons Javons Javons.

Jake: I have no clue.

Matt Mulcock: I have no clue, but this Javan’s paradox, it basically, it’s his principle that is saying when kind of the opposite of what we think was going to happen with AI, this is what’s explaining it is basically what he came up with in 1865 was this is around the steam engine specifically, but he came up with this idea that when, despite what we think, when technology progresses or improves vastly, it creates efficiency, making that resource cheaper and much easier to use, the overall consumption of that resource increases the demand and not decreases the demand, which is kind of interesting to me. I wish we had Robbie here to kind of help us further break this down, but it’s kind of interesting that it’s this. I mean, it’s the oldest kind of like theory or concept in economics and supply and demand issue. But I think we always think that it’s only

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: the supply that’s changing the demand. But in this case, it’s like, no, just because this becomes cheaper and easier to use, more people want it. It’s kind of interesting. Exactly.

Jake: More people want it. Because they can get it, they have more access to it, which then create like if more people want something that creates like more jobs and things because there’s this higher demand and you have the service that demand, right? And so yeah, it’s again. We don’t know what the future is going to hold. I don’t think Matt. ⁓ Our dentists really concerned about AI.

Matt Mulcock: I personally haven’t heard a ton just anecdotally. ⁓ I think like any industry, I think it’s one of those things that it’s something you certainly want to be, I think proactive about using whatever tools are out there. I think there’s companies that come to mind for us as like over jets and these, I think there’s been a lot of like

Jake: I don’t think I have either. Yeah using whatever tools and things you can for your practice.

Matt Mulcock: We actually did a two cents on this relatively recent about the adoption of AI in the dental space. So the data supports like it is certainly happening that, but I think there’s also a difference of a dentist saying I’ve thrown my notes into chat GPT to like, you know, come up with a summary versus like I’m implementing an actual like AI process around diagnosis. Like there’s a, there’s a wide spectrum.

Jake: And I don’t know if I’ve had a ton of worries. think a dentist is a pretty foolproof AI profession, unless we get to the future where robots are doing all this stuff for us. Anyway, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: No way. Sorry. I’m maybe I’m naive, but I also heard a really interesting podcast to the day about this very thing. And to summarize what they say, it was actually a real pro AI or I should say anti AI is taking over the world. Then it’s going to wipe out all these jobs. Like this take that from this person was like, can’t remember the name, but they were like, very, very anti that. And the main concept that they brought up, what they brought up, Javan’s paradox as well. But they said any profession that hinges on relational activity like a dentist. He’s like, that’s not going anywhere. It’s only gonna be enhanced by AI. It’s not gonna go away. It’s kind of interesting. Do we spend too much time on AI, Jake?

Jake: Does ya? No, think people are, I’m curious about it. I have a lot of conversations about it. ⁓ In the bottom line, we’re not seeing any impact yet even in the economy.

Matt Mulcock: So to We’re saying unemployment is low, AI is not taking over jobs the way we thought. In fact, so far it’s been creating jobs.

Jake: Not taking jobs. Yes, because a lot of these big tech companies are actually spending on AI, which are creating more jobs and more money in the economy, yada yada. So yeah, nothing there yet. So let’s move to the stock market maybe because I’d say, okay, do people have complaints about the stock market? Are their portfolios going down? No, we’ve talked about this on two cents, another podcast, but as of now the S &P 500, like if we just look over the past three and half years, we’ve been in an awesome bull market run here. In 2023, the S &P 500 went up 26%.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: Twenty twenty four increased twenty five percent in twenty twenty five and increase seventeen percent. And so far this year in twenty twenty six, we are recording this at the beginning of June. It’s up over ten percent this year. Not bad, like all in all. So if you invested ten thousand dollars in January of twenty twenty three, you would have almost eighteen and a half thousand dollars today. So you’ve nearly doubled your money in the course of three, three and a half years, ⁓ which is pretty good.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, good run. We’ll call that a good run. Yeah.

Jake: Like I don’t know if there’s anyone out there complaining about the market. And I just listed S &P 500, know, U.S. stock numbers. International has been performing really well. Devel has been performing really well. Energy sector, gold, silver, like everywhere you look like markets are going up. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: But which by the way, we’ve seen this in real time. We did, you know, we do annual, you know, end of year reviews with all of our clients to check progress. And, know, it’s really fun at the end of years, we have a three year run like we’ve had, but we’ve seen this bear out in real dollars and real wealth for our clients where We’re sitting here saying over the last three years, we’re seeing multiple high six figures to multiple seven figures, depending on the portfolio of increased value in investments from doing nothing but exposing themselves to that growth, which is again, really powerful. mean, we’ve seen years and years taken off financial freedom timelines just over the last few years from the stock market.

Jake: we just referenced numbers of just like a flat amount set in 2023. But hopefully for a lot of our dentists that we’re working with, they’ve been contributing kind of on a monthly, quarterly, annually basis. And if you’ve been contributing at all to your portfolio, yes, over the past three years, you should have doubled your value at least, ⁓ which is pretty awesome. And this is the reason why we invest. That’s why we put our money into the market for windows of time like this when we’re in a good bull market run. so maybe like so the stock market has been on fire. I don’t think that’s the reason people are complaining. At least I don’t think it is. Now, some people can make the argument of, well, not everyone owns stocks. That’s just enriching the top 1%. Still, 62 % of Americans as of 2025 do own stocks. So it is the majority still. So of those 62 % of Americans, they have seen their wealth balloon quite a bit over the past handful of years.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I was going to say that.

Jake: You can always make the argument like, yes, it is. This is like widening the gap between the people who do own stocks and those who don’t. get that. But we’re still at our highest participation rate in the stock market as we’ve been as a country. It keeps going up.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I do think there is some nuance here because I do think this is still we’ve talked about this in the past. The stock market is still highly concentrated of like the hands that it’s in, even though 62 % owned stocks for sure. I would guess that a vast majority of that is via like a 401k.

Jake: Yes, this this 62 % counts people who have $8,000 in a 401k through an employer. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. Yeah, I think it’s something like, like, not like 90 % of the markets owned by like 10 % of the people.

Jake: Not even I actually know the numbers 90 the what the top 1 % owns 90 % of all stocks.

Matt Mulcock: Okay, there you go. So I do think this still can contribute a little bit where it’s kind of like this idea of like, yeah, my I’ve seen my portfolio go from $5,000 to $10,000. But I’ve also seen stories of this guy, this billionaire who just added another billion or 20 billion or whatever. So I do think there is a little bit of like

Jake: Another billion. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Although I’m participating as well, the vast majority of it is, like it’s not life changing money for me, right? For the regular person where for the super wealthy it is.

Jake: Ballot point. I think that’s a good argument to bring up here. Like if there’s some discontent around the market, it’s maybe the inequality side of things. Or it’s like, maybe I haven’t been participating as much as other people and through social media or different things. I’ve seen other people to participate and have their wealth grow even faster than my wealth has grown. guess.

Matt Mulcock: or just by sheer dollars, meaning it’s the same percentage, let’s say, but the sheer dollar amount is just not enough for me to care about. Whereas when I see another billionaire or millionaire add all this money, it’s like, well, cool, I’m not doing as good as them. A little bit of comparison there, I think. So kind of interesting.

Jake: That’s fair. I think that’s fair. My response would be to people thinking that as we’ll get in, get involved, start participating. The stock market is available to everybody. It’s been doing awesome. Get in, start taking advantage.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And also too, Jake, when we talk about the stock market, ⁓ majority of these people that we’re talking about that own that have a vast majority of it are baby boomers. Let’s be honest. They’re people that have just been in the market for a long time. And so you’ve got to start somewhere. ⁓ It’s easy, I guess, for us to sit up here like a grandpa on a porch, like stop complaining. But there is something to that of like, hey, if you’re winning.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: You’re just, you’re, you’re winning. Like you just take it, take this run, you know.

Jake: Mm-hmm. I agree. So the stock market has been performing well in general, right? Through all sectors. It’s been an awesome performance. So I don’t think, I don’t see lot of complaints about the stock market. I don’t think that’s the one ⁓ that we’re pointing to there. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: There can’t be other than what we just said, but like the actual numbers, there’s there can’t be complaining about it. It’s been incredible.

Jake: I have seen a lot of complaints about gas prices, which I have a whole section here on gas prices for my group of uncles, particularly if they’re listening. I don’t think they would ever listen to this, but if they are shout out, you guys are awesome. ⁓ But gas prices, I’ve had a lot of conversations about, man, the price of oil and gas just keeps going up. ⁓ Ben Carlson is a finance, he does animal spirits and with great holds wealth. And we talk about him a lot. He actually produced a chart showing real US like real inflation adjusted.

Matt Mulcock: From your group of uncles.

Jake: Gas prices recently, which right? Just like if we’re adjusting for inflation, gas prices are actually lower now than they have been over the past three years, even with this big spike. And they’re kind of on par with gas prices since 1990. If ⁓ we want to look there. So like if we’re adjusting, I know no one does this right? Whenever someone is going to the when they’re going to the gas pump, they’re not like, I wonder what the inflation adjusted number of this gas is right there. Just like they’re just like it’s for

Matt Mulcock: Your uncles don’t want to hear this, by the way. Let me look up the adjusted figures.

Jake: Yeah, it’s like it’s $4 now. It was 280 or whatever a month ago and I’m ticked off that it’s like a dollar more per gallon. I get that. But if we’re just trying to put some context around gas prices like, they’ve gone up recently. But if we adjust for how much inflation has grown, I also have another chart here that shows. The price of gas, if we compare it to wages, it’s like wage growth over the past 20 years. Wages have grown about 20 % since 2022. We’ll talk about that in a different section.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. How dare you bring data?

Jake: But if you view gas prices as like what does it cost like the cost per gallon as a percentage of wages, we’re essentially as low as we’ve been in almost two decades still even with this increase here.

Matt Mulcock: This is a big deal. I really do. This is the narrative. This more than any of the ones we’re highlighting is the narrative is not matching reality.

Jake: So yeah, I think. Yeah, which I know people complain like a gas is a dollar more per gallon or whatever it is like. That’s just annoying and very frustrating. But it’s likely like and it happened really quickly, which I get. But as we’re looking at gas, like what does it cost as a percentage of income and how much you’re making? We’re really not at any crazy high levels currently. And it’s kind of the funny thing. We’ve stayed relatively flat over the past 20 years. It’s even gone down a little bit like gas costs as percentage of income. So I just I don’t really buy this is where the narrative breaks off like I don’t.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble for saying this. don’t really like love that I’m complaining about gas argument or complaints. I don’t quite get it. ⁓ Anyway, am I wrong there, Matt? What am I being insensitive?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I think, no, no, no, I think to your, I think to your, no, I think you’re, I don’t think our, I don’t think our client base struggles too much with this one in particular. I think this is more of like, ⁓

Jake: But this is the straw man argument here. Like people say, have you seen gas prices recently? And people argue it’s not just price of the pump, but it’s like gas prices, increased costs of transportation. And so the grapes that you buy at the grocery store are going to go up right. I think it can impact a lot of things. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think what you said earlier, though, is spot on, which is like no one’s sitting at the pump saying, I wonder what the inflation adjusted wage adjusted number here is. So I’m with you. Like the data supports like I think all we are the regular all of us like us regular people when we’re at the gas pump, we just know the salient fact is it feels more expensive because nominally it is.

Jake: Bye.

Matt Mulcock: Nominally it is and so and then the media and the narrative grows around that and and I think the other thing you highlighted is really is really worth repeating as well, which is anytime we have a Massive change in an important data point that happens quickly It feels more painful. So it doesn’t happen slow. It’s like when inflation of any kind or price change of any kind happens fast We don’t have time to adjust to it

Jake: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: It feels worse than it really is.

Jake: Fair. I get it. So if you want to complain about gas, I guess my verdict is like, sure, go ahead and do it. I don’t think it’s making that big of an impact in kind of as a percentage of people’s budgets. I think we’re right in line with historical averages.

Matt Mulcock: Don’t do it to Jake. So do you send this data to your uncles when they complain in the thread? Did you really? What did they say?

Jake: I did. Yeah, they don’t like it. huh. Yeah, I’ve sent it to him. It’s the classic like, how are they manipulating these numbers? I just know how like my situation feels and it feels crappy and I just have less money than I did a couple of months ago and I get it like that’s kind of their argument right that it’s just lame. ⁓ So it’s just like the yeah, how do we trust the data? I just know my own personal situation is feeling crappy, which I get I can’t argue you know, I can’t argue with that.

Matt Mulcock: yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Got it. Don’t ever show me data that opposes my view, Jake, or I’ll just question the data. Yeah, I get it.

Jake: OK, so those are some of those things I want to get into. Maybe some of the more meatier, like if I’m if someone came and asked me like, Jake, what do you think the problem is with the economy right now? Why do think people are unhappy? I would give two reasons. Like it was the big one. Inflation being one and then housing being the other care kind of like I think are two pretty valid responses here. So let’s start with inflation, which I think if you pulled most of America to, they would say inflation is number one. Right. Like they just like the things that I’m buying cost more now than they did a couple of months ago or a year ago or even five years ago.

Matt Mulcock: Well, and I think you could split this into two categories of people, ⁓ homeowners who purchased their home prior to 20, whatever, 21 or two versus people who don’t own a home yet. I think people that already own a home with a 3 % rate would absolutely say inflation of everything else. I would guess that anyone who doesn’t own a home yet, first time home buyers or otherwise ⁓ would say, Prices of homes are by far the number one reason.

Jake: Yeah, let’s get into housing then. Yeah. like how let’s just start with that one. Let’s maybe move around the order from outline here. So I get the housing thing. I’ve said on multiple podcasts. If you are a first time home buyer trying to buy a home right now, I feel for you. I empathize. It is probably harder to buy a home now than it ever has been in American history. Like it is very expensive. The combination of higher prices, which is we’ve seen like house prices have skyrocketed since 2018, 2019.

Matt Mulcock: It sucks. Yeah.

Jake: plus a combination of that with higher interest rates. And they’ve kind of remained stubbornly high as the time we’re recording this. It just made it very expensive to buy a home. I get that. So that’s one end of the spectrum. Like I get the first time homeowner complaints. I would say, like you mentioned, Matt, for the people who already own a home, though, who have owned a home over the past handful of years, 65 % of Americans own a home as of 2025. Right. It’s like this is even higher than stocks. Still, two thirds of Americans own houses. If you’re part of those two thirds of people, You have seen a huge increase in home equity over the past half decade. There’s like two sides of the, you could argue that maybe you should be feeling pretty awesome about how whole, like if you’ve owned a home for five, 10 years, you’re sitting on, like we are sitting in America right now on a ton, like a record amount of home equity.

Matt Mulcock: You should be feeling good about it. Yeah. Yeah, not to mention you control your nieces, nephews, and kids and their friends about the fact that they don’t know home yet. And you do.

Jake: Yes, so I would split that. Like if you’re feeling like for the first time home buyers, I think you have a valid response. I don’t even have like a comeback to like if you’re feeling like I really feel bad about the economy solely for the reason of I cannot buy a house. I get you. It sucks. ⁓ If you already own a home and like, man, it’s kind of expensive to get into a new house. I don’t buy that argument as much because it’s like, well, just like use your home equity. You have a lot of it, right? Or stay in your home, right?

Matt Mulcock: Or just like stay in your home with your 3 % rate. Yeah.

Jake: But a lot of you are like, I don’t want to give them my 3 % rate. Well, it’s like, well, you got it. You can’t have everything here, right? You can’t keep your 3%. It’s like, if you want to get a new house, you have hundreds of thousands of equity in your house, access that, use it to buy your new home, get your thing where you want.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Which by the way is highlighting the problem for the new home buyer is that because people, even people who would normally upgrade, right on a let’s say a seven to 10 year schedule, which is pretty normal for a person who owns a home, maybe they’re a young family, then they grow that home. And like that normal cycle is broken because interest rates went up so quickly. And so people are staying in their home with a 2.9 % interest rate longer. Jake, think you are a walking example of this. Truly. Like people who would normally upgrade or not and new homes are not being permitted to be built or there people who just new home builders not building right now. So we just have a massive shortage of single family homes by like 5 million in America right now. And so yeah, there’s no real way way around it. For the first time homebuyer, like you said, Jake, there’s no comeback other than like, I don’t know.

Jake: I am, yep.

Matt Mulcock: Change your goal, I guess. Like maybe it’s not home ownership or I don’t know. And that sounds again, that sounds really, I don’t know, Privilege? Yeah.

Jake: Yeah privilege to say like it’s like, yeah, where it’s like, ⁓ like, we are both homeowners, you know, talking to the non homeowners there. Yeah, it’s easy once you get into the house breaking through is, is tough there. Yeah, so I get that. Like I would say like my verdict on the homeownership stuff is first time homebuyer, I get you complain all you want. existing homeowners, I don’t have a ton of sympathy for you. Like I think we’re like, you’ve had a lot of home equity growth. If you wanted to move even with higher rates. Oftentimes, this increased equity can offset some of those increased interest costs of getting into

Matt Mulcock: Brutal. Brutal. Yeah.

Jake: So I would say that if you’re an existing homeowner, again, two thirds of Americans own homes, two thirds of Americans own stocks. Both of those things have skyrocketed over the past five to seven years. Because of that fact, Americans are as wealthy as they’ve ever been. It’s from a net worth point of view, right? On paper, home ownership, portfolio value. If you’ve had a home, if you’ve been invested over the past five to 10 years, you’re probably feeling pretty good. You’ve seen your net worth really grow.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I think I just saw a thing recently that said the first time ever the median household income is now in the six figures, I believe. I’m pulling from data I don’t have in front of me, but I’m pretty sure that’s true. You can keep going on inflation. I’ll see if I can find it.

Jake: Maybe, sure. I could see that with dual income. Sure. Dual income houses there. So that was that’s the housing thing. Oh yeah, Matt, you look that up. Talking about inflation, the other thing that I understand people are complaining about. Can we talked about? It’s no secret people hate higher prices. But if we’re again, the context of people feel worse today than they ever had before. We had really high inflation in America again, the double digits in 1970s and the 1980s like double digit inflation. My guess as to why people hate inflation so much and this is such a sticking point is because we haven’t really seen crazy inflation since the 70s or 80s. So that is now 40 plus years ago. We are coming off a decade like the 2010s like historically low inflation where the prices did not grow at all. And so we’ve had kind of a rapid jump up here. And so my my guess is to appeal. This is really a big stepping sticking point is we haven’t had to deal with inflation like for maybe decades, really since the 2000s. It’s not been a big topic and not been a big issue. It has been the past couple of years. We haven’t had to deal with it for a while. And some people are like, oh my gosh, what is this? I forgot inflation even existed, even though if you talk to your boomer friends or parents, I’m like, oh, we actually lived through this a while ago. So that’s, think inflation is a big one. Although my one, again, data point here to combat the people complaining about inflation is if you go back to 2018, this is data from the Carson group.

Matt Mulcock: is even a thing. Yeah, yeah. Don’t do it, Jake.

Jake: Incomes on average have actually grown 15 % higher than inflation since 2019. Which again, I know there’s probably people out there saying, well, like that’s not the case for me. My income hasn’t grown, but my groceries have gone become more like that’s great. That’s true. But how data works is like if that’s not the case for you is probably the case for your friend. We’re we’re talking about average aggregate data, average incomes. We’re not talking about individual incomes. If your income didn’t go up, unfortunately, probably your friends did. And that’s what’s making this data prove out to be where it is.

Matt Mulcock: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. And if we come back to this idea of Dentist specifically, since that’s who we’re talking to, ⁓ I think this is a real issue in dentistry. you know, dentistry, as we both know, Jake is an interesting career and profession and small business in the sense that they don’t have control at either end of the bound or of the PNL, meaning or as much like especially a PPO led practice.

Jake: Yes. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: They don’t have a ton of control over other than just grinding, working more, opening up offices or days. Christine probably would be yelling at me right now if I told people don’t have control. I’ll just say they have less control from a pricing perspective than a typical small business that’s like selling widgets, right? So I think there’s that. But they also have the same sometimes lack of control when it comes to inflation.

Jake: Sure.

Matt Mulcock: supplies and wages and all this stuff. Wages is huge.

Jake: Wait, this is a big one. think reviewing a lot of P &Ls. I’ve seen a lot of dentists like the top line is not increased, but just wage growth for their hygienists and their front office staff have just naturally gone up because people are asking for because inflation so I get that.

Matt Mulcock: Yes, so this is one I’m definitely seeing that even if they’re having top line growth on collections, they’re definitely having a squeeze on the profit side because they haven’t been able to outpace inflation on the balance sheet, like on the P &L. It’s tough. We see this. It’s really hard. We’re seeing profits actually decrease a little bit.

Jake: Yep. Real concern, real concern. Real concern. Yeah. So on the I’m glad you brought that to being dental specific on the dental side. This is a little different than aggregate, you know, just across America. Yeah. Inflation is the one I think like if I had to pinpoint any like inflation and the housing there for first time home buyers are probably the I think the biggest sticking points and complaining points for people again. But on an aggregate like wages have kept pace, which bears out in the data that shows consumer spending is as high as it’s ever been.

Matt Mulcock: That’s what’s so weird to me is…

Jake: Yes, like this shows that even with the higher prices, wages have kept pace enough to allow people to continue to spend.

Matt Mulcock: Well, and people keep spending record rates and now, but they’re also flipping around and saying they feel worse about the economy than they ever have. It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense. Cause like you would think if you actually felt that bad, this is the most confusing part. If you actually felt that bad about the economy, you’d think you.

Jake: You have a cut back.

Matt Mulcock: you would change your behavior. You wouldn’t be like you’d be actually responding to that in kind, which makes me be one of your uncles, which is like I’m questioning the data. Maybe I’m like, where did they manipulate this? Because based on like, words are one thing, but it’s like, let me see your actions and the actions would indicate that no one’s cutting their spending. So they can’t feel that bad about the economy.

Jake: huh, yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. I’ll tell an example. He’s probably not listening to this anyway and won’t give up his name, but I have a buddy who goes to the US Open tennis every single year. And it’s like his favorite thing to do. He knows where I go. It’s a fun trip. Really cool in New York. Anyway, over the past like last year, he said, prices like ticket prices have tripled, right? Like from where it was. And he was complaining on and on about ticket prices tripling. I said, well, you’re not going to go then because it tripled. He said, no, I’m still going. like I’m still taking it.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, I’m gonna complain about it first.

Jake: I’m going to complain about it the whole way, but I’m still going to buy those tickets at triple the cost because I think that’s like representative of a lot of people. It’s like, my gosh, you know how much this vacation just cost for us to win on, but we still went on the trip. We still did the thing. I can’t believe how much these beans cost of the grocery store. Yeah, but I’m still going to buy this stuff. They’re still buying it even though complaining about the higher prices.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yep. Yeah. I will say this, I’m a dad. I get it. This is a dad thing of doing. I just categorize this very much as a dad. Like, can you believe the price of this salad or this cheeseburger? I do that all the time. I just went on a little weekend getaway and like a little, I call it camping. wasn’t really camping. It was glamping. We were like in a cabin and I was blown away at how expensive it was. Right. But

Jake: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. expensive yeah

Matt Mulcock: It was shockingly expensive, like the nightly cost for this little cabin in this like little town in Utah. But the same thing. It’s like, I’m not, I’m going to go, like I’m still going and going to enjoy myself, but I have to at least call out the middle-aged dad comment of like, can you believe these prices?

Jake: Which is fine, right? Which is fine. Part of how we bond as humans is complaining to each other. Like studies have shown that it’s healthy for us to complain about certain things. Anyway, so that’s kind of a lot of the data that I had met that I wanted to go through of we’re complaining. Like we went through a lot of different aspects of the economy from stock market to AI, to housing, to inflation. I really, like bottom line is I really don’t think we’re in a bad spot economically in this country.

Matt Mulcock: Sure. Yeah.

Jake: just like hard data stuff from like unemployment, stock market, labor participation, all of that stuff. Yeah, let’s do it.

Matt Mulcock: By the way, I found the data, Jake. The US median family income officially exceeded $100,000 for the first time ever, reaching 105,800. So that’s the family income.

Jake: Yeah, that’s what I think individuals are like 60 to 70,000 on average. So that makes sense for a household. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So it says the broader US median household income is approximately $83,730. The distinction between the two metrics explains the $100,000 milestone. So there you go. still, so this is while broader national household median has not crossed $100,000, an estimated 42 % of US households now earn $100,000 or more than ever before.

Jake: Incomes are going up. Yeah, incomes are coming up. Even though prices are they really are. ⁓ Which again, I guess back, we can get into a whole discussion of what people rather have their income increase or the prices of the things they buy stay the same. Like what’s more like what hurts more? Like if you made five grand extra per year, but your expenses went up by five grand, you know, that doesn’t feel great. Would you rather just kept where you were?

Matt Mulcock: Well, there’s also interesting data that we referenced before around this idea of reference groups around the broadening of our reference groups. And there’s been legitimate studies done around, would you rather make objectively more money? Like it was like something like $50,000 more, but live in a neighborhood where everyone made a hundred thousand dollars more versus make less money like by half.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: But you make more than everyone else around you in that neighborhood. And a vast majority of people selected making less money objectively, making less actual income in real dollars just so they could live in a neighborhood where they made more than everyone else. Wild.

Jake: We don’t want to make more money. We don’t want to make a lot of money. We just want to make more than our friends is kind of the dark truth of it. You know, kind of where we stand. Okay, Matt. So I kind of we can maybe get towards we went through some of the data here. I don’t know if I can pinpoint one thing that’s like the economy is in a bad spot here again outside of first-hand home buyers. So why do we feel so bad? Like if you had like if someone has asked you that question of like why are Americans feeling so crappy for lack of a better term about where the economy is at?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jake: Is it some other intangible thing that we’re not talking about? is this is this like a social media thing, a comparison thing? Do you have any ideas on that?

Matt Mulcock: I really, I mean, I have ideas. None of them are probably, well, none of them are backed by data and their vibes. But yeah, I do think social media plays a huge role, not to sound like cliche there. I do think there is a phenomenon around just like narratives grow. I just think narratives cling on, just like build. It’s like a snowball going down a hill. And nobody wants to question it for the most part, like in day to day life. And I also think there, I think what you said earlier, just now ⁓ is interesting. Like I do think there’s some bonding like aspect of it where people just want to like bond over negativity and pessimism and life is hard. ⁓ But yeah, I don’t know if I have like real answers other than just like, I just think this narrative has grown ⁓ and gotten

Jake: Yeah. Life’s hard. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: To a point where no one questions it. And it’s just like, yeah, the economy sucks. it’s like, but does like really it does. I like, what are where are you getting that from?

Jake: If I to give a take here, ⁓ I wonder if we ever get back to a point in the future where people feel positive about the economy. I wonder if we’re past that as a society. Yes, just due to and not saying like again, where I’m separating here like sentiment from how the economy is actually doing like the data behind it. I just think from the sentiment point how people feel.

Matt Mulcock: Just all together. Yeah.

Jake: I wonder if we’ve just got so ahead of our skis on social media and interacting with each other. And like we talked about this, the negative headlines and you know, media companies trying to get you to click on stuff, negativity sales. I wonder if we’ve just gotten to the point where because we have so much exposure to everything happening in the world that we’re never going to feel satisfied with where things are. And we’re never going to feel like everything is going well because everything won’t be going well. There will never be a point in the future where everything is doing awesome in every corner of the world. There’s always going to be problems.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: And they wonder because we’re seeing so many of those problems, we’re always going to feel like, yeah, I don’t think things are going awesome. I had this here in our outline. Nvidia CEO. I really like this quote. actually resonated with me as here, which he said. What’s the name? Jensen. How do you say his last name? Wong Jensen Wong. think I say Nvidia CEO. You guys should know Nvidia out there. It’s the best performing stock ever.

Matt Mulcock: Jensen Wong, I think.

Jake: With Nvidia here, but he was asked a question a while ago of would he rather relive his 20s back in the day when he did or be 20 years old today? Like what does he think would be more preferable? And he said this, this is a quote, I thought our 20s were happier than these 20s. I think everyone deserves some time to be oblivious and not where all the world’s problems on their shoulders on day one. We are raising a generation that is very cynical and too informed. They are cynical not because they’re inherently cynical but they’re cynical because they see so much stuff. It’s too much stuff. And I think that this ring true with me of like this, like the social media. I think we’re just overexposed. I think we do see just too much stuff and it’s causing us to be cynical and pessimistic. We’re like back in the day, like again, in your twenties that he’s talking about here, like you should be kind of naive and optimistic and you can go change the world. And I think we don’t feel that way today because

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Jake: Yeah, we’re we’re exposed to all of it. We know the inner workings of all these companies and the governments and we’re a bit disenfranchised, I think, with everything. And so I think that. That like the nature against social media, Internet to just cause us to be like, I don’t know if we’re ever getting back to a point where people are going to feel awesome about the economy. That’s my hot take.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, I think there’s some truth to that. I think the key word there is he’s saying too informed. I don’t know if, I don’t know if the word informed is what I would use, but something like that too exposed to endless amounts of information, some true, some not. And I think that’s a real problem today is like being able to find the actual truth in anything.

Jake: Too informed. I like that.

Matt Mulcock: it’s, gave the example earlier, kind of tongue in cheek, but I think there’s a lot of truth to this of your uncle’s being like, well, I questioned that data then. Like, I think that’s kind of our mentality nowadays. It was just like, don’t tell me to be, not be pessimistic. Like, no, like that’s what I’m, I’m set on. And any data you show me, I’m just going to question the source. I think that’s the day and age we live in now, which is a huge problem. I think that’s a, that’s a problem.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So there’s actually a book I think of whenever this topic comes up ⁓ by a guy named Hans Rosling. This is a long time, I don’t even know how long ago, 10, 15 years ago probably called Factfulness, highly recommend. But he talks about this exact concept around that the world has always and will always continue to improve and get better and make progress. But we just now live in an age where we just don’t want to see it or we just can’t acknowledge it, I guess. ⁓ I think of what Morgan Housel says too around like pessimists sound smart, optimists kind of stand out of touch. So I think there’s a little bit of that aspect of that too. Like you’re saying, Jake, it’s unifying to complain with your friends and people, but be the guy, try being the guy that’s like, I actually don’t think it’s that bad. Like, that’s scary.

Jake: Mm-hmm. Yep. And you’re just called naive usually, or you don’t know, right? It’s like, you don’t actually know, or you don’t relate to us, right? Type of thing.

Matt Mulcock: You’re called naive or yes. So I honestly think that’s where we’re kind of out of society is like you, you don’t, it’s really scary to be the person that’s like, Hey guys, I actually think we’re doing okay. You sound privileged or out of touch or naive or stupid where I think this snowball has gone so far down the hill of this negativity and pessimism. And it’s.

Jake: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I don’t think anyone wants to actually be like, ⁓ I actually think we’re all right.

Jake: Well, given that backdrop, Matt, I am going to be that guy today on this podcast. I think we’re doing OK. I’m just going to say, like, I think from a pure financial point of view, think we’re all right. Like if you’re I think if you’re complaining about this economy, I don’t kind of kind of don’t know what you want. Like I know like it’s like most everything I think as much as we can get right is kind of right currently. Sure. Double down, please. OK.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Can I double down on that? Yeah.Yep. I’ll do I’ll double down on that. I’ll say generally, obviously, we cannot speak to anyone’s individual situation like that is my throat officially cleared there. ⁓ But generally speaking, there’s never been a better time to be alive ever, especially in America, and especially when it comes to wealth, the wealth that’s been created and the ability to create wealth.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Has never been better. And I might get yelled at for that. I don’t know. Maybe people are screaming at their.

Jake: Well, we said, yeah, maybe the people like, yeah, you guys are naive and privilege and don’t relate with us. That’s OK. I’m willing to I’m willing to take that because I just really I think we’re in a pretty good spot. ⁓ And so, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s okay. Maybe I am. And by the way, specifically ⁓ people, can redo this dental podcast. I get asked this a lot. I get asked this a ton. I’ve got a particular client right now I’m thinking of where I’ve been with them. They’ve been with me for a long time. Really good friends of mine now and their son is ⁓ going to dental school and like really, really close to going through this process. And the plan is hopefully for him to take over their practice and they’ve me, they’ve asked me quite a bit over the last few years and sometimes like they’ll send me articles like, what about this, what about this? And I just say the same thing. I’m like, dentistry is awesome. And it’s an incredible profession. There’s such a bright future in dentistry. Tell him to go all in. Like he’s got this type of thing. And I believe that, fully believe that dentistry is awesome. And this doomsday, I think it’s actually died down a little bit, Jake. I really do. think the DSO.

Jake: awesome. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Doomsday Sphere type of stuff has died down, fortunately. But I just wanna double down on that too. Like dentistry is awesome. It’s a great profession and it will be around for a long time.

Jake: Yeah, we see it every day. I don’t know of many professions out there where if you want to, you can be your own boss. You can make a really good income. You can pick your own hours and you get to help people, right? Like actually tangibly help people. Like it’s hard to find a combination of all of those things. And dentistry offers that. It’s pretty cool. I don’t know if I have any any final thoughts, Matt. Do we thoroughly beat this horse to death or is there anything anything we haven’t hit on?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. I know. Did we give too many answers that I don’t know if we did. think we just, hopefully we, we, hopefully we executed on our, our, our mission of just being, ⁓ exploratory and I’m, I’m, I will say I’m thoroughly, I’m thoroughly confused. I really don’t have answers other than like what I read from like people like Hans Rosling or, or, you know, other people who’ve written about different phenomenons. ⁓ I think it’s more.

Jake: Talked about it enough.

Matt Mulcock: I think there’s more to be said around like just the psychology of humans and group think and thing. I think we’re seeing master displays of that kind of stuff. Kind of what, you know, Jensen Wong says of just maybe we’re just too cynical and too informed. I think that’s kind of that might be the answer. Yeah.

Jake: I do think it’s possible to be too informed. I kind of think I’m getting there. Like it’s possible just to consume so much data and information that we don’t know the difference between North and South and what’s going on there. so I think that’s a, you know, moving to the future, I think a trait that will be valuable is again, picking the right information, seeing what information you’re exposing yourself to on and on. ⁓ Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Well, with that point, Jake, think there’s something to be said moving forward. It’s becoming more and more, I think, valuable. It’s really easy to stay kind of at the Twitter level of everything, like just little like excerpts of things and like base base level knowledge of a lot of different things. I think the future even more so will be the people who can actually go deep in something.

Jake: Yeah. The people who don’t just read tweets, but watch read a book on a subject, right? Where someone’s researched and don’t Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, there you go. Can we get back to reading books? But yeah, I think the people who are willing to look out of touch or misinformed on certain things, like that’s the other thing here is like, do you have to have an opinion on everything? Does everyone have to have an opinion on everything? It feels like that. Now we’re just sounding like curmudgeon old uncles. That’s what we sound like.

Jake: No, as podcasters we do. Podcasters we do. But yeah, I just I actually just want to be like, I empathize with you. Again, this is a hard thing to which is hard for us to square in our heads, which is there will always be people in America suffering and having a hard time. There will be individual situations in the world, too. But you may be like, there’s always been people like, man, this economic environment does not suit me personally. And I’m getting crushed over here. What’s hard is on the flip side, there’s a lot of people. There’s there are other people who are

Matt Mulcock: or in the world, yeah, yeah.

Jake: becoming successful and feel comfortable. it’s been an awesome few years for them. And it’s I think it’s hard for us to square as humans, those two things happening at the same time, right. In our minds. That’s why this data and the stats that we give are all just general aggregations in America. So like we’re saying, you know, wages have increased by 15 percent. On average, there is definitely scenarios for dentists or other people where that has not been the case. Right. It has not grown by 15 percent. And that’s where you just have to like all we have to go off of when judging the economy is this broad aggregations of data.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: we can’t dive into everyone’s specific situation. So I think that’s important to note.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think that’s true. And maybe we end with this too is we should have maybe brought this up sooner, but like, what are the practical, what do I do with my hands type things? Like, I think it’s a good, a good reminder to around focusing on the things that you actually can control. So like to your point, Jacob, the people that are listening maybe and saying, well, what about me in this specific situation? Like the general principle still exists that there’s so much you can’t control and you shouldn’t even try, you’re going to drive yourself nuts. Pretty much everything, right? The things you can control are the things we always talk about and share on our podcasts and articles and whatnot around something as simple as like controlling your savings rate, controlling your spending, get organized. Like it all comes back to some really base look in the mirror type things around how do you make progress?

Jake: Pretty much everything we talked about today. You cannot control, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: something as trite and simple as focus on the things you can control and do it for a long time. You don’t control the fact that the market has done this incredible three and a half year run. You don’t control that. And you can’t control when it turns against us. You can control, you know, not spending more than you earn and actually putting money into the stock market over the next 30 years to build your wealth. So I think maybe wrapping it up with that is like a reminder that everything we talked about today, we’re exploring this like kind of broad, we don’t know what’s happening with the sentiment thing comes back to just like, let’s focus on the things you can control.

Jake: What matters in the end is your situation, not the broader economy, right? Like if inflation you do feel like is eating you alive, you might have to make some hard decisions on cutting back. Right? Like, you just like you can’t control inflation or prices of things. You may have to be like, you know what? Maybe we do one less vacation this year because our savings goals are suffering because of that. Right. So in the end, all that matters is what you can do with your personal situation. I think that’s I like that you brought it there at the end.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah being willing to make trade-offs. The story you brought about your friend is like, are you willing to make a trade-off about prices tripling? Like if you’re not, then it kind of falls on deaf ears. So, all right, Jake, we’re gonna change this topic or this podcast to two old uncles. I don’t know, we’ll see. Two curmudgeon out of touch uncles, maybe. Well, no, appreciate you bringing all the data and the outline here. I think a helpful discussion hopefully.

Jake: Yeah. Could, yeah. Sorry in advance, anyone who felt that way listening, yeah.

Matt Mulcock: If you’re listening and you ⁓ vibe with us or maybe you don’t, but you want to get some help with the things you can control in your life with investing, financial planning, taxes, accounting. We are here at Advisors. You can go to dentistadvisors.com click on the book free consultation button. We would love to talk to you, hear your stories, see how we can help and point you in the right direction. Again, dentistadvisors.com for now. Everyone, thanks for listening. Jake, thanks for being here and sharing your wisdom. Till next time. Have a good one. Take care. Bye bye.

Keywords: economy, inflation, stock market, housing, AI, consumer sentiment, financial planning, wealth, recession, personal finance

Economy