No Need to Win the Lottery

It is a privilege to work, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. But the best scenario – especially when you are older and getting closer to the end of a clinical career – is to work because you want to work and not because you have to work.

One of the major reasons that we remain in a “seller’s” market for dental practice transitions is that there are fewer practices for sale than the number of doctors looking to buy. Many doctors who were planning to retire at 65 have come to the realization that they can’t afford to sell and still maintain their current lifestyle. For the first 11 years of the 21st century, the stock market was a bitter disappointment with essentially no growth. And many doctors, understandably nervous when the market crashed and lost so much value in 2008 and 2009, sold to protect their portfolio but unfortunately never bought back in as the market totally recovered.

So age 75 or 72 has become the new 65. Doctors continue to have to work longer than they ever thought they would. For whatever reason – bad advice, bad execution, lack of understanding – these professionals never anticipated how much money they would need in retirement. Life expectancies continue to lengthen. Statistically, if both you and your spouse make it to age 65, one of you will live to 90! And living longer obviously requires lots of cash. So how do you prepare yourself for this challenge? How do you make the supposedly golden years truly golden?

Over the next few months, I plan to write a series of blog posts all about ways to aggressively save money. So many of the rules have changed, and more products than ever before are available to the motivated and informed doctor of any age. Stay tuned. As always, I will look forward to your comments.