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Dentists, Puns, and Money is a podcast focused on two things: The financial topics relevant to dentists leaving clinical practice and the stories and lessons of dentists who have already done so.
1. The stories of dentists who have transitioned from full-time clinical dentistry.
2. The financial topics that are relevant for dentists making that transition.
If you’re a dentist thinking about your exit from clinical, and you’d like to learn from the experiences of other dentists who have made that transition, be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast app.
Host Shawn Terrell also dives deep into the many financial components of exiting dentistry, including tax reduction strategies and how to live off your assets.
And, we try to keep it light by mixing in a bad joke… or two.
Please note: Dentists, Puns, and Money was previously known as The Practice Growth Podcast until March 2022.
Shawn Terrell (00:02.284)
Welcome to Dentists, Puns and Money. I am your host, Shawn Terrell. Dentists, Puns and Money is brought to you by Dentist Exit Planning. At Dentist Exit Planning, we help dentists within five years of leaving clinical practice build their financial treatment plan for life after dentistry. Part of that financial treatment plan usually involves
investment accounts or money in the market. since the market has been so volatile lately, as I record this in early April of 2025, I thought I would use this podcast as a chance to offer a few of my thoughts on the recent market volatility, just maybe in the event that my perspective helps someone else's perspective in a small way.
just in case my perspective helps someone else's perspective in some small way. So a couple disclaimers before I get started. Number one, when I talk about the market, I'm talking about just the market in general, like not any specific funds or anything like that. Most people have money in their 401k or their profit sharing plan or different IRAs or brokerage accounts. And in those accounts, there's underlying funds that they're actually invested in.
But I'm not getting any specifics about those funds. I'm just saying that most people log in, they can see what their account balance was last month or at end of last year, and they can see that it's gone down quite a bit recently. So just in general, talking about that. Number two, this is not some deep dive on tariffs. I am not the person to get into the weeds on the microeconomics of that.
My knowledge of tariffs probably begins and ends with Ben Stein's lecture and Ferris Bueller's Day Off If you are familiar with that movie from almost 40 years ago now, Bueller, Anyone? So just wanted to say that it's not going to get into the weeds. And we're talking in general terms about this recent market volatility. So.
Shawn Terrell (02:09.097)
The first thing I want to do is just acknowledge that this is scary and it's okay to be a little bit scared and have some anxiety about everything that's been going on recently and the fact that if you have put a lot of your money throughout your clinical career into your 401k, into your profit sharing plan, into different IRAs and we're planning on using those accounts to fund your post clinical lifestyle.
it can be really scary to log in and see that it's worth 10 or 20 % less than it was a few weeks ago, especially when you put a dollar amount to that 10 or 20 % loss, whatever you're down, it can be several hundred thousand dollars, if not more. So it's okay to be a little bit anxious about everything that's going on. That being said, I do wanna acknowledge that, but these things...
happen periodically from time to time. And when I say these things, I just mean that the market takes kind of a nosedive for a period of time. And if you look back through recent history, just my recent history of being alive, I think about the war in Ukraine starting in 2022 that through the market through a loop. Before that, it was the COVID pandemic in the spring of 2020 where everything really nosedived for a short period of time.
Before that, it was the housing bubble crisis in 2007 and 2008, which led to the lost decade for a lot of people my age. And then going way back, I don't really remember this as well because I was just getting out of college and sort of naive, but the dot com bubble burst in the early 2000s or right around 2000 caused a pretty big market dip in a short period of time. So.
It's always some headline, some world event that causes it, but they do sort of happen from time to time. So the key I think is to, know it sounds cliche, but it's true. Like a lot of cliches is just don't panic and make rash decisions about what's going on right now. So with the fact that it's happened so many times and all those examples that I just gave, I think it's probably likely that something like this is going to happen again or happen several retards.
Shawn Terrell (04:25.37)
or happened several different times in your post clinical life when you retire from dentistry. So the second thing I would like to offer as a thought is just so the third thing that I would like to offer as a thought is just sort of what is your plan for when this does inevitably happen again, one or more times in your post clinical life when you're retired from dentistry sequence of returns. I know that's sort of a financial planning term, but it's
I'm not going to get into too much here, but that's a big thing when you're looking at the last five years before you retire and the first few years after you step away from a clinical and start living on your assets. So I think it's important to make sure that in your financial plan, you have somewhere you can go to access money to live off of for a period of time that is not correlated or not related to the stock market or the market, broadly speaking.
So make sure that this event kind of serves as your reminder that you do need a plan for not, again, another cliche, having your eggs all in one basket. I'm sort of cringing as I say that, but it's true. You gotta have a little bit of money outside the market to make sure that you can dip into that when something like this happens. So another thing to think about a little bit more perspective is...
One other thing that I think about, and this didn't occur the first few times that this happened in my lifetime, but now that I've seen it happen several times, I start to think about where is the opportunity when these short term, hopefully dives in the market take place? Is it a good time to do a Roth conversion? Is it maybe a good opportunity to do some tax loss harvesting? Is it maybe
and a chance to take some money that you have sitting on the sidelines, if you want to call it that, in a low interest bearing account and put it in the market now with the assumption that eventually this is all going to recover. There's no guarantee of that, but my thought process is that eventually everything will come back. And one other point that I want to make earlier that I did not is that part of being
Shawn Terrell (06:48.864)
in the market is if it's going to go up, it must go down once in a while. If the market did nothing but go up consistently over long periods of time, like straight up at an arrow, then everyone everywhere would have every last dollar that they owned excess and what they need to live on invested in the market because it would be a guaranteed rate of return. It is not a guaranteed rate of return.
the price of long-term slow rates of return sometimes is short-term volatility like we are experiencing right now. I just thought of that in the fly. I probably read it somewhere. if I'm not attributing to that where I need to attribute it, then I apologize. But that just occurred to me as I was sort of doing this podcast in one take.
Shawn Terrell (07:42.883)
The final thing that I would want to communicate here is that 24 hours of cable news and nonstop social media posts are probably not going to help if you're very anxious about everything that's going on right now. It was occurring to me that when I was a kid and I think it was called Black Monday in 1987, when that happened, I did not even know about it until like 530 that night when Tom Brokaw came on the nightly news and
delivered that headline. But now with cable news being in existence and having 24 hours to fill, pick your favorite network, I'm not choosing sides, but they have to talk about something. And so if it's on 24-7, then they've got to fill the time talking about and talking this or any bad headline for that matter into the ground. So that's probably what's gonna happen. And if you continue to, or if you
And if you regularly consume that all day, every day for extended periods of time, I think you can be a little bit more anxious about everything that's going on. Same thing with social media. It often has occurred to me, and let me just say I use social media as much as anyone probably, but it's often occurred to me that when bad things happened 20 or 30 years ago, anywhere in the world, you just didn't always hear about it. Now you've got social media that takes the worst things in the world and sort of
accumulates them and puts them three inches from your nose, 24, well not 24 hours a day, but all day, every day that you're awake and looking at your phone. So cable news and social media probably are not going to help bring your anxiety level down. if you are experiencing some level of anxiety about the recent headlines and the recent market volatility. So there you have it. A few thoughts on the recent market volatility, just to recap.
Number one, it is okay to feel anxious and scared because it's not fun to log into your account and see that it's dropped 10 or 15 or 20 % in a short period of time. But number two, these things do happen. And if you want to be in the market, then this is kind of part of the deal. Number three, what's the plan for what happens next? excuse me, number three is what is your plan or start to formulate a plan for when this inevitably happens again somewhere down the road?
Shawn Terrell (10:05.588)
Number four is looking to see if there's actually an opportunity here over the long term. And the number five is just sort of to maybe tune out as much as you can the news networks and social media where possible. So there you have it. A few thoughts on the recent market volatility. I hope my perspective has helped your perspective on this in some small way. Just a reminder, A couple of reminders before I go that Dentist Exit Planning helps dentists leaving clinical.
within the next five years build their financial treatment plan for life after dentistry. And also a reminder that this podcast, Dentists, Puns and Money and Dentist Exit Planning is a registered. And then another reminder that Dentist Exit Planning is a registered investment advisor. The information presented here should not be interpreted as investment, legal, tax, financial planning, or wealth management advice.
It's for educational purposes only and past performance is not indicative of future results. I am Shawn Terrell and we will talk to you again very soon.