Very Clinical: Dr. Tarun Agarwal Changed His MInd About Retirement Savings

[00:00:01] This is a production of The Very Dental Podcast Network.

[00:00:16] Welcome to The Very Clinical Podcast. In about the time it takes to do an MO on three, we will entertain and amaze you with tips and tricks on regular daily dentistry. Here's Kevin and Zach.

[00:00:28] What's up, Very Clinical listeners, and welcome back to yet another episode of the podcast. This is Zach Miners coming to you from Kansas City, Missouri, with me as always, Dr. Kevin Hare Fryer. Kevin, what's up, man?

[00:00:40] I'm not doing too good. No? No, I had an Almond Joy, a Mounds and a bit of honey and I just threw up in the bathroom.

[00:00:47] Well, I ate wrap snacks. And you threw up too? All right. How about you, Alan? Bunch sugar babies?

[00:00:53] I just ate all the sugar babies and I pulled out all of my, I pull out every restoration in my mouth.

[00:01:01] I'm just disappointed there's no more presidential debates for me to watch now.

[00:01:06] Oh. And the politics ads have now stopped and life is getting back to normal.

[00:01:11] Yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious.

[00:01:14] Will it never be normal?

[00:01:15] As promised, the other voices you hear there, Dr. Alan Mead, all the way from Michigan.

[00:01:20] Greetings.

[00:01:22] And Dr. Tarun Agarwal, all the way from North Carolina. Tarun, what's up?

[00:01:26] What's up?

[00:01:27] All right.

[00:01:28] Got my rest.

[00:01:29] What's the, uh...

[00:01:30] What's the bit of honey, Kevin?

[00:01:32] We have no bit. Our bit is no bit.

[00:01:34] No bit. We're gonna just dive right into it.

[00:01:35] No bit tonight.

[00:01:36] We're, um...

[00:01:37] I broke a bit in the patient's tooth today.

[00:01:39] Oof.

[00:01:39] Ooh.

[00:01:40] That does not work out.

[00:01:41] That sparks, yeah.

[00:01:42] Thank God I was taking the tooth out anyway.

[00:01:44] Okay, good.

[00:01:45] Yeah, for sure.

[00:01:48] All right, Tarun, we're going deep now.

[00:01:51] We've talked to Tooth Talk the last two weeks.

[00:01:53] Now we're gonna find out what are maybe one or two things you've really changed your mind on when it just comes to life in general over the last 20-something years since you've gone from, you know, dental school to a seasoned mid-career dentist here.

[00:02:08] Just some, just life, life changes.

[00:02:10] Yeah, this one took me a little thought, which is not good by the way.

[00:02:16] Sorry.

[00:02:16] I had things that popped up right away.

[00:02:18] I was uncomfortable talking about them.

[00:02:20] But in terms of something I was open to talk about, and then it came to me and is, um...

[00:02:26] It has to do with savings and retirement.

[00:02:31] Okay.

[00:02:31] And, um, you know, the, one of the biggest mistakes I made is, is I didn't save any money for the first, uh, 15 years of my career.

[00:02:39] So I'm 25 years in now.

[00:02:40] Uh, I didn't really save any money.

[00:02:42] I made good money.

[00:02:44] Uh, but I was so busy reinvesting, uh, into myself by, you know, I was, I'm like every dollar I made, I put back into the practice.

[00:02:53] I put back into the practice.

[00:02:55] And, um, I, I still believe in that, but I believe that in a little bit of moderation.

[00:03:03] Now.

[00:03:04] And I think, uh, like the biggest advice I would give somebody is, uh, get a number that you're trying to get to, even if it's the wrong number right now and put together a plan from day one of how you're going to get there.

[00:03:17] And you can't reinvest a hundred percent of your income back into your practice.

[00:03:21] There has to be some money that's put into your, what I call it financial flexibility fund.

[00:03:27] Uh, and, and, and that's something that I've definitely changed.

[00:03:33] It's hard for me to say this because it's all worked out pretty darn good for me.

[00:03:37] Uh, you know, investing back into my practice and, you know, I, I've been successful enough where it's, it's fine, but I, I don't, I don't believe we should just reinvest everything back into our business.

[00:03:49] And I hear too many people that, that say that, and it's concerning to me.

[00:03:55] So are you saying you didn't do like, um, you didn't have like an office 401k you set up for yourself and do like Roth stuff?

[00:04:03] No, I, I had a simple IRA, which allows you back then it was five grand.

[00:04:07] Right.

[00:04:07] You know, and I, and sometimes I didn't even max those out, which looking back was, which is dumb.

[00:04:12] I mean, that's the, you know, a 40% 30, maybe there's a 30% savings at that time, you know, not having to pay tax on that money.

[00:04:19] Um, but I, I literally for the first 10 years of my career invested every, you know, everything back.

[00:04:26] I mean, I, I'm a, I'm a technological marvel.

[00:04:30] There being, you name it, I've got everything.

[00:04:33] Uh, and, and, and, but it has come at the cost of savings, uh, saving sooner for me.

[00:04:40] Now for me, luckily my income level has allowed me to overcome some of that.

[00:04:45] Uh, but, uh, the, it, well, if my income level wasn't extraordinary in, in dentist terms, at least, um, I, I probably wouldn't be at as good of that.

[00:04:56] I'm in a shape and, uh, and I wouldn't want to be fifth.

[00:05:00] I'm almost, I'm 48 right now.

[00:05:01] I wouldn't want to be 50 and not have, have a good savings nest egg already put, put aside.

[00:05:08] It is funny too, because the, the, it goes against the concept of investing back into your practice a lot, but the, the more money you can get into a plan like that earlier, just, just aging, just getting older makes that make more sense.

[00:05:26] Because you really, I mean, it really just compounds on itself.

[00:05:29] So the earlier, I'd be at, I'd be at two X right now.

[00:05:31] If I had just started this, putting the money in.

[00:05:35] Like a minimal amount, even, you know, it's like, honestly, when you're new, it's not like you have to make it hurt necessarily.

[00:05:41] Yeah.

[00:05:42] Just enough that you're putting something on what being in, being in the practice of putting something away.

[00:05:46] I totally agree.

[00:05:47] It's, it's, it's so interesting, the kind of the way I'm starting to do things and life has made me start to kind of, we get back to the basics a little bit too.

[00:05:55] Is, is now I kind of have a plan of action, you know, and let's say I make a $10,000, you know, I'll, I'll set aside $10,000 extra.

[00:06:07] I'll set aside, you know, $3,000 of that into the practice fund to be able to do things for the practice.

[00:06:14] $3,000 that will go into a pre-tax or tax, tax, tax, tax beneficial retirement.

[00:06:20] And then $3,000 of that will go into maybe a savings plan, you know, and maybe, you know, maybe earlier in my career, maybe that would have been $5,000 into the practice.

[00:06:30] So I'm not saying you don't invest in the practice.

[00:06:32] I'm just saying you can't invest a hundred percent of your money into your practice.

[00:06:36] There's, there's gotta be at a minimum, you need to maximize your tax deferred opportunities at a minimum.

[00:06:44] You know, like, like, you know, this comes back to me, like when people say I want to pay off my debt early.

[00:06:48] I'm like, I got no problem with that.

[00:06:50] As long as you pay your retirement first, as long as you invest in your practice first, and then you can, if you still have money left over, then certainly you can pay off debt earlier.

[00:07:00] But I invested way too much of my percentage basis of my revenue income into back into my business.

[00:07:10] Tarun, if you could get in the, uh, get in the DeLorean and go back to, you know, 2000, you know, 2000, 2001, when you started practicing, what would you do?

[00:07:20] What would you tell that, tell that version of Tarun to do?

[00:07:22] What would you have done to feel better about that at this point?

[00:07:26] Yeah.

[00:07:27] You know, I, I would have, uh, I mean, I, I don't know.

[00:07:29] I don't remember what 401ks were, uh, maxed out of them.

[00:07:33] I mean, I, that would be 20, but let's call it 20 grand, 12 grand, whatever it is.

[00:07:37] But that 10, 12 grand 20 years ago for 10 years would be 300, $400,000 today.

[00:07:43] Yep.

[00:07:44] Sure.

[00:07:44] Right.

[00:07:45] And, and so, you know, that 10 grand I used to buy X, Y, Z junk.

[00:07:51] It's not Joe.

[00:07:52] That, I hate saying that.

[00:07:54] It doesn't appreciate in the same way though.

[00:07:56] Yeah.

[00:07:56] No, it doesn't.

[00:07:57] And, and so, so my whole point is not that you shouldn't invest in your practice or in

[00:08:02] yourself.

[00:08:02] I don't want somebody to think that.

[00:08:03] I just think there has to be, it needs to be a percentage, not all in.

[00:08:10] And, and, and then if you, if there's something like I, I'm, you know, one of my associates

[00:08:15] is opening his own practice now and, you know, I, I'm wishing well and I'm helping him,

[00:08:20] encouraging him.

[00:08:21] And, you know, and I say, listen, man, if you have to borrow a lot of money to buy what

[00:08:24] you want, you're not ready to buy it.

[00:08:26] Yep.

[00:08:26] And I'm not saying you have to pay cash for it, but I'm just saying you, you, you've

[00:08:31] got to be a little bit more thoughtful about your future.

[00:08:35] And I think about 50 is when we start thinking about these things right more deeper.

[00:08:41] And we, and we think about those things with regret maybe because honestly, I mean, you

[00:08:48] know, my practice would be fine with four digital impression machines instead of five, you know,

[00:08:54] but that, that, that, that 10 grand in 2000 and 2000 would literally be that 10 grand alone

[00:09:02] would be like 40 grand today.

[00:09:05] You know, that's, that's, this is fascinating, true.

[00:09:09] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:09] I'm the guy who did it the other way.

[00:09:12] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:13] I maximized all the retirement stuff and liquidated debt at a, at a like absolute, like I treated

[00:09:20] that stuff like it was everything to do all that at the sacrifice of not investing in

[00:09:27] the practice.

[00:09:27] Let me tell you, I honest to God of the two mistakes, I think mine's worse than yours.

[00:09:33] Well, maybe.

[00:09:34] Oh yeah.

[00:09:35] Like, well, for me it's, I won't say yes because it's, I'm, I'm doing just fine, but it's a

[00:09:42] balance.

[00:09:43] But you know, it's, I guess it goes back to this and everything in life.

[00:09:46] Everything has to be a balance of some form or another.

[00:09:50] Yeah.

[00:09:51] Yes.

[00:09:51] That's correct.

[00:09:52] That's what I'm saying.

[00:09:52] The real, the best person would be in the middle of those two somewhere.

[00:09:56] Does the balance, I always wonder though, does the finding the balance, does it almost

[00:10:02] require gray hair a little bit?

[00:10:04] Does it almost require just having, having done some stupid shit and, or, or, or realizing

[00:10:10] that what you did in the past was not as, you know, you could have done it differently

[00:10:13] or better.

[00:10:14] I always wonder about that.

[00:10:15] It isn't, it isn't that there's a wrong way.

[00:10:17] It's just looking back, you can, you can, you know, critique the way that you did it.

[00:10:22] I look at it.

[00:10:23] Yeah.

[00:10:23] Yeah.

[00:10:24] So you're at 100% correct.

[00:10:25] You know, wisdom.

[00:10:27] Wisdom is knowledge and experience.

[00:10:28] Correct.

[00:10:29] And, you know, for me, it was, I, I, I'm, for me, it was easy to spend money on my practice.

[00:10:35] I love tech.

[00:10:36] Yeah.

[00:10:36] I love, I love gadgets.

[00:10:38] Yep.

[00:10:39] And, you know, we, you know, 2000 to 2010, 2015, like, like dentistry now is gadget heaven.

[00:10:47] Yeah.

[00:10:47] Yeah.

[00:10:49] And, and, and you need gadgets.

[00:10:52] It's so hard for me.

[00:10:53] It's like, number one, I sell gadgets.

[00:10:55] Okay.

[00:10:56] I train on gadgets.

[00:10:58] I train on gadgets.

[00:10:58] You know, I make a lot of my living from gadgets and I have a lot of my successes from gadgets,

[00:11:03] but I think that, I think there can be a little, it's kind of like my comment with a couple of episodes ago is like hold your horses.

[00:11:10] Because implants will be there for you one year from now or two years from now.

[00:11:14] Let's get good at the fundamentals.

[00:11:16] I think that discipline, and really that's the right word.

[00:11:20] It's discipline.

[00:11:21] It's discipline.

[00:11:22] That discipline of, of making a budget.

[00:11:26] And see, Zach, that's probably something you didn't do.

[00:11:29] You probably didn't make a budget of saying, I'm going to allocate this much to practice, this much to retirement and debt.

[00:11:36] And, and, and it's okay for that budget to change from year to year.

[00:11:39] It might be a big year where it's, you know what?

[00:11:41] I'm going to go all in on my practice this year, but the next year I got to go all in on myself.

[00:11:47] And, and, and, and, you know,

[00:11:51] I don't know if we'll have another 20 years in the market like we've had just this last 20 years have been stupid.

[00:11:58] Like, like, so in Zach, I would say in some ways, like, you know, if you've done this well, you probably can say F you now.

[00:12:06] Right.

[00:12:07] You know, it's nice to have good retirement pads, but, you know, I think of like,

[00:12:13] and, you know, who knows hindsight, but I mean, I think it was like you,

[00:12:16] I remember some of the initial stories about how you talk about how, like your parents, like gave you money or lent you money or something.

[00:12:24] Yeah.

[00:12:24] Take some courses.

[00:12:24] They gave.

[00:12:25] I didn't pay them back.

[00:12:26] Okay.

[00:12:26] That's it.

[00:12:27] I didn't want to judge.

[00:12:28] I didn't remember the story.

[00:12:28] There's still time.

[00:12:29] Yeah.

[00:12:30] They bring it up all the time.

[00:12:52] And I think that that is probably in a lot of ways more valuable than just having a, having a fat 401k, you know?

[00:13:00] I just, that's the way I think about it.

[00:13:03] Well, I want to, there's no right or wrong answer to that.

[00:13:06] No.

[00:13:07] So, but we, I, I do want to say this.

[00:13:09] I, I just, and it's something that's important to me.

[00:13:12] I don't think putting all of our money in retirement in a locked away money in a lock box, you know, putting that, you know, I, the, the challenge I have with 401ks, any retirement plans, you can't touch the money without penalty.

[00:13:26] So there's got, even on that end, there's got to be a balance between, between what I call locked away money versus flexible money, like a true savings account that you can literally do whatever you want with, you know?

[00:13:38] And so, so my lesson would be balance.

[00:13:42] Okay.

[00:13:43] And balance, balance is this balance.

[00:13:46] The, the pendulum swings, you know, depending on what season of life you're in, where you're at.

[00:13:52] And, and, and there needs to be balance.

[00:13:55] Like, I remember, I remember I bought this super nice Mercedes in 2004.

[00:14:00] It was an SL55.

[00:14:03] And beautiful.

[00:14:04] It was a beautiful car.

[00:14:05] I mean, and it was 105 grand at the time, which is, you know, that car is like $180,000 now.

[00:14:12] And, um, I remember my dad going, uh, that could be your retirement.

[00:14:16] And I go, what do you mean by that?

[00:14:17] He goes, I can buy a motel for that much money, you know?

[00:14:21] And, and, and that, that motel would then produce revenue, you know?

[00:14:26] And so like, I look back and like some of the things I didn't do, I didn't invest enough in real estate.

[00:14:31] You know, I didn't invest enough.

[00:14:33] Like, like I have a friend of mine, he, he's bought one town home a year for 20 years.

[00:14:42] Wow.

[00:14:43] Wow.

[00:14:43] Like the, like the $100,000 townhouses.

[00:14:46] And he says, I only have to put 20 grand down every year.

[00:14:50] Right?

[00:14:51] So I leverage 20 grand every year.

[00:14:53] And the, the, you know, so I'm out 20 grand.

[00:14:56] I get $100,000 town home.

[00:14:58] It produces, it produces five, you know, he says, I don't, I make $300 a month on it.

[00:15:03] I go, yeah, but 20, he goes, but now they're all paid off.

[00:15:06] And now I don't play a real monopoly.

[00:15:08] He is.

[00:15:09] And so to me, it's, and that doesn't mean go out and buy townhouses.

[00:15:14] It just means like, I didn't explore.

[00:15:16] I just totally wholesale dismissed all of that stuff because I said, you know what?

[00:15:21] The best investment I can make is myself.

[00:15:23] And that is still true, but it can't be the only investment I make.

[00:15:28] And that's the mistake I made.

[00:15:29] I only invest in myself and it's worked out for me, but it doesn't work out for everybody.

[00:15:35] They said it worked out for me so far.

[00:15:37] Kevin, where do you, where do you, where do you weigh in on this?

[00:15:40] Are you, are you closer to a, to real or are you closer to me?

[00:15:43] Did you find the balance?

[00:15:44] I think I, listening to this, I think I have found the balance.

[00:15:48] Um, yeah, I, I think, I think here's, here's the thing.

[00:15:52] If you're going to invest in something in your practice, it has to give you a good ROI.

[00:15:57] And you can't be just chasing some shiny object that you think is gonna, that is cool or whatever.

[00:16:03] And I, I think I've done a really good job at that.

[00:16:07] Um, and invested in things in our practice that have continued to, you know, make us money.

[00:16:16] Um, yeah, I got lucky enough that we got as lucky to have a Croatian wife who's really good with money.

[00:16:29] And, uh, that's, you know, we don't have, we don't have, uh, personal debt.

[00:16:36] And, you know, so it's, uh, we've padded our retirement as, as much as we can.

[00:16:44] So, but like a lot of this discussion that we've had, you know, you realize like, I want to do the stuff now.

[00:16:53] Like, let's take the trips now.

[00:16:55] You know, like I just decided last week, you know, um, Charlie bought a house.

[00:17:01] I'm going to Utah on spur of the moment.

[00:17:04] I'm going next week, you know?

[00:17:06] So, um, yeah, I, I do think I've, uh, achieved that balance.

[00:17:14] I think that also like turn, I wish I would have put more away earlier, but it's kind of all worked out in the end.

[00:17:24] Yeah.

[00:17:25] And it's only worked out in the end because we've been around long enough.

[00:17:29] That's true.

[00:17:31] Like, like, like if I invested so much money into my office, like I did.

[00:17:34] And then I break my hand 10 years in, or, you know, I, I get up and have to move like 10 years in.

[00:17:43] And like, you know, that money you invested, the, the, the, the, the, the depreciated value of that is pretty much nothing.

[00:17:49] And, and so, so time makes up for all of this.

[00:17:53] No matter what decision you make, time will make up for it.

[00:17:57] Uh, but sometimes we're not blessed with, uh, than a certain amount of time.

[00:18:01] True.

[00:18:02] True.

[00:18:03] Man, true is with spout wisdom now for three episodes worth, man.

[00:18:07] Good stuff.

[00:18:08] I'm older.

[00:18:09] I've been humbled in life.

[00:18:11] So you learn things, you get better.

[00:18:13] And, uh, um, yeah, you have a different perspective.

[00:18:17] Super.

[00:18:18] I agree.

[00:18:19] Super.

[00:18:20] Kevin, any, uh, any final thoughts?

[00:18:22] No, I think, uh, I, we've got a lot of feedback actually from the series.

[00:18:25] So I'm glad we decided to do it way back whenever that was July, I think, or whenever it was.

[00:18:31] Um, we've had a lot of good discussion, a little bit different than what we've been doing in the past.

[00:18:37] So I hope everyone's enjoyed it.

[00:18:39] And, uh.

[00:18:40] And if you didn't, it's over now.

[00:18:41] Yeah.

[00:18:42] That's it.

[00:18:42] It's over.

[00:18:43] Ta-da.

[00:18:44] But it's like Amazon deals.

[00:18:45] Like Amazon has Prime Day.

[00:18:47] Now they have Big Prime Day.

[00:18:49] Then they have Black Friday.

[00:18:50] Yeah.

[00:18:50] Then they have Cyber Monday.

[00:18:51] It's like, I'm like Amazon's going to have a deal every month next, you know, before we know it.

[00:18:56] For sure.

[00:18:57] For sure.

[00:18:58] Alan, how about you?

[00:18:59] Final, final thoughts from the Changing Your Mind series?

[00:19:02] I think it was, I think it was a good call.

[00:19:03] Are we getting downloads?

[00:19:04] Yeah.

[00:19:04] Is it working?

[00:19:04] It's working.

[00:19:05] It's working.

[00:19:06] Okay.

[00:19:06] All right.

[00:19:06] That's good.

[00:19:07] That's good.

[00:19:08] All right.

[00:19:08] Hey, thank you guys for listening.

[00:19:09] We always appreciate it.

[00:19:11] Tarun, thanks for taking time out of your busy day to join us these last few weeks.

[00:19:15] Uh, we appreciate it.

[00:19:16] So.

[00:19:16] Thanks, Tarun.

[00:19:17] Thanks, T-Bone.

[00:19:18] If, uh, you guys want more from Tarun, 3D Dentists, and he's also on the Very Clinical Facebook page for, well, I don't know.

[00:19:25] Did you give up Facebook?

[00:19:26] I've given up almost all social media.

[00:19:28] Smart, man.

[00:19:28] Okay, well, he's not on the Facebook page.

[00:19:29] There's a whole podcast there, I tell you.

[00:19:31] But we'll send him a letter.

[00:19:32] But he does have a podcast.

[00:19:33] I'll probably get on there and talk about that.

[00:19:34] Okay.

[00:19:35] Guess what?

[00:19:36] We've just got another Very Dental Podcast episode coming up with Tarun.

[00:19:39] We'll make that happen.

[00:19:40] There it is.

[00:19:42] All right.

[00:19:43] Thank you, guys.

[00:19:44] And we will see you next Tuesday.

[00:19:47] See ya!