Most dentists are incredibly smart, disciplined, and successful at their craft. But when it comes to money, even the best clinicians make costly mistakes that set them back years.
I recently sat down with Matt Mulcock, a certified financial planner and managing partner at Dentist Advisors , for an honest conversation about what he sees going wrong financially with dentists across the country.
Matt and his team have been working exclusively with dentists for nearly 20 years. If you’ve ever listened to the Dentist Money Show , you already know how seriously these guys take financial education.
What came out of our conversation was eye-opening, practical, and worth every dentist’s attention.
Rather watch than read? Check out the interview:
VIDEO
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Who Is Matt Mulcock and Why Should Dentists Listen?
Matt didn’t start his career in finance. He came from a fitness and powerlifting background, transitioned into real estate investing, and eventually found his way to Fidelity Investments, where he spent five years falling in love with financial planning.
After earning his certified financial planner designation and moving back to Utah, he stumbled upon Dentist Advisors and never looked back. That was over eight years ago.
Today, Matt works with hundreds of dentists across the country as part of a fee-only fiduciary firm that advises on everything from investments and tax strategy to insurance and practice financing.
No commissions.
No kickbacks.
Just straightforward financial advice built around each dentist’s specific situation.
The Root (Canal ?? ) Cause Behind Almost Every Financial Mistake
When I asked Matt what the biggest financial mistakes dentists make are, his answer wasn’t what I expected.
He didn’t lead with bad investments or overspending. He said the root cause behind almost every financial mistake is being disorganized with money and not understanding their numbers, both on the personal side and the business side.
Why Organization Is the Foundation of Everything
Being organized sounds like the most unsexy answer to a financial question. But Matt was direct about it.
Without organization and a clear understanding of your numbers, you end up making what he calls random acts of finance . You react to things instead of planning for them. You make decisions based on incomplete information. And those reactive decisions compound into much bigger problems over time.
If you don’t know your monthly cash flow, practice overhead, effective tax rate, and net worth, you’re flying blind with a very high income.
That combination is dangerous.
Mistake #1: Chasing the Shiny Object
The big mistake Matt highlighted is one almost every dentist can relate to: chasing the next big thing and abandoning a strategy that was already working.
Why Dentists Are Especially Vulnerable to This
Matt made a fascinating point here. Dentists become masters of their craft relatively early, often within the first five to ten years of practice. Once you’ve mastered something, boredom sets in. And boredom leads to looking for the next challenge or the next opportunity.
That tendency to go all-in on something new is exactly what makes dentists great clinicians. But it becomes a liability when applied to investing. You start jumping from one investment idea to the next, chasing returns, and abandoning the compounding process before it has time to work.
The irony Matt pointed out is that most of these moves are made with the intention of speeding up wealth building. But they almost always end up slowing it down.
The Compounding Problem Nobody Talks About
Matt shared something that really stuck with me. On a 30-year compounding chart, two-thirds of the total growth happens in the final ten years. Most people understand this intellectually. Living it is a completely different challenge.
Ten years into your career, progress feels slow. That’s exactly when dentists start second-guessing their strategy, watching YouTube videos about the latest fund or trend, and making moves that reset the clock on their compounding.
Staying in your seat through the boring middle years is one of the hardest and most important things a dentist can do financially.
Mistake #2: Treating General Financial Advice as Specific Advice
This one hit close to home for me. When I got out of dental school over 20 years ago, Dave Ramsey was basically the only financial voice out there. I followed his advice and assumed it applied to my situation as a dentist.
Matt addressed this directly with a phrase I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: good general advice is often really bad specific advice .
Why Dentist Finances Are Fundamentally Different
General financial advice is designed for the average American. Dentists aren’t average. Their income is significantly higher, their debt load between student loans and practice debt is far larger, and the financial decisions they face are far more complex.
A dentist building a multi-location DSO exit strategy needs a completely different financial approach than a dentist running a single lifestyle practice. And both of those are completely different from a career associate. Applying the same general advice to all three situations is a recipe for suboptimal outcomes at best and serious financial mistakes at worst.
Matt’s advice is to understand the role general financial content plays in your life. Use it for directional awareness and general education. But never confuse it with the specific, customized advice you should be getting from advisors who actually understand your unique situation.
Mistake #3: Not Being Intentional About Your Financial Life
The third major mistake Matt described is perhaps the most overlooked: not being intentional about what you actually want.
The Empty Nest Problem at the End of a Career
Matt said he regularly hears from dentists who are mid-career or approaching retirement who have checked all the financial boxes, built significant wealth, and still feel lost. They did everything right by conventional standards and arrived at the destination only to realize they never defined what the destination actually meant to them.
Being intentional means asking hard questions early.
What kind of practice do you want?
When do you want work to become optional?
What does your ideal financial life actually look like outside of dentistry?
Without those answers, financial decisions get made in a vacuum and wealth becomes a number on a spreadsheet rather than a tool for living the life you actually want.
Mistake #4: Poor Tax Planning
I shared a story from early in my career about overhearing two doctors at a Christmas party bragging about their massive tax bills. Back then, I thought a huge tax bill meant success. It took years to understand how wrong that thinking was.
Matt validated this completely and pointed to a specific problem in the dental profession: too many CPAs are tax historians, not tax planners.
The Difference Between Filing and Planning
A tax historian tells you what you owe, files your return, and maybe suggests a piece of equipment purchase at year-end to reduce the current year’s bill. That’s it.
A real tax planner thinks about your lifetime tax burden, not just this year’s return. They meet with you quarterly or at least twice a year for strategy conversations. They think about your whole family, not just your individual income.
Matt gave the example of putting kids on payroll as a legitimate strategy that many dentists overlook. If you’re paying your children for legitimate work in your practice and keeping compensation below the standard deduction threshold, you’re shifting income that would have been taxed at your top marginal rate down to zero. Over multiple kids and multiple years, that adds up to real money.
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The Extension Filing Red Flag
Matt also made a point that I thought was worth highlighting. If you’re filing tax extensions every single year and getting hit with a large tax surprise every March or April, that’s not a YOU problem.
That’s a team problem.
Re-evaluate who you have in place.
What Great Financial Advice Actually Looks Like for Dentists
Matt described Dentist Advisors as a comprehensive fee-only fiduciary firm that acts as a financial quarterback for dentists. They advise on investments, insurance, financing, tax strategy, and practice transitions without selling any products or taking commissions from referrals.
The goal is to connect all the dots of a dentist’s financial life, which, as Matt and I both know, is genuinely complex.
The Dentist Money Summit
If you want to go deeper on all of these topics and connect with like-minded dentists who are serious about their financial lives, Dentist Advisors hosts an annual Dentist Money Summit every June.
This isn’t a packed conference with back-to-back speakers. It’s a carefully curated event designed to give dentists space to step back, think about their careers and financial lives with intention, earn CE, and connect with other dentists in a beautiful setting.
Past summits have been held in Park City, Utah, with activities like golf, hiking, biking, and ATV riding alongside the educational programming.
You can find more information and register at dennismoneysummit.com . And if you want to explore working with Matt’s team directly or just have a no-pressure conversation about your financial situation, head over to dentistadvisors.com .
The Bottom Line
The biggest financial mistakes dentists make don’t come from a lack of intelligence. They come from disorganization, distraction, and applying generic advice to a highly specific financial situation.
Stay organized. Know your numbers. Build a financial strategy tailored to your life and stick with it through the boring years when compounding feels invisible. Work with advisors who understand the dental profession and think about your lifetime tax burden, not just this year’s return.
And most importantly, be intentional about what you actually want. Wealth is a tool. Make sure you know what you’re building it for.
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