Is a Second Career In Your Future?

Post-Retirement Planning For Dental Professionals

Dentists don’t think about what happens after they sell their dental practice and retire from the industry. People are living a lot longer and there are a lot of factors to think about when retiring. In fact, it’s not uncommon for professionals to take on a second career after they “retire” from their first. Dental transition experts Matt and Joe share what dental professionals should be thinking about. In fact, Joe knows all about this challenge because he’s one of the many who have officially retired from his first career (30+ years in public accounting) only to pick up a second career with PMA Practice Transitions.

In their experience, the people who succeed and do well in retirement are the people who have a plan for what they want to do after retirement – including starting a new job, volunteering, taking up something in the arts, even going back to school!

Check out this video for some tips to help you prepare to make the most of your retirement.

Matt Scherer: Hello and welcome. My name is Matt Scherer with PMA Practice Transitions, the nicest dentists, dental professionals that is, buy and sell practices in this state of Ohio and Western PA. My colleague is …

Joe Gordon:  I’m Joe Gordon. I do the same with dental professionals, but I do it in Indiana and Northern Kentucky.

Matt Scherer: Our topic today is post-retirement planning. I think a lot of times people don’t realize or think about what they want to do post-retirement and get into retirement and then say, “What’s next?”

Joe Gordon: Yeah, exactly. We, as a society, by all measure are living longer. Certainly we’re living healthier, we’re more active than any other generation that’s ever retired. It’s a whole new second lease of life and a lot of people have second careers these days that they go into. So it’s a topic that needs to be discussed and there’s a lot of factors that you need to think about when you do retire. In all honesty, I retired. You didn’t know that, Matt, did you?

Matt Scherer:  Right.

Joe Gordon: Hard to tell.

Matt Scherer: Right.

Joe Gordon: But I did. I spent 30 plus years in public accounting and I retired from that and went into the transition business almost the next day with my colleague here, Matt, but I understood I was going to do that.

Matt Scherer: Got it.

Joe Gordon: I was a different world, different thing to do and I think a lot of people are going to do that and I think they need to think about that. Over those years in the public accounting world, I’ve seen thousands of people retire and the ones that succeed and do well at it had a plan on what they were going to do.

Joe Gordon: It could be volunteer work, it could be a second career. It could be taking up something in the arts. I had a lot of clients that set up 529 plans for themselves to go back to college.

Joe Gordon: They would go back to college and learn. If they wanted to travel, we needed to plan that into their retirement picture. I have one physician that says rarely does anything good happen after the year age 75, you’ve got to plan that. If you retire early. Where’s your health insurance coming?

Matt Scherer: Yeah, social security.

Joe Gordon: You have to plan your social security. There’s a variety of ways you can take your social security. Earlier or later, whether your spouse takes it, based on yours, based on theirs. We need to look at that. If you’re going to continue to work, you can only make so much and they’ll reduce your benefits, so maybe it makes sense to wait on your social security. It will continue to grow, you’ll get of the monthly benefits. When are you going to be eligible for Medicare? Those kinds of factors will go into it. We also importantly have a lot of boomerang children that come back and live in your household. You may be experiencing that. We have a number of grandparents that are raising their grandchildren too.

Matt Scherer: That’s true too.

Joe Gordon: Which is also a big phenomenon.

Matt Scherer:  So it’s really taking a look at pre-retirement, number one, can you retire, do you have enough? As you stated, we’re living a lot healthier these days. We’re living a lot longer these days. I think it’s taking a look at your genetic makeup, so to speak and how long you have … In your family, how long people have lived to give you an idea of, am I going to live … nobody can tell, but am I going to live a little bit longer than the rest? And making sure that you have certainly enough money for that, right?

Joe Gordon:  Sure and talk to your financial advisor about if want to do anything like nursing home insurance, things like that. If you need that kind of insurance.

Matt Scherer: Yeah, that can kill you fast.

Joe Gordon: If you either keep that risk yourself or possibly move into an insurance product, which are constantly changing these days. What you’re going to do, where you physically live. Is your home appropriate? May be appropriate for now, but it will be appropriate and 10 years from now? If that’s not the case, then you need to start thinking about that sooner than later. So you can make an intelligent decision that you don’t have to make quickly, or somebody else has to make for you.

Matt Scherer: I think the beauty about dentistry is if there’s no ailment that precludes you from practicing dentistry, somebody’s always looking for somebody to fill in-

Joe Gordon: Exactly.

Matt Scherer:   … here, there and everywhere and you can keep yourself busy that way and earn a little bit of money at the same time.

Joe Gordon: I think that’s a great idea and I think the dental schools are looking for people that can help do that too.

Matt Scherer:  Absolutely.

Joe Gordon:  We see a number of people do that. So, just some topics to think about as … what are you going to do when you … kind of like, what are you going to do when you grow up? Well, this is growing up for the second time.

Matt Scherer:  I think it’s a great topic. I don’t think people think about it and I think it’s never too early to start thinking about. So it’s a great topic. If you liked the topic today, please give us the thumbs up and please share it with colleagues and friends. Thanks for joining us.