Dr James:
Fans of the Dennis who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dennis who Invest podcast episodes that really, really, really was massively valuable to you, feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position, so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world. To me, what that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome, welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast. Hello, and welcome everybody to another episode of Dennis who Invest official podcast. I believe we’re on episode number 28 from memory, but you can’t quote me on that. I’m pretty sure it is number 28. Number 27 was an absolute stormer with Julian Keane, so we’re going to follow that up today and I think we’re going to hit even higher highs. This is going to be even better because we’ve got another chap, another dentist, on, who is someone who’s obviously a very keen and diligent dentist and he’s driven himself to propel himself to the position where he’s already a practice owner from such a very young age, and that was why I thought that this might be an interest in podcast. That would speak to a lot of people. You may have seen him on the group. He’s very active, he’s always commenting on lots of things and I’m very happy for that because he’s got a lot of expertise to share. His name is Dav. How are you today, dav?
Dr Dav:
Yeah, good thanks for yourself.
Dr James:
I’m absolutely smashing it. I just got in from work. I had a brilliant day, so, yeah, I’m ready to go. I’m looking forward to shooting this podcast. It should be fun. So, dav, just for anybody who doesn’t know you on the group, can you just speak a little bit about who you are, maybe just a little bit of an intro to those that haven’t met you yet?
Dr Dav:
Yeah, sure, my name’s Dav. I’m a practice principal. I own a practice in Glasgow City Centre and then I also spend my time doing some trading and working in between Glasgow and London. So I’ll fly every other week and I’ll see mainly my invisible line patients in London and spend my time between the two places.
Dr James:
That’s exciting, and Dav also does some forex trading, which is on the sexier side of investing, so we’re going to come on to that at some point. It does turn a few heads. Forex is something that a lot of people want to get into but maybe they don’t know quite what it entails, the risks, how you can bounce it with being a dentist, etc. But Dav will happily elaborate on that later. And a little bit of stocks, and of course, he somehow manages the time to beat still be a dentist, fly to London and run his dental practice. So I think this is going to be an interesting one. You talked about owning a practice, dav. I was hoping that you might be able to speak a little bit more about your journey into practice ownership, because you are still at the tender age of 31. And there’ll be a lot of people who are young dentists or associates who are listening to this or be thinking about taking the leap. What did your journey look like?
Dr Dav:
I had a bit of an unorthodox journey into practice ownership. I think the first thing I’m a postgraduate student, so I did dental materials in 2008. And then I took a year out. I actually didn’t get into dentistry and that was probably the trickiest thing was actually getting into dentistry in the first place. Eventually I got into a postgraduate course in Aberdeen which is kind of why I’m still in Scotland and then, once I finished in 2016, I moved to Glasgow. I had a fantastic BT position at Mary Lee Dental in the south side of Glasgow and I stayed there as an associate up until, I think, 2019 in the summer, and then that’s when I began to transition into as a practice owner, and so it’s a bit unorthodox, and the reason and the main reason I ended up moving into having my own practices I really wanted to start placing implants or to continue my implant journey, and it’s not always the easiest thing when you’re working in someone else’s practice in order to be able to want to do the cases that you want to do or be ambitious and try more complex things and I get an hour as a practice owner is your reputation is at stake and it’s not the easiest thing to let a young dentist come in and go and do a few implant courses and then come in and place implants in your practice. One, it doesn’t really breathe the same confidence into your patients and, two, it begins to affect your reputation in the practice as well. To have someone that’s quite an experienced that can’t deal with a lot of the complications that you get with implant placement and that kind of transitioned me into getting my own practice in order to start placing more implants and take my journey down implants.
Dr James:
Oh, I see, I see what you mean about the slightly unorthodox way. But fair enough, that serves as your sort of call to action, or maybe kick up the backside a little bit. Really, you were more gear.
Dr Dav:
I think that was the catalyst to kind of move me on into getting my own place and by the practice and then start placing implants, as that’s what I thought it would be. And then when I became a practice owner, I was like, okay, day one, I’m ready to start placing implants. And then you have all these financial pressures that you, all these things that you never, ever thought about and you know, and the cost of these things are astronomical, that you, the implants is the last thing that you’re thinking of in order to keep your business running, you know. And so, yeah, the implant thing took quickly, took a backseat up until fairly recently, when I’m doing my MSc now, and that’s kind of come back into the frame. It’s a much, much more difficult thing owning a practice than you initially I went into really naively and with only tunnel vision on placing implants.
Dr James:
Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve heard a few people say about practice ownership that naivety is your best asset. Have you heard that one?
Dr Dav:
No, I haven’t. I haven’t by 100% agree. Every day is like a slap in the face. I’m like, oh, that’s why it was. One told me not to do this, so that’s why he told me that, that’s why he said that to me, and every day is a slap in the face, but it’s. It’s really reassuring as well, because you know all the lessons and things that I learned in my VT. I was a very he was very clued up on on making me understand the business side of things. I’m really getting a head start at being a practice owner in order for me to then go on and do my thing as a practice owner. But, yeah, definitely you don’t know what you don’t know, and I suspect that it’s like that for a lot of things. When you get into the position, you’re ultimately in that, in that position and the first thing, that the end of every month you must make sure that your staff get paid, and that comes above everything else. Doesn’t matter whether you pay your lab bills, doesn’t matter whether you pay rights or Henry shine, your staff get me to get paid first. And you know, some months you know you might not, you might not be able to pay everybody, but you know your staff always get paid, so you learn very, very quickly as a practice owner.
Dr James:
I was just about to say that I bet, you bet, that you learned very fast. Did you struggle? Did you have anybody who was happy to mentor you?
Dr Dav:
Yeah, so I have a partner. My partner’s an architect, so he builds and he builds dental practices. He goes into surgeries and he fits them out and he puts in the chairs, cabinetry, x-ray equipment, designs or surgeries, does all the signage and everything. So he was quite a good mentor and he’s still always. I’m always learning from him. But we bring two different things to the business, whereas one I do the dentistry and he then provides and feeds the patients into the business and then make sure everything else is still running. So we work really really well together. And that’s, I think, a very key thing about the partnership is, you see, a lot of partnerships kind of fall apart and they don’t go so well, and it’s normally because the two dentists tend to be two, two alpha males that want to do the same thing. They both want to place implants, they both want their big work, whereas with me and my partner we both bring two completely different things to the business. I can’t do what he does and he can’t do what I do.
Dr James:
Amazing. What would you say to any young dentists out there who are aspiring to own their own practice, or even not necessarily young dentists and just associates in general?
Dr Dav:
Do it 100%, just just do it. Yeah, you know. Yeah, you have to take, you have to take the lead and the hardest thing about owning a practice is managing the staff and any practice owner will tell you that it’s managing your stuff. It’s you roll over a AM or whatever, a time you want to get up and you get a text saying I can’t come in today and that’s the hardest thing to deal with is dealing with the staff absences, dealing with work, kind of. Fortunately we don’t have any stuff issues. There’s no fights between stuff. No, what, there’s. No, he said, he said, she said in our practice we don’t have any. There might be going on about me behind my back, but as far as well I can see there’s. There’s no rifts or anything and if any, if there’s a bad egg, that I guess we’ve gone quickly.
Dr James:
Yeah, I mean, you’ll have a part to play in that as well, because when you employ people, it’s all about finding not necessarily someone who is the most confident or a depth of the job, but also someone that’s gonna fit. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr Dav:
Yeah, absolutely, and we, when I, when I bought the practice, I started off with me and I inherited two other nurses, so it was there was just three of us in the beginning and we slowly grew where we had we now got seven nurses and We’ve been replacing one nurse position Over and over because we cannot get that right person to fit in the group. And and I think now we kind of come together where it’s beginning to gel and it’s kind of beginning to fit, whether it’s Reliability, whether it’s attitude or whether it’s performance and six and you know those kind of things, and it’s that one position that you cannot fill. And I think I know a lot of principals will resonate with that as well. And it’s if there are any bad eggs in your team, that that egg needs to be moved on. And you need to get the right team, because everybody needs to come together and you need to create an environment that your staff want to come to work every day. You know they, they, they feel like they’re a valued member of the team and that their role is important, which it is. But then they need to feel like that, whether they, if you have a, if you know that your, your staff is important to you. You need to make sure that they know that as well, because if don’t always have that feeling of I’m important in my role, in my position.
Dr James:
Would you do it again?
Dr Dav:
I Wouldn’t do a squat practice again, and when? Where? I’ve? You know what I started. It was me and two other members of staff and I started on a half a day a week and I used to come to the practice. There was no one there and I think I’m beyond that point in my career where I would willingly and take the loss of income in order to start a squat practice again and I think I’d I no longer need to be in that position. I think it’s there are pros and cons. I think, with the current environment that we’re in, I wouldn’t do a squat practice again, but certainly I would. I would buy an established business and and look at, I would buy and when an established business that has things I can improve on or add to it or add value. You know, you can go, look at our practice that, say, has a two surgery, two surgery practice with room to expand that implants, to add in business aligned, to add composite bonding, to add hygiene services or all those things to really grow the business. Because the Value in the practice is not really in the money that you take home every month, it’s in the goodwill, listen, it’s in the capital game. You know, and that’s what it is. Can I take my business from zero pounds to a million pounds within five years as a capital game, while also taking my home, my associate income and and then sell the off? And then you, you know, can can you turn that around? And and to do that it’s incredibly difficult, it’s an incredible amount of hours to do it from a squat practice. So, yeah, that’s why I would go around and look at an established business, something that’s doing fairly well but has a lot of room to grow. I would never go out and buy and you know, a million or a million a half pound business.
Dr James:
Yeah, yeah, fair enough bit of insight to share with that for anybody who’s listening. Maybe you might want to think you know, given DAV’s experience on the matter, you might want to Align your thoughts a little bit more with what he suggests. Let’s talk about the obviously the the most clear return in terms of expectations and what you can expect to get out of being a practice owner is the fact that you make more money. Aside from that, what would you say the greatest perks are?
Dr Dav:
maybe the perks that people wouldn’t necessarily think of and I Don’t know all practice owners with 100% agree with me that they would say that they make more money.
Dr James:
Maybe that’s my totally naive Outside looking in perspective on it, maybe it’s not even like that, I don’t know, and what I think. I think you can shout out the illusion today on this podcast episode. Real quick, guys. I put together a special report for dentists entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes the dentist make whenever it comes to their finances. Most of the time, dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily Realize that they’re happening until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistuneinvestcom forward slash podcast report or Alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details these seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. Really looking forwards to hearing your thoughts.
Dr Dav:
I Don’t know every practice toner would agree with that. I think there are some people some to say you know, for me, the way I look at it is if, if I come to work and I’m employing 10 other people and I’m having to deal with the absences, the, the quarrels or hiring or firing of staff and I’m responsible for 10 other people’s incomes, then it better be worth more than 10 or 15 or 20 percent of my Associate income. You know, if I’m having to order stock and deal with people who chasing up for lab fees and things like that in the beginning, where there’s an added pressure on having to deal with the water leaks and compresses failing and chairs failing or the handpiece Is broken or the nurse has broken something, you know it’s not worth my time to do that for an extra 20 or 25% More income. I’m better off being an associate. You know, come to work and you your your last one in and first one out and you know you turn up and the materials are there. They fall out the sky and fall into your lap and you’re ready to to use your panavia and aqua care and everything else.
Dr James:
That’s how it works.
Dr Dav:
Yeah, so for me, in terms of being a practice owner, financially has to be way, way, way higher. I’m responsible for 10 people’s incomes. I’m responsible for making sure that everything runs like clockwork. I’m making sure that my business and the reputation and the social media and the marketing and everything else is it’s gone into that and it’s a lot of hours that even when we leave the practice, that we’re still working. When I get home at 9, half 9, sometimes I open up my laptop and my wife’s just looking at me and she’s like you for real and you gotta do. And financially there’s gotta be rewarding, whether it’s in the beginning or whether it’s it’s later on down the line. Otherwise, you know, you know. But for for another aspect is Principles might say okay, I can work five days a week as an associate and take, say, 80 grand a year. Or I can do three days as a practice owner and I have two days off and that is two days of free time. You know you can’t buy time, you can’t Earn any more time, so you know they might not take any more money but they might have more free time. So you know there is a trade of all. You might have principles to say okay, you know what, I don’t, I don’t, I’ll work one or two days a week and I’m happy with With, with less money, having to do less work. So I don’t think. I don’t think every principle makes more money than the associates. I know certainly there are some associates that are making a hell of a lot more than their principles.
Dr James:
Yeah, fair enough, that’s. I’m glad that you said that, because maybe that shattered that illusion a little bit for me and that was always my understanding of it from the outside, looking in, definitely. So it’s interesting to hear you say that. Uh, well, I’m just in just in addition to that, when I was saying earlier about the other perks that other people might imagine, would you, would you throw anything in there? Uh, maybe things that people wouldn’t necessarily initially think of?
Dr Dav:
One is that you get to do everything the way that you want to do it. The business runs with your vision. So you say, okay, I want to do lots of Invisalign and I want to market to Invisalign and I want to push my practice down that route. Then you dictate which way that goes. You dictate how the money gets spent. The second thing is you start and you work when you want. You work the hours that you want. If you don’t want to work Fridays, you don’t work Fridays. If you want to, I start at 10 o’clock. I’m not getting up to start work at 9 o’clock. That’s amazing. Yeah, I started at 10 o’clock because I don’t want to work at 9 o’clock in the morning. I don’t want to be doing that. The third thing is you get to pick and choose what work you want to do. Ultimately, when the enquiries come into the practice, you can dictate okay, I want to do the Invisalign, I want to do the implants and I want the associates to do the composite bonding work and I want the hygienists to do all of the cons work and the restorative work. So you get to pick and choose which work you want to do. In terms of your staff, you can dictate in terms of how you want to build the business. I work with two nurses and I want to have two nurses in my surgery. I want one person to be scribing what I’m reading out of them, writing my notes, and I want the other nurse to be nursing or cleaning up the room or doing the instruments or getting things ready for the next patient, because they ultimately build efficiency into my team. I want the staff making the profiles for the patients for Invisalign. I want my radiograph, my nurses that are trained in radiography to be taking the OPTs for me. I want my staff to be taking the clinical photos for me in order to build my efficiency into my team. I’m also an associate in London, so I have a unique perspective of being an associate at the exact same time, on the principle, and I don’t get that same luxury when I’m in London. I don’t get two nurses, I don’t have staff creating profiles or uploading photos to Invisalign for me. I don’t have them following up with me, bringing me a list every morning to say this is what you need, these are the patients we need to contact or this is what we need to do. It doesn’t quite work in the same old machine because you’ve not made that machine and it’s also not your role to dictate, to say, okay, I want to do this and I want to do this. It’s not your business. So you don’t get that same luxury and say Amazing and Dab ask me that.
Dr James:
Oh sorry, you’re more to say go on.
Dr Dav:
No, no. So there are many perks of being a principal, but that comes at a cost as well. The cost is your time and your effort.
Dr James:
Totally man, totally Cool. So, dab, as well as that, as well as being an associate and a principal, you also do some investing on the side. Would you say that you’re because one of the perks might also be that you have more time to afford towards your investing side of life, you can spend more time investing, or would you say that that’s important, or would you say that that’s something that is true? I don’t know.
Dr Dav:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I do a few different things of investing and I invest in quite a few different things. Ultimately, you need to decide on where is your money best utilized and what are your short-term goals or your medium-term goals, and what are your long-term goals. Ultimately, for most most, then it’s that are in a position, they’ll be in a position where they’ll be earning enough to be able to be able to put some money aside, and then, with the money that you’re putting aside, you need to figure out how you’re going to amalgam that money. Where is that money going to? How are you going to allocate and how much do you have to allocate without? If you’re not earning as much to have to put aside in terms of to suit your long-term goals, then you need to make some lifestyle changes, and if you can no longer make the lifestyle changes, then you need to readjust your goals. It has to be a balance. If your goal is to save and earn 100,000 pounds and you want to keep that in a bank account for a deposit, then you need to obviously be putting away the right lump sums every month in order to facilitate that goal. It really depends on for me, it depends on how much money I’m earning in order to say, okay, I can put this much into my eyes, or I can say this much into my forex, or I want a passive income from rental property, or I want to purchase more property using the money that I’m getting back from rental property. Thank you. It really depends on your cash flow and your long-term goals. The first thing that you need to determine is what are your goals? Where do you want to get to? What is the point? And then it kind of reads back to say, okay, I want to do 4X, or I want to do my ISO for a long-term investment, or I want to get involved in rental property for a more passive income. So that’s kind of the way it kind of takes shape and I do a bit of everything.
Dr James:
That’s not a bad point, actually, to kind of work backwards in that sense to sort of figure out what your long-term ambitions are, maybe your risk profile or something like that, and then consider what your options are in terms of assets to invest in. I don’t think that’s a bad point at all, actually Just another way of looking at things. Maybe someone might look at they might say, well, actually I’m playing the long game, and they might say, well, okay, maybe I want to get some gold, some physical gold, and some indexes and some bonds, some indexes and shares, and some other people maybe who are a bit younger. Maybe they can afford to be a bit more race here because their main ambition is capital appreciation rather than capital preservation. So just another way of looking at it, I guess, and that’s a good point. What do you invest in then, dav Is it you said you mentioned 4X and I think you mentioned stocks as well.
Dr Dav:
Yeah. So I have kind of investment. It depends on how you look at that investment. I would say 4X is probably 4X. Definitely I wouldn’t class as an investment. I would class that as another way to have the source of income. How do I make more capital? So that’s one of the things I do. As for investments, where do I take the money that I’m making? From dentistry or being a practice principal, or from 4X? Their streams are avenue of income, same with rental property. Once you invested in the rental properties, then designed to give you passive income, 4x is not so much of a passive income, it’s very much active. But in terms of where I then take that money, in terms of going to crypto, I’m going to my I-circ, I’m going to a SIP and then long-term investments and long-term holds. The property is kind of the unique one where it’s an investment but it’s also giving you something back.
Dr James:
Yeah, fair enough. Interesting stuff, Cool. So I don’t know how active you are in your investment. I know that you said that yes, you have to. 4x is not a set and forget one. Is that something that you day trade or is that something that you take a long-term or more sort of long-term approach to?
Dr Dav:
So ideally I’ll take the swing trades over the days, the weeks, the months, if you can get into a position. If we look at, let’s say, gbpust, you can see that’s been riding for a number of weeks now. So if you get into an entry on the position on GU, you can take that for quite some time. The markets don’t always give you the opportunity to take really long-term swing trades and then, which you need to then adapt to the markets and say, okay, the markets are range found in a period at the moment, can I enter the market and take my positions, in which case you can then scale up your entry size in order to then make the same amount of money if you take the final positions and your final profit, or are you going to take a longer trade with a smaller position over a longer period of time?
Dr James:
I must say I didn’t know it was possible to swing trade 4X. I always thought it was a day trade thing. You get in at night.
Dr Dav:
No, swing trading is a lot less stressful. The more you go down in the time frames, the more stressful it is. The more time you’ll spend at the computer, it becomes more and more difficult to do as you do In some instances. There are unique challenges in day trading and there are unique challenges in swing trading. It’s just a test of your skills. Everybody that we meet in the 4X world or that actively trades 4X require the same set of skills and not everybody has that. You don’t matter how good a trader you are, if you don’t have these fundamental skills in terms of discipline and time management and patience. Patience is the most important one. You don’t matter how good you can read the markets, how close to your entry you can get in within a 5-bit stop loss or whatever, if you don’t have these key skills, then you will not be a successful trader. You will not be the discipline and the attention to detail of the time.
Dr James:
I think that there’s a bit of a misconception that the more that you trade, the more profitable you are, and it isn’t always the case. People who are day trading I mean, I would take up a position in the crypto where I would leverage a day trade every, maybe every month, and it’s only when I look at a chart and I just happen to be in front of the computer at this precise moment and I look at a chart and I think that looks too good. I have to take a roll of dice on that one. You know what I mean, but I’ll only do it every so often. But the emotional aspect to it, like the stress, particularly when you’re trading with high leverage, how much it goes up and down in a few seconds I don’t think a lot of people are prepared for that and I see a lot of times I get people who come to me and they’re in jobs where I know that they’re very busy and maybe they think that you can just flip on the computer at any one time and these trades are just there. You just have to have a trained eye to look for them. In my experience, it’s more about just happening to be there before you. There’s like a low hanging fruit just ready to go, and maybe that doesn’t come along every once in a while. And certainly if you’re sat there in front of the computer all day staring at a screen and you’re waiting for something to happen, you’ll be more tempted to take up positions where they aren’t necessarily very good positions on terms of risk award and overtrading is the name for that and overtrading is real 100%, and I only know because I’ve been there myself and I’ve tried to force it a little bit. So maybe that’s just an interesting point or maybe something that people don’t really think about so much. So I was interested to hear about your forex and I immediately assumed that you day traded it and I wanted to know how that looks. But it sounds like you might be aligned with me in a sense on that one, because you’ll look at it and you’ll think, okay, this is what the chart looks like, this is what it’s giving me. I’ll either day trade short term position this one because it looks like it’s range bond, as you said, etc. Or you might look at it with a more long term view based on how it looks. So there’s some flexibility there on your part and I think it’s important to not go in there with this rigid mindset that you’re going to try and day trade it. You know, bang, bang bang every day. It’s very hard. There’s very, very, very few people who can do that. The skill, the lower time frame, you get more exponentially. It takes exponentially more skill to trade it and maybe the one that suited for most people is those slightly more long term positions, particularly dentists, who have very they’re very time scarce. They’re very time scarce. Just something to think about when you are investing. I know that you do your forex. I know that you do stocks. How do your stocks portfolio look? Does that look similar to your forex in terms of the time frame over which you’re taking up positions, or are they even more long term things still, or how does that compare?
Dr Dav:
For me, when you come from a initially, when we started all of this 2016, 2017, where we’re looking at rapidly entering the market in order to gain as much as you can in crypto, you know trying to. It doesn’t matter what you bought in 2016, 2017, whatever you bought in terms of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, xrp, ethereum like it was all going to go up. So you’re not. It’s not. It was never skilled at that point. It was never I was so skilled in the market. It was. You took a punt and the punt was good. Now there’s a little bit more skilled to it. But in terms of stocks and shares, when you’re looking over the time period of 10, 15, 20, 30 years, it doesn’t really matter. When you enter the market, it doesn’t matter to say, okay, I’m going to enter at this position because I’m going to be 3% up. You know you need to be looking at these stocks for the long term. If you look at stocks like Microsoft and Apple, when you view them on a 10 or 15 year chart, they’re only going in one direction. They’re not going in any other direction, and so timing in the market is not as important. When you’re looking at the positions over a long period of time. It’s time in the market is more important, whereas that’s the opposite for forex. Timing in the market is absolutely everything in forex and that’s the most critical. So there are two completely opposite points of view, depending on what your goals are. My forex goals are very short term. My investment goals, my ISO and my stocks and shares are very, very long term. The idea and the goal of them is to be close to 3 to 5 million pounds as a long term asset.
Dr James:
Before I begin to liquidate the asset, Interesting and presumably you invest in stocks through stocks and shares.
Dr Dav:
I say yeah, so I have a rule. I think I’ve posted it a few times in the group. I have a kind of list of things I follow If you only have a limited amount of funds for me and in terms of what my goals are, I follow this set of rules, and the first is a lifetime ISO, which you have a £4,000 limit on stocks and shares ISO, where you have a £16,000 limit on, and then you can then begin to explore your other opportunities in terms of depending on what’s suitable to you. It’s a rental properties, practice ownership, or you want to go and buy more stocks and shares and then begin to use your capital gains allowance, things like that. I think the most important thing before you jump in and do anything is speak to a really good accountant, and you need to be having these conversations with your accountant before you start entertaining the idea. It’s not good to say, okay, I’m going to start doing property investment and then you buy maybe three or four properties and then find yourself in a little bit of hot water in terms of from a taxation point of view, and same as when you’re looking at trading stocks and shares. Speak to your accountant If you have other businesses that can finance that. You might be doing that through a limited company, so it depends on whichever taxation itself is the best for you, but you need to have that conversation before you entertain the idea.
Dr James:
Awesome. How come you opt for the Lysa in preference over a stocks and shares Lysa?
Dr Dav:
The Lysa. If you put four grand in every year, the government will give you £1,000. So you can then reinvest that extra £1,000 into whatever stocks and shares that you want. So say, over the course of 30 years I get a 30 grand back from the government back and then reinvest to buy whatever stocks, whatever shares I want, whichever indexes or exchange-changing funds. So that’s free money to me and I know that over the course of 30 years, if I have 30 grand extra, that’s going to be worth a hefty amount in my hand.
Dr James:
Yeah, fair enough. And obviously you’re picking the long-term viewpoint on that, because I believe with the Lysa you can’t obtain your money until you’re 55 or unless you use it to buy a house. Isn’t that correct? Yeah, something like that, fair enough, cool. And Tristan won because usually most people go for the stocks and shares. I said first of all, but you can definitely argue a case for prioritising the Lysa first and foremost, 100%.
Dr Dav:
I think if you’re, whatever your goals are, I think for me and my own personal goals it’s that long-term growth. If you start playing around with the calculators and you look at, say, I put 20 grand in every year into my stocks and shares, I said I have a 5% yield over the course of the next 30 years, you’ll have maybe 250 grand investment and 750 grand that you’ve actually made in terms of your investment. So the numbers rapidly begin to increase. When you begin to compound that and the compound interest and compound accumulation of money is your single greatest asset of everything that you can do in investment. The power of compounding is something that you can’t compare to anything else. There’s nothing else that you can do that’s going to accumulate you well, that quickly.
Dr James:
There’s a really interesting start about Warren Buffett and his wealth. Let’s say I’m a little loose on the figures, I don’t know them exactly, but let’s say he’s got 90 billion total wealth and he’s made 86.5 of that after his 65th birthday. Now the guy is now in 90, so he’s had another 25 years to do that, but he’s made what do the math about? Close to 20 times as much as he made in his first 65 years, in the most recent 25 years. And you can look at there’s people, there’s charts that you can see on Google that plot how this wealth is growing and it really does. Just, it’s actually hard to get your head on how much it begins to increase exponentially towards the end. It’s just another testament to the power of compounding, and I know we all go on about it a lot, but there’s a reason for that.
Dr Dav:
And that’s why the lifetime I also have to serve as number one on that list is because the view is to compound that over a long period of time. If you’ve already got a property and you already own one, there’s no point putting money into a stocks and shares. I say, if you’re looking at that, even if you’re looking over a 10 or 15 year period, you better off doing something else. The stocks and shares has to be the long game, otherwise you’re not going to really make that final cream, you’re not going to get that cheese that you want Interesting.
Dr James:
Fair enough. There’ll be a lot of people listening to this that haven’t invested yet, or maybe they’re just dipping their toe into the murky waters of investing at this point. What would you say?
Dr Dav:
to them. Get involved, get involved. Yeah, get involved, the first thing you’ve got. You’ve got to get involved. You’ve got to set up your long-term goals. You’ve got to set up your medium-term goals and your short-term goals. What are you actually trying to do, or what are you trying to actually achieve? The goals will rapidly change as well. As you begin to go from maybe, an associate to a principal. Maybe you begin investing in other things and you have more income coming in. Your goals might rapidly change, but you can adjust and change those goals as long as the goals are going up. If the goals are coming down, and it’s a bigger problem, then maybe you’ve not set the right in the first place. The goals are there to be in the short and the medium-term, to be shattered, and then that long-term should forever be increasing or should ever be getting further and further away.
Dr James:
Yeah, dave, I get the sense. You’re a man with a plan and you spend a lot of time thinking about this. So hats off Some real knowledge. Share it out on this podcast. Thanks very much for that. The Lyser one is an interesting one, and I must say it’s something that I’ve never really considered myself. I’ve just been using my stocks and shares I’ve seen Max and Natoy where I can, and it’s never really entered my thinking. The new tax year is coming up everybody, so that’s another chance for you to your ISO limit is going to be reset, so maybe it’s worth reevaluating before now, in April the 6th, I believe. It is such as the new tax year off top of my head, and it’s definitely given me some food for thought. 100%, dave, we’re going to wrap up now. Is there anything else you’d like to say? Just in conclusion.
Dr Dav:
No, I think. Thanks very much for having me. I appreciate being asked to come on to the podcast For anybody that’s kind of thinking about getting their own practice more undo it. If anybody that doesn’t really know where to start with the investment, the Lyser is the first place that I would always recommend. And just dip your toes and don’t over commit. And if you’re finding that you’re trying to get involved in forex and you see the money’s going up and down and you’re looking at your screen thinking, oh, this is going too fast, your position size is too big. For anybody that wants to learn how to do forex, babypipscom, do the course on there and then, once you’ve done that course, you’ll give you a good foundation to enter the market. And I think that’s the best place to start for people that really want to get involved in forex. I saw that I mean you’ve had really good property people on the podcast, so you don’t really need any advice from me on that. And as for a practice owner here, get involved.
Dr James:
Awesome. Yeah, and that’s the another misconception about investing as well is that people think that it’s inherently something that you have to spend all your time staring at a screen to do. It’s not. There’s no one shoe that fits and there’s a setup. There’s an asset out there for everybody. The trick is just to know what you’re doing, know what your expectations are and also have a plan, as Dave says. Dave, I just want to say thank you very much for coming on the show. As well as that, if anybody who is listening to this is not on the Facebook group, it might be worth checking out Dentist who and Versa Community Group for Dentist who Enjoy Trading on Facebook. That is the original the OG. This is where the whole podcast became inspired from. If anybody is listening to this and they haven’t come across that group just yet, the group is there for you. It’s very much along the same lines of what we’ve had this podcast on all about investing safely, how to grow your money, how to make your money work for you, with a dental twist. So it’s interesting stuff. Feel free to check it out on Facebook if it sounds like your thing. Dave, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Dr Dav:
All right. Thanks very much for your time.
Dr James:
Thanks for having me Pleasure my friend. Thank you for being so jazzed for your time this evening. I hope we speak again very soon in a bit Perfect Thanks. If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit, follow or subscribe so you can stay up to date with information on new podcasts which are released weekly. Please also feel free to leave a positive review so others can learn about this podcast and benefit from it. I would also encourage any fans of the podcast to sign up to the free Facebook community from which the podcast originated. Please search Dentist who Invest on Facebook and hit join to become part of a community of thousands of other dentists interested in improving their finances, well-being and investing knowledge. Looking forward to seeing you on there.