Some of the most disconcerting things a dentist will encounter in their careers are the surprise effects of recessions for which we were unprepared for. This is often a surprise for us as healthcare professionals since we have been historically regarded as having “recession-proof” jobs. However, due to the unprecedented growth in the number of healthcare providers, there are areas of practice (physical location and services offered) that have incredible overlap and density of providers that make competition and susceptibility to market forces undeniable. Healthcare is one of those industries that have characteristics of necessities and commodities at the same time and rather than dwelling on it being susceptible to market forces, we can leverage this duality to protect the business to a certain degree from contraction during a down market. Two goals of recession preparation should be 1) reduce fluctuations in income for the business and for employees, and 2) reduce or eliminate loss o...
Have you had the experience of not wanting to even look at your student loan balance because it never gets smaller, sometimes just keeps getting bigger, or is altogether too huge of a number that it scares you? I checked all of the above at one time or another. I’d love to say that there was some magic bullet to getting out of a mountain of debt like the $200k I accumulated from dental school. I’ve even heard of stories of dentists graduating with a half million dollars in debt when you throw in undergrad studies and specialist training afterwards. Many dentists and other professionals with this amount of debt end up resigning themselves to the idea that they will just always have a student loan payment, just like they’ll always have a car payment or a house payment. I’m here to tell you why it is of an even greater importance that you rid yourself of student loan debt in particular compared to any other type of debt. I began my journey as one who was just sick of paying my level pay...