Retirement for dentists has long relied on traditional tax deferral strategies and an assumption that you will work full time for many decades until a traditional retirement age. After all, “Retirement” means to be “taken out of service”.

I realize it's been a term that's been used for decades and decades – generations, actually. Working hard all your life at some career, job, or profession, then someday retiring to supposedly “live the good life” is what comes to mind for most people. 

This was true back in the industrial revolution when people often worked factory jobs. Jobs that were hard and required lots of physical labor. At a certain age they retired out and they had a pension plan.

Many people also didn't live much beyond that, not just because of lower quality health, but because there was no purpose or meaning in life after you retired. This is why I don't like the word retirement.

There’s an Alternative to the Traditional Retirement for Dentists 

Rather than retiring, what about evolving in life? What about taking on different phases of life? 

To do that, you have to replace the income you make (trading time for dollars) from wherever you start in life 

I started like most people did, having many odd jobs before I even had any degrees or licenses. These odd jobs made just enough money to put gas in the car, and pay rent and utilities.

But once I got a license that gave me the ability to earn a greater income, by increasing my productivity and the value I provided (which should be the goal of everybody), I also started buying more assets that produced cash flow.

In fact, I started buying assets that produced cash flow before I had my license in dentistry. I bought my first house all the way back in dental school, back in 1980. After graduating, I practiced dentistry for a number of years, but the whole time I was buying more assets.

Because I saw the light.

I saw and understood that once I had these income-producing assets, I never had to go back and produce that income again.

I could just hold on to the asset. I could change the asset. I could add more assets. But as long as I kept the assets I would always keep getting “golden eggs”. As long as you don’t eat the goose that lays the golden eggs, the eggs keep coming.

The Value of not Doing it Yourself

Yes, it takes some diligence to manage assets. You can do that yourself. I did that for many years when I was younger and more open to trading my time for the building of assets. At that time in my life, it made sense.

Today, however, I invest through other people who do all the management. Do I get a little bit less of a return? Financially, yes. But the return on my time? My time has expanded. I now have the time to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want to do it with.

That's my point. Evolving in life to the point where you don't have to put the time in to do work unless you want to. You get to choose what you want to do. You get to evolve, in your being, to a greater state of purpose.

That's what income-producing assets allow you to do. 

I don't understand why more people don't wake up to this. Even going back to Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He wrote about this regarding the four quadrants and learning the fundamentals.

How you specifically go about doing it, is a different story. It's what I love about the group and community that we have called Freedom Founders. It's for professional practice owners and healthcare professionals who want to create that same freedom in their life and pass it on to their next generation. Their kids and grandkids can then still have that same outlook on life.

Choose what you want to do. Choose what you're passionate about. But build the assets along the way. Acquire the assets that allow you to have true freedom.