It has been 10 years now since my wife, Shahinool, passed away, and I visited her graveside recently to once again reflect on her and the life we shared with our sons. As always, I replayed many moments in my mind—stories that brought back what an exceptional woman she was and what a profound influence she had (and continues to have) on us.
For instance, like many young couples starting out, we had a modest first home together—a simple apartment of about 600 square feet. And like most young couples, we could hardly wait to get out and move into something bigger. Of course, we eventually did—and four homes later we had a magnificent but still fairly modest-sized dream house by the ocean in a suburb of Vancouver. Then as we became more successful, we moved to a new dream home—a bigger house in Vancouver.
This new house had a feature that really attracted me: a full-size indoor pool. In a place like British Columbia, where it rains a lot, this seemed like a fantastic idea. I could go for daily swims year-round if I wanted to!
Then one day, about three years after we had moved in, Shahinool said to me, “Do you know how much we are paying for the pool?” She had worked it all out—the maintenance, the chlorine and other supplies, the heating costs—and she counted how many times we actually used the pool in the last year. “It comes out to about $800 per swim,” she said.
Two things happened after that conversation. First, I went swimming four times that day, in a desperate bid to bring that average down. And secondly, I started to do some hard thinking about how easy it is, as your income grows, to fall into a trap where you are working more and more to fund a lifestyle that has grown needlessly complicated.
I have seen this a lot with dentists over the years. When I ran a consulting company we would often help our clients achieve substantial growth—in many cases, revenue increases of even 50 percent or more—which had a huge impact on the client’s income. It’s the kind of increase that many people dream about, thinking that it would solve so many problems.
What we often found, however, was that those increases were matched by increases in lifestyle spending. We would check in with these clients a few years later and find that they were having the same economic stresses—just at a higher level now.
This is why I urge all dentists who are going through a growth phase to step back and think about how to best capture the full value of that growth. Think about re-investments in the practice. Think about long-term retirement and children’s education goals. But don’t just let the economic gains get absorbed into a consumer lifestyle that ultimately consumes you.
Today, I can say that I am lucky enough—and have worked hard enough over the years—that I enjoy a standard of living where I have everything I need or could want. That’s a good feeling. But I also have never forgotten that some of my best memories in life are from those simple times when Shahinool and I had just that 600-square-foot place to look after. That was a good feeling too. I also never forget, no matter how abundant my resources, to evaluate each possible addition to my current lifestyle and ask myself how much I really need it. I have never forgotten the lesson of the $800 swim.
