As dental professionals, we spend our careers helping patients understand the importance of oral hygiene for their long-term health. We encourage them—usually often—that small, consistent actions today prevent larger, more expensive problems tomorrow. Floss and brush now or pay later. Tell them to wear their retainer, or they will get to do orthodontics all over again.

And yet, when it comes to personal finance, even the most disciplined clinicians fall into the same trap as their patients: we know what to do, but we don’t always do it. After years of practicing orthodontics and advising clients financially, I’ve noticed something striking: the biggest financial issue isn’t lack of income, and it’s not even poor investment choices. It’s a failure to consistently save. In fact, I would argue—perhaps a bit provocatively—that your savings rate matters far more than your rate of return.

We know plaque doesn’t show up significantly overnight. It builds slowly and invisibly from poor oral hygiene. Skip flossing once? No big deal. Skip it for six months, and now we’re dealing with inflammation and gum disease. Finances work the same way—but in reverse. We don’t lose all our wealth in one dramatic moment. We lose it gradually through daily spending habits, unconscious decisions, and a system that makes saving an afterthought. Most people operate under a familiar pattern: earn, spend, and save whatever is left. That’s like telling a patient to eat whatever they want all day and, if there’s time at night, maybe brush. We know exactly how that ends. It’s a very inefficient way to build wealth and why Americans only save about 4% of their income.¹

Dentistry is a high-income profession, but income alone doesn’t create wealth—just like having the latest technology in your practice doesn’t guarantee increased profits. I’ve worked with many professionals who earn substantial incomes but still feel financially stuck. Expenses naturally rise with income. Lifestyle expands. This is called the propensity to consume. Then there are other wealth-eroding factors, such as taxes, inflation, market fluctuations, technological change, planned obsolescence and more that eat away at our wealth every day of our lives. What’s left over for savings is often minimal relative to income and why the national savings rate is so low across the country, including for dentists!

In financial conversations, people focus heavily on rate of return because they believe it is the most important aspect of wealth building, but it is not. They ask what portfolios are earning, how to maximize performance, which investments are best, and what are the fees. It’s the financial equivalent of asking which toothpaste is the best—while ignoring whether the patient is brushing at all. If you’re not consistently saving, your rate of return becomes almost irrelevant. Saving an additional 2% per year with a modest rate of return will be significantly better than adding a 2% return to your investments.  Over 30 years, the difference could be millions of additional wealth.

Savings are the engine of wealth creation. Returns are simply the turbocharger.  Without consistent contributions, even the best investment strategy has difficulty reaching its maximum potential.

So why is saving so difficult, even for disciplined individuals? The answer lies in structure, not willpower. Behavioral science shows that we are influenced by present bias: we prioritize immediate rewards, and primacy bias: we prioritize what comes first. In most financial systems today, spending comes first. When income is deposited directly into a checking account, it is implicitly designated for consumption. Plus, the rainmakers, which are the government, financial institutions, and corporations, also excel at extracting our money from this account. This is not a failure of discipline; it is a flaw in design.

Budgeting has long been a traditional solution, but it often resembles a financial diet. Like dieting, budgeting starts with good intentions but requires ongoing discipline that is difficult to sustain. Life inevitably gets in the way. One unexpected expense, a vacation, or a busy week can derail the plan.

Many budgeting tools or apps track spending effectively, but they do not solve the underlying issue: income is still flowing first into a spending environment. If that structure remains, saving will continue to require conscious effort and restraint, which is not efficient, nor enjoyable. Hence, it does not work.

This is where a structural shift becomes critical, and we believe it to be a game changer in personal finance. We use a system called Currence (only financial advisers can offer it to their clients), which fundamentally changes how cash flows through a person’s financial life. Instead of the traditional earn-spend-save model, Currence flips the sequence to earn-save-spend, AND it is accomplished automatically with technology. Income is first directed into a reservoir account, separate from everyday spending. From there, a defined amount—based on a person’s current lifestyle needs—is distributed to a spending account. The remaining funds stay captured as savings before they can be consumed. This creates a simple but powerful shift: saving becomes automatic, and spending becomes intentional.

In orthodontics, we understand the importance of retention. After months or years of aligning teeth, the retainer ensures that the correction is maintained. Without it, relapse is inevitable. Financially, saving is what moves you forward, but structure is what keeps the money in motion. Without a system that enhances savings, even high earners can find themselves repeatedly starting over, like a treadmill where you run, run, run and when you get off you are in the same place. Currence introduces a “speed bump” between income and spending, encouraging conscious decision-making without imposing rigid restrictions.

One of the most impactful outcomes I’ve seen with this approach is increased confidence. When saving happens automatically, financial stress decreases, and decision-making improves. Clients shift from asking whether they can afford something to evaluating what’s the best use of their capital. This is the transition point in wealth creation from the world of accumulation to acceleration! As income grows over time, the system captures that increase automatically, preventing lifestyle inflation from consuming it. The result is a growing pool of capital that can be directed toward investments, practice expansion, or passive income opportunities to create multiple income streams in the future.

Ultimately, financial success is less about chasing higher returns and more about establishing consistent behavior. In dentistry, we don’t begin with cosmetic procedures—we begin with hygiene. In finance, the same principle applies. Before focusing on optimizing investments, we must first address the savings problem and establish a sound financial foundation. The most effective way to do that is not through increased discipline, but through better structure and technology.

Financial freedom is built through a series of one-year perfect plans. By having an automatic cash flow technology that shifts the flow from spending first to saving first, dentists can change the trajectory of their financial future. Just like maintaining oral health, the key is consistency.

References

Personal Saving Rate.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT