When the time comes, do you expect to be ready for retirement?
In response to September JADA’s Question of the Month, 52 percent of the respondents said they expect to be ready for retirement. "I plan to have my retirement, house and children’s college funded by age 40," said one reader.
"I will be ready partly through my efforts and partly through those of my working spouse," said another.
A few offered advice. "Pay yourself first each month," said one reader. "No one cares about your hard-earned money as much as you do, so learn to invest wisely."
"It is hard to protect the future with the fluctuations of the stock market over the past few years, but you need to keep plugging along," said another.
Others said that although they expect to be ready to retire financially, they still plan on practicing. "I hope to be physically and mentally capable of part-time practice following retirement," said one dentist.
"Like all ‘older’ dentists who have not been indoctrinated in the conspiracy of greed, I plan to ‘drop at the chair’ as long as I’m a viable practitioner," said another.
Thirty-one percent of respondents to the September Question of the Month said they do not expect to be ready for retirement when the time comes.
Most attributed this to financial emergencies and lack of planning. "We had family medical emergencies, and we lost our retirement to medical costs, even with insurance," said one. "We will have to start over."
"I won’t be able to enjoy same standard of living I enjoy while working," said another. "Not enough planning, and I lost money in the stock market."
A few questioned whether they will be able to sell their practices when the time comes. "Will purchasers be there when ‘baby boom’ dentists begin selling their practices to finance their retirements?" asked one dentist. "The population behind ‘boomers’ is smaller, and possibly more practices will be for sale than there are buyers for them."
Seventeen percent of readers said they did not know if they will be ready for retirement. "I’m heavy into the stock market, and it depends on its performance in the next 10 years," said one.
"At one point, I thought I did," said another. "Unfortunately, given the increasing uncertainty of the stock market, investment returns, practice income, can retirement be reduced to a simple formula?"
The ADA Department of Library Services, or DLS, has compiled a retirement resource package. It consists of articles addressing practice transition, risk management, drafting a solid retirement plan and projections of number of retirees versus graduates. For more information about this resource package, ADA members should call the DLS at 1-312-440-2653 or the toll-free number on the back of their membership card and ask for Ext. 2563. They also can send a fax to 1-312-440-2774 or send an e-mail to "library{at}ada.org".
The ADA also offers its members the ADA Members Retirement Program and ADA-endorsed individual retirement accounts to help them plan for their retirements. The ADA Members Retirement Program offers a profit sharing plan with a choice of four 401(k) options, as well as 12 other investment options, including mutual funds and fixed-income options. For more information about the ADA Members Retirement Plan, call 1-800-523-1125.
The ADA-endorsed individual retirement account program offers traditional or Roth IRAs, rollover IRAs, as well as simplified employee pension IRAs or a savings incentive match plan for employees’ IRAs for business owners. The ADA-endorsed IRAs include 16 investment options. For information, call Equitable Life and Metropolitan Life Insurance Companies, the plan administrator, at 1-800-248-2138.
