Latest / The Chiro Money Show / 053 | The Fall Money Review
Transcript
- Chris Scheele: Welcome back to the Chiro Money Show, where we're helping chiropractors make better financial decisions so they can build stability in their finances and a lifestyle that they love. We're your hosts, Chris Scheele and Scott Campbell, financial planners with Align Wealth. Scott Campbell: This is a really big episode, Chris. Big episode today for a few reasons. Number one, today is episode fifty-three, so we're officially moving into our second year of podcasting. Who would have thought that we would do a weekly podcast for a year and then decide to continue doing it? That's one. Love to get your take on that. But two, more importantly, if you are a YouTube watcher, I know you've been waiting patiently, but Chris officially has the blue wall back. The blue wall's back, Chris Scheele: Blue walls arrived. Scott Campbell: so Chris Scheele: Yep. Decorations Scott Campbell: Congrats, Chris on Chris Scheele: Yeah. Decorations to come, but the the wall is blue. Yep. Yeah I Scott Campbell: Great. Good work. Good work. So what what what do you think? A a year of podcasting? Chris Scheele: Can't believe it. Scott Campbell: Yeah. We got our professional mics like two episodes ago. Chris Scheele: Yep. Yep. The setup just gonna keep getting better. Scott Campbell: You gotta share the story, Chris. What happened this last weekend? Chris Scheele: Last weekend we had a fan. We met a fan of the podcast. Big fan. Yeah. Scott Campbell: Big fan of the podcast. Where were we? What happened? Chris Scheele: Yeah, we were out at in Toronto at the AFC Alliance for Chiropractic fall conference and met a wonderful listener there. So yeah, that was pretty cool. I I was still under the impression that no one listened, Scott. So like The fact that someone came up and and upright told us, she told us, Hey, I listened to your podcast. I've I've binged them all. Like, that was pretty cool. Big win. Scott Campbell: Very very cool. I think y you're you're in this great position, Chris, where you just show up and hit record and and things just happen behind the scenes. But there is data. There are people listening and and taking in the content. So that's great. Speaking of which, yeah. Chris Scheele: I stay Yeah. I stay as an ostrich, head in the sand. Yep. Yep. That's right. That's right. Scott Campbell: Yeah. That's all right. We need you to do other things. You focus on what you're doing. You're doing great. Yeah. Speaking of of loyal listeners, if if you if you've been listening to a to the Chiro Money Show for a year now, well, first of all, like hope you're getting some good value out of the out of the conversations that we're having and the guests that we've had on. I know it's something that you hear when you listen to other podcasts to say, Hey, do us a favor, rate and leave a review of the show. It often it does make a big impact for helping the show grow. But I think from our perspective, Chris, and I'm sure you would agree, we're speaking to a very, very unique, like a very small audience at the end of the day. We're speaking to Canadian chiropractors across Canada. There's not that many of you. Like we're not trying to grow this podcast into this massive, you know, thousands of listeners, right? It's a very unique listener that we're looking to you know, bring on and attract to to take part and enjoy the show. So if you've gotten value from the chiroponey show, we'd highly appreciate if you could You know, take a minute, find an episode that you've listened to that you got some value from and share that with a friend. Yep. All right. Should we dive into dive into year two? What what are we gonna be talking about today, Chris? What's topic de jour? Chris Scheele: Let's do it. The fall money review. And why we do it the fall money review? Why we do it Scott Campbell: Fall money review. Yeah. Chris Scheele: now and not in the new year or Christmas time? Scott Campbell: Yeah. We're Chris Scheele: Yeah. Scott Campbell: we're kind of piggybacking on a time of year that is kind of big in our world out at Align Wealth with clients. We have typically have about a five week window here in October, November where we as you if you've been a longtime listener, you kind of know that we typically see our clients kind of in a in a style it's kind of a surge style where we see everyone all at once for kind of in a in a in a period three times a year where we focus on a particular topic. Or various areas of their financial life, obviously along with like whatever is top of mind and most important to them. The fall meeting is kind of, it feels like the big one, the one that we want all the clients to be at. There's so much good stuff to review what's happened in the past. It's a great time of year to make any sort of adjustments for end of year that's coming up from a tax planning perspective. But they also have a lot of great data and kind of the new year is close enough where we can start thinking ahead and thinking about. The new year, right? Chris Scheele: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a great, great point in time to just have a a bit of a check-in and look both at what what's happened in so far this year and like what we're anticipating to happen going forward into into the next year. It's yeah, there's enough data to look at like the last nine months, which is three quarters of the year of twenty twenty six is now behind us, and make any adjustments maybe for the last quarter, last three months of the year, and start already thinking about If we want to do things differently next year. Scott Campbell: sure. You don't want to leave this till December. December gets busy enough with kids being off school and and Christmas holidays and then there's the hangover from New Year's and all that good stuff. Where we want to get on this now. We wanna start thinking about twenty twenty seven now and make any adjustments from, like I said, tax planning perspective or just little minor shifts to make sure that we close out the year strong. Chris Scheele: Yeah, for sure. Scott Campbell: So, Chris, should we start the conversation off today with talking a little bit about how we're we put some importance on getting an accurate snapshot from of our all of our clients? And we're going to walk our listeners through the importance of this exercise and leave them with some takeaways for why they should consider doing this themselves as well. But why do we want to take a moment and get an accurate snapshot of what your net worth is? Maybe you could just kind of share high level what that means. and why we're looking to collect it this time of year. Chris Scheele: Yeah. Yeah, I think to start with, the reason we love doing this is it takes us out of the grind, out of the day to day, head down, like just working and working and doing our stuff, and takes us out of that and gives us the overview of of everything that's going on. you know, you might call it like the thirty thousand foot view of your financial life. So We need to do this from time to time because it's so easy to just get caught up in the day-to-day and and not see the progress, the changes that we're making. You know, it's the same like you've probably seen this where you you run into a friend or a colleague that you haven't seen in quite some time and you're like, man, you've lost weight or you've gained weight or you've put on muscle or w something, right? Like your hair's longer. But to the person, th i it's no noticeable change. Like, you Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: know, maybe I did put on a few pounds, maybe I did cut my hair differently, but like to me, you know, I see it every day, so I don't notice it, but someone else notices it differently after a long period of time. So try to get that like fresh eyes on on your financial life and say, hey, what is actually happening? So that's kind of why we do it. what it is quite simply is just putting down, you know, on jotting down on paper, spreadsheet, whatever you want to do, all of the things you own. personally and through your corporation and then all of the all of the debts or or liabilities, things that you owe money on personally and through the corporation as well. We add up all those numbers, what we own minus what we owe, and that leaves us with our net worth. Scott Campbell: We're doing something a bit differently with with clients this this round of fall meetings that I I I like the addition of this in terms of looking at what's changed over the last year in terms of really how that's like what what caused the change? Like your net worth has increased or decreased by X amount. Let's talk about the increases. How what how and why has it increased? What portion what has happened over the last year that resulted in like how much debt have you paid down? How much have you built up in cash and savings reserves? How much you put into your long-term retirement accounts? And also what portion of your net worth growth could be attributed back to market growth, right? That's not Chris Scheele: Mm-hmm. Scott Campbell: in our control, but we want to factor in, all right, we've had a pretty s pretty significant maybe net worth increase over the last few years. Well, global markets have done really, really well. They've done a Chris Scheele: Mm-hmm. Scott Campbell: lot of a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of helping us increase our net worth. What is in our control is potentially paying down debt. Well, we're actually contributing to our savings accounts or our investment accounts, right? Chris Scheele: Yeah. I will push back there on the what markets did component. Like, yeah, you're totally right. Not in our control, but man, is it powerful. Like, even for a young investor that's just starting out, like even if you've only invested 10, 20, 30, 50, 100,000, whatever dollars, it doesn't matter. Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: When you see the impact of the markets going up over time, like you see you you get your first your first look and feel at like being rewarded. For taking on the risk of investing your money. Scott Campbell: Well said. Yep. Chris Scheele: And that is so powerful because then it it it reaffirms this this truth, this this realistic thing that like investing your money is is so great and it your money can get to work for you and compound and grow on your behalf without you doing Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: anything. All you had to do was was contribute it to the accounts and put it in a sensible portfolio and boom. Amazing. Scott Campbell: For sure. And we've seen it too. If we once you start getting a bit bit more of a history in terms of someone's net worth changing year over year, even if the amount that they're saving and contributing to their investments is relatively changing, or maybe changing just kind of inflationary, you can you can start to see that that kind of hockey curve growth in terms of like, wow, like not all like my income hasn't changed maybe that significantly, or I haven't been putting that much more into my investment accounts, but just the just due to Compound interest doing its doing its magic, you can start to see how the hockey curve growth is going to going to come into play. Yeah. Chris Scheele: Yeah, for sure. Mm all of our clients are gonna get to a point where the markets or you know the growth of their portfolio is doing way more for them than you know how much they're adding to their accounts. Like it's it's huge. The Scott Campbell: For sure. Yep. Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: other the other point you mentioned is just like the kind of what happened in the year. So I think that's a great thing to look at too. It's like, okay, what what did we do? We saved, invested, we paid down debt, et cetera. You know, what did the markets do? Cool. Those are like two great things to look at. And then, you know, what were some of the big life decisions we made? Like, did we did we buy a house? Did we, you know, take a big vacation that we'd been saving up for for two years? Like w maybe there's reason to there there always is actually reason to explain the changes to this kind of snapshot. And Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: I think Pointing specifically to those reasons, especially if we do see some a client with their net worth going down, I think it's especially important, right? Like I I give my own example of like, yeah, we we did that trip to New Zealand last fall. It's like that was a lot of money it cost us. Our net worth probably went down in that quarter or ha that year, maybe even. Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: But when you reflect on the reason for it, it makes sense and it's no longer yeah. It's not a concern. It was like, yeah, that was intentional. I spent that money for Scott Campbell: For sure. Chris Scheele: the memories, enjoyment, et cetera, whatever values Scott Campbell: For sure. Chris Scheele: you have. Scott Campbell: Kind of makes me just think of this other point that we wanted to make here when it comes to tracking net worth. You're mentioning like what are the wins that happened? What, what, what experiences did we have? I think Chris Scheele: Mm-hmm. Scott Campbell: we often mu sometimes might forget like w all the things that we did or accomplished throughout the last six, twelve months, especially maybe t a year ago, like last fall, if we're thinking about that back like back that far. It's sometimes it's natural for us to forget all the things that we have done. But the one thing that I wanted to bring up And I think we've talked about this in a previous episode, is that we don't go through this exercise as a as a way to be like, wow, like the whole purpose here is to increase our net worth and to be like this is a s like we don't view it as a scorecard. And I think a lot of people kind of maybe subconsciously flex the idea of like, I'm I'm I'm I see my net worth, it's increasing. I'm you know, I've reached millionaire status, whatever the number is, like we're doing well. This is it's just a number on a page at the end of the day, right? I heard I heard I think it was Julia on the Future Proof episode just talking about, you know, n you know, w grandpa when when grandpa passes on, like the grandkids aren't gonna be like, look at look at grandpa's net worth, it was so great. Just he did such a great job at growing his net worth, or he was so efficient with his taxes, or my goodness, look at grandpa's portfolio, it was amazing. No, that's not what this is all about, right? It's not a scorecard at the end of day. Yeah. Chris Scheele: Yeah. That's right. Yeah, we've got to connect it to the real life, the stuff that actually matters. Yeah. Scott Campbell: sure. Yep. But what it then, like moving on from here in terms of all right, we have a snapshot, we understand where we're where we stand today, what has changed over the last year, you know, then we can start thinking about thinking ahead, right? What does that look like, Chris? Chris Scheele: Yeah, so I think, you know, we have to look back and forward kind of at the same time. It's like, hey, we're like we mentioned we're we're three quarters of the way done twenty twenty six. So we should have some real data that we can point to. for our practice owners, that's you know, obviously going through their their books, looking at, you know, what was top line revenue, what are our expenses, are those coming in where we anticipated they would? Are those percentages still, you know, where we want them to be? is there something we need to tweak? Looking back at that gives us can give us the the confidence we need to make an adjustment for say the next three months or even heading into next year, right? So Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: for instance, just to give an example, like, you know, what if we have a practice that, you know, they're they're exceeding the revenue targets. So it's like, okay, great, we've, you know, the first half first three quarters of the year have been awesome, our revenue's up. We're still in growth phase. So our salaries, you know, maybe it's a couple, their salaries aren't where we want them to be or where they want them to be yet. So maybe we're looking at, okay, maybe we bump salaries for the last three months of the year and plan to have a new, you know, new salary starting Jan one for, you know, for the for the next year. with this information, we can make educated decisions about how to proceed, right? It on the flip side, maybe it's, hey, you know, our expenses came in more than more than we wanted them to be. Like we were thinking they were here this about this much per month and, you know, they're averaging more than that. Okay, well, what are we gonna do about that? Are we gonna cut expenses? Is there something here that doesn't belong or something that changed? Did our you know, our costs increase with our our lease increase? Did we renew something that had an increased cost? Or what's going on here? Is there a reason and What do we do about it? Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Yeah, at the end of the day, it's all about making informed decisions. Chris Scheele: Mm-hmm. Scott Campbell: Being at this stage of the year, like we've kind of touched on, both with getting an accurate snapshot of net worth, but also then reviewing previously what's happened in the last six, 12 months in practice. Even if you could even work in some of your personal kind of spending, like how's spending on the personal side? Is personal cash flow, is that kind of side of things feeling good right now? Do I feel pinched? Do I feel comfortable? Do I feel the pull to start saving and investing more? Is there any big changes that could happen in the next three, six, twelve months that we need to start really thinking about now versus being reactionary in the moment? With that data, we can start saying, all right, well, say the goal is, hey, we want to buy a house later in 2027. All right, well, now is probably a good time for us to start looking at your practice and revenue and maybe look at opportunities to. Maybe shave down some operating expenses. Maybe maybe there's room to increase your salaries. But if we do so, maybe the goal is to keep kind of lifestyle spending the same, but we can allocate more cash flow to a savings account to help with that home purchase. And maybe it's in 12 months from now, but we have lots of runway to start planning for it. Chris Scheele: Mm. Yeah. Yep, for sure. last point I wanna make on this of as far as like looking back and kind of what you have control over for the next three months, like before we go into a new calendar year, would be y you know, specific to your compensation, right? So, you know, what has your total compensation been year to date? Ha you know, has it been just salary, like employment income, or is that you know, a mix of dividend draws as well, and then looking at have we set aside the appropriate amount of tax that we are gonna owe for all of that income we've drawn out of the practice. With that information, we can then make a great decision about what to do for the next three months. Scott Campbell: Mm-hmm. Chris Scheele: So this is your chance. You can get caught up, you can make adjustments, but once we hit January, you don't have any options to change your twenty twenty six income. Scott Campbell: Yep. It's already happened. And if you've been on primarily, say, a dividend type of income and you're behind on how much you need to have set aside for taxes, maybe both on the corporate side as well as personally, you actually probably have closer to maybe five, six months here be between now, depending on what your installments were kind of due to the CRA, but you have a little bit of time here to get prepared for personal tax. returns being filed and that tax amount being due. You have some time to start thinking and preparing for that if you haven't been in a position where you have been remitting enough taxes or setting aside those taxes, you know, for the last six to nine months. Right. Yep. In some Chris Scheele: Yep. Anything. Scott Campbell: cases there's there's a reason to play some catch up and and get things sorted. Chris Scheele: Mm-hmm. Scott Campbell: Right. And maybe, you know, I th I think of I think of someone that we recently started working with, we had to make some adjustments to like how much they were saving and investing so that we could get caught up on tax to make sure that wasn't going to be a burden come tax time. And once we solve that problem, taxes are paid, then we can reevaluate, get things going back in the right direction, saving and investing. Chris Scheele: Yeah, for sure. Yep. Anything else you want you want to point to as far as like looking back and kinda using the next yeah, using this information of the first three quarters? Scott Campbell: I think the only thing that potentially comes to mind that just happened to come up in a couple of recent calls, just in terms of looking back, and I'm thinking more on the practice side right now, is that we still see I feel still still feel like we see a lot of meet a lot of new docs who aren't looking at their numbers as often as we probably would like them looking at it. Like they're looking at it and reviewing it, come their fiscal year and their accountants going through their financials with them. Maybe this is the year if you're not in that position already where you're not looking at your financials on a regular basis. Maybe that's maybe that's a a a great goal to start thinking about how I can get a better understanding of where the practice stands on a quarter by quarter basis. You know, we're three quarters into the year. Do you know how you do you know you're where you're at in 2026? do you understand what your average revenue is per month? Do you understand what your average operating expenses are per month? Do you understand what your kind of margin is for profit after you've paid yourself a fair fair salary or at least fair income from the practice for the work that you do as a chiropractor. If you don't have those answers right now, I think it could be a good opportunity to start saying, Hey, I need to get more involved with my financials in the practice so that I can make better and more informed decisions this time of year for the year ahead. Chris Scheele: And just a reminder, we're not suggesting you do your own bookkeeping, you do your own accounting. You know, you should have the right people on your team to make this easy for you. Right? It should be a report that's sent to you that cuts out all the jargon and the nonsense and tells you what you need to know. Here's where you are compared to where you were at this time last year. Here's here's the numbers that matter, and leave off the stuff that doesn't matter. And then you can get into the details if you need to. Scott Campbell: Any closing thoughts here, Chris? I think we kept it short and sweet today, Chris Scheele: Yeah, I think we should leave it there. Scott Campbell: Cool. Well, we didn't mention at the top of the show, but you have you have a backyard ultra race here this weekend. Chris Scheele: We didn't even talk about Hyrox Scott. my god. Scott Campbell: Didn't talk about high rocks. I don't know if people ni necessarily need to hear more and more about our high rocks, but yeah. Chris Scheele: No. They've probably heard enough. And I mean we don't have a brag. We don't have a you know we w we didn't we didn't make the podium, so Scott Campbell: We're close though. We're close. Chris Scheele: yeah. That's okay. Yep. And yeah, straight. Scott Campbell: We were in third place until the eleventh hour. Right? That's all right. We got bumped down, but Chris Scheele: Yeah. Yep. That's okay. Scott Campbell: that's okay. So Chris is doing a backyard ultra this weekend, running around and around in circles. What is it, six point seven kilometers, top of the hour every hour? Is that right? Chris Scheele: That's right. Scott Campbell: All right. Chris Scheele: Big change. Little little bit of different feel compared to the the Toronto High Rocks race. didn't Scott Campbell: Little different for sure. Are you gonna are you gonna share with our listeners kind of what the what maybe the goal is? Doesn't necessarily need to be a a distance, like just what's the goal? What are you looking for? Chris Scheele: Yeah. Just gonna go just gonna go run until I don't wanna run anymore. We'll see. See how long that takes us. Yeah. Might be Scott Campbell: I like it. I like it. Chris Scheele: might be a short day, might be a long day. Yeah. Scott Campbell: Gonna be a long day. I feel it. I feel it. The main thing is your the great thing for the Backyard Ultra and for you and for people watching is that they get your your your family, the people there to support you and all the other racers, they get to see all these people at the top of the hour, same spot. They just keep coming back to the same place. So it's great spectator event too. Chris Scheele: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'm really excited for the for the whole the whole event and the feel of it. It'll be it'll be great. So we'll Scott Campbell: For sure. Cool. Chris Scheele: fill in we'll we'll fill the the listeners in on next episode how how I did. Yep. Yep. Scott Campbell: Next week. That sounds good. All right, Chris. Thanks for the time. We'll see you all again next week for another episode of the Chiro Money Show. Thank you.