What is the best use of my dental office profit dollars?Only 60 of the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 were still listed in 2017. Over 50% of the S&P 500 has disappeared since 2000. Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this creative destruction in 1942. Mufasa called it the circle of life in the 1994 Disney children’s movie Lion King remake of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1603. This is why how you allocate your capital is not only the most important business decision you’ll ever make, it’s also the most important financial life decision you’ll ever make. Retained Earnings (RE) are those net income profit dollar earnings that you decide to reinvest into your dental office by adding another operatory, laser, CAD-CAM, CBCT, oral scanner, 3D Printer, continuing education, or marketing campaign, as opposed to taking it out by paying it to yourself in income to reinvest or consume. Would your profit dollar be more likely to turn into two dollars of capital value creation if I deployed it in my dental office, or should I extract it and redeploy it by investing it in another business, real estate, stock or bond? Or, should I just consume the dollar myself with a new house, car, boat, or toy? Obviously the dentist that needs to learn a new technique, and hasn’t taken the time and invested the money to learn it, is already paying for it, but eventually you’ll want an exit strategy from working with your hands all day to having your money work for you. Debt reduction is always a great idea considering it’s guaranteed that the 18% you’re paying on your credit card is a sure bet use of your capital because that is certainty as opposed to the inverse of making 18% in a stock is not. But over the long run, having an investment portfolio which you can retire and live off is very likely given a dentists income given a few decades of time with the miracle of compound interest which Einstein called the most powerful force in the universe because not only can money make money, the money that money makes, makes money, so you can do other things with your time than drilling, filling and billing.