FINANCIAL RECKONINGS
By Clark Troy
Columnist
“I was a little confused when I saw your X-rays, because I got a glimpse of you walking in there and then I saw this film, which looks to be the teeth of a much older man.” Thus spoke my new dentist, Drew Fairweather of Somerville, New Jersey, thereby inaugurating a new phase in my financial and health adulthood.
Let me back up. It was the fall of 1998. My wife was beginning a new teaching job in New Jersey, so we had moved out from Manhattan. I was doing some adjunct teaching in northern NJ and was to finish writing my dissertation that academic year. Soon after we arrived in Somerville, we got a mailer promising a free dental examination. I had been to the dentist maybe once or twice during grad school and only sparingly in the preceding years. I had taken terrible care of my teeth and mouth during my years of active alcoholism, deluded by the typical alcoholic belief that somehow normal rules didn’t apply to me.
I was about to learn how wrong I was. Over the next few years, Dr. Fairweather and his preferred periodontist, Dr. Martin Cornick (may he rest in well-earned peace), took me through a range of dental surgeries which allowed me to keep my teeth and continue to enjoy a range of delicious foods. They taught me how to care for my mouth, an ongoing and labor-intensive practice I have never entirely perfected. When I moved to North Carolina, they found a recommended dentist who belonged to some hard-core professional society of no-nonsense, tough-love dentists.
If all this sounds expensive, it was. It still is. I go in for quarterly cleanings and nonetheless still end up needing a crown or an overlay or a filling or something every year, because years of early neglect put me in the position of being a high-touch dental patient for the rest of my life. I forget how much the early phases of my intensive dental period cost but by now I basically budget $2,000-$3,000 a year for dental care on top of the 10-15 minutes a day I spend brushing, flossing, rinsing… Over a quarter of a century, I have shuddered to think how many inflation-adjusted dollars I’ve spent, but $90k-$100k is not a bad guess.
And I know how fortunate I am to have done so. Thank God I met those guys when I did.
Much of health is like this. Investments you make in time, in diligence, in recognizing that people with expertise in other domains have important things to tell you and that it behooves you to listen to them, all that pays off down later on in life in expenditures of time and money you don’t have to make.
These principles hold true in various domains, such as home care, auto care, and even relationship care, but those are topics for another day.
Clark Troy was born in Durham and educated in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, then elsewhere. He is a financial planner at Red Reef Advisors and may be reached at clark.troy(at)redreefadvisors.com. When not working, he reads, plays sports, naps, drinks coffee and plays guitar, not necessarily in that order.
This reporter can be reached at Info@TheLocalReporter.press
Oh, I’m with you, Clark! Periodontal care twice a year since I was 35. Bummer, but I do like to smile. We’re lucky to have good dental care and to afford it. Shouldn’t our health insurance and Medicare pay for this fundamental health benefit?