Smarter money moves for veterinarians: Building wealth and freedom

How confident are you when it comes to financial planning, balancing debt repayment with savings, and aligning personal and business finances? If you are not feeling so confident, or not confident at all, then this episode of Vet Watch is for you!

For our first episode in 2026, host Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, DACVM (Parasitology), welcomes Florida Veterinary Advisors cofounders Tom Seeko, CExP, and CJ Burnett, CExP, to the show to talk all things finances.

Throughout the episode, the trio debunks common money myths, such as the belief that money management is straightforward, while stressing the need for comprehensive insurance coverage and proper cash flow management, discussing the importance of exit planning from day 1, and more.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Christopher Lee, DVM, MPH, DACVPM, DACVM (Parasitology): On your podcast, you've said that being debt free is not the same thing as being financially free. Could you define financial freedom for veterinarians?

CJ Burnett, CExP: Well…it sounds like it ends there, but there's actually a second part of that phrase. [The] second part of that phrase is if you're still living paycheck to paycheck. So being debt free isn't financially free if you're still living paycheck to paycheck. Now, financial freedom is different than experiencing freedom within your finances. Financial freedom is where you have a balance sheet that reproduces all of the income that you need to pay your bills for the rest of your life, and you never have to return to work. That's financial independence. That's real financial freedom.

But experiencing freedom within your finances means having enough clarity to know exactly where the boundaries are with your money, and having an understanding of exactly how you're going to build a balance sheet to get to financial independence.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity

Tom Seeko, CExP: On the note of debt, usually what happens is people focus so much of their attention [on how much they hate] paying the interest on student loans, [which], of course, is a massive topic in this industry. Some people are like, “I just give up.“ Some people name them. Some people [think], “I’ve got to get rid of them.” It gets to a [point] where some people are so focused on trying to eliminate that payment, trying to eliminate that balance that they owe, and they neglect everything else that they do in their financial life.

They have no cash reserves for “uh-ohs” in life. There is no money available to get married. There is no money to go buy a business, and most of the time, people are scrambling, trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces and put things together on the back end. Or, 10 years later, they get out of all this debt…and then here we are, 10 years later, with nothing saved…trying to make up that lost time.

One thing I can say, from working with people for over a decade now, [is] it's very rare that someone, after 10 years, can save everything that they've been contributing toward debt, because there are probably things they've neglected to do in their life that they want to do now. They have new things that they've taken on. They have kids, they have other responsibilities, and life just continues to move on. So … we always want to talk about: How do you do both of them? And at some point, if you have a tremendous amount of money saved up and you want to knock out your debt, that's a whole different conversation.