Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Danny Favreau with One Less Worry Discussing Estate Planning in Uncertain Times

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Danny Favreau is a knowledgeable, detail-oriented leader with nearly 17 years of experience in the dynamic financial industry. As the owner of One Less Worry, Danny has become a trusted authority in pension and retirement planning, providing Federal and State employees with tailored guidance to achieve “Retirement by Design.” His success stems from his strategic approach to business development, his dedication to building strong client relationships, and his clear, practical communication style.Danny’s career spans a range of challenging roles, from field underwriter to account executive, financial advisor, and now business owner. Each position has refined his financial expertise and deepened his industry insights. With a National Social Security Advisor certification, Danny is equipped to address Social Security-related needs, including optimization strategies to maximize benefits.Throughout his career, Danny has demonstrated a commitment to professional growth, expanding his financial acumen through continuous education and leadership roles within top-tier organizations. His clients and colleagues alike value his integrity, his attention to detail, and his ability to consistently deliver exceptional results.Learn More: https://www.onelessworry.co/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-danny-favreau-with-one-less-worry-discussing-estate-planning-in-uncertain-times

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with this Danny Fabro, who's the founder of One Less Worry, and we'll be talking about estate planning in uncertain times. Danny, welcome back to the program. Welcome. Thank you, I mean. Hey, you know, uncertain times. It's kind of like, you know, flip a coin and pick a day.

Any day is uncertain times. So, you know, these days, it just seems like, you know, what's going to change that we need to adapt to? So I think that having things in place for your estate plan is super important. And I feel like I'm going to learn some great tips from you because I think a lot of people's eyes kind of glaze over on estate planning. that's like so high level and out of reach. So where do you start when you're working with your clients on explaining what an estate plan is and why is it so important to have an estate plan and keep it updated? That's the key right there, keeping it updated once you start it, okay? You want to make sure that estate plan is going to cover things that you want to take care of when you pass. Okay.

So you want to make it easy for people and you want to make it so they'll be it. don't pay more taxes and you want to try to keep everything out of probate, you know? So that's the key right there is if you take these steps and do your state plan correctly, then it's going to avoid a lot of taxes, it's going to avoid probate, and it's going to avoid that family from fighting or something of that nature when you pass. So that's the keys right there. So with your finances, your taxes, and even your health care, you want to make sure that's all taken care of, okay? when we sit down, we find out what your needs are, okay?

We find out what you got and what your wishes are, you know. You have property. Where do you want that property to go? Who gets the property? You know, so you want to make sure that you have all that taken care of for your wishes, okay? And then you also want to make sure that you have the great people in charge. So if something happens to you, you know, who's that person going to be, you know, your beneficiary? If you want to, it's a whole family, or you want to make sure everybody gets equal amounts,

well, that's what estate planning is going to do for you. It's going to be able to put in writing exactly what your wishes are and what people are going to get. Now, I've seen it. People even go down to the point, well, hey, I've got all kinds of money here and going to inherit it to my kid, but I want to make sure a kid's going to get so much of it per year. Well, that's part of the estate planning. If I'm getting it all at once, they can get that out so much per year. I had people go as far as they got to have a job to make sure they have a job.

If they don't get their money from the inheritance, you know, that type of thing. It all breaks down to what your wishes are. Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, it's almost like, you know, begin with the end in mind. Or where do you want to go on vacation? I don't know anywhere. Well, anywhere could mean anywhere and it might not get you where you'd really want to be. But having that plan in place, knowing what you want, that's pretty.

important, right? I mean, have you ever run into a client that kind of a scratch of the head going, I don't even know what I want these things to be or what are some things that I should be including in there? So kind of what are the key things that someone needs to make sure that are included in a really fully comprehensive estate plan? Well, two parts of there. One, let's talk about the vacation real quick. I see clients spend more time on the vacation planning than they do on planning their estate. or even their social, picking when they're, like, their Social Security. You know, these are things that are going to take place for a lot longer than a vacation. You know, your vacation is going to last two weeks. Your estate planning is something that will last for the rest of your life, time, plus the next generation. So you want to make sure you plan it well. And things that are your life insurance policies, okay, that's huge. Your retirement plans, like your 401K, your Rothschild.

IRAs, okay, in your IRAs. Them could be all dedicated of beneficiaries. Your bank accounts, savings accounts, your real estate, any stock market portfolio, money market accounts, them are also, don't forget if you have a pension fund.

Those are things that you could actually dedicate to a beneficiary. And you know what? Beneficiary is out trump wills and trust. That's important to know right there. Your beneficiaries can out trump a will without a problem. And when you have a beneficiary designated to it, they're the ones going to get the funds.

They're the ones going to get everything. And it's done. There's no probate. There's no nothing. No questions asked. That's the easiest thing to do. And everything I just listed could have a beneficiary. It's fine to it.

So therefore, when you pass, it's your beneficiary. That makes things cut and easy. But if you need a will or the trust, we help. you with that. But if you have an attorney, your own attorney where we get all to get everything, you know, done, we work with your attorneys. If you don't have one, we'll look for one in your area or else you could use one of ours. But it's important that these are done and taken care of. Now, so we don't do any of the attorney work. We leave that to the attorneys. And yeah, but anything else that you can speak to the importance of needing those things and, and maybe things like, I don't know,

what do you call them advanced directives of things like prior attorney or medical or, you know, do not resuscitate? Those are things to at least be aware of that could be needed. Are they needed every single time? That's what you need to decide on. And it reminds me I talked to someone recently that said, look, you know, I know there's a lot of people out there that say get a trust, get a trust. There's all kinds of trust. And they tend to be really expensive. And this person said many times.

In fact, he said most of the time you don't even need a trust. You just get a good will and you're good to go. Yeah. I agree with you there. You know, if the beneficiary is designated to a beneficiary, if everything is designated to a beneficiary, then you really truly don't need a will. A trust comes in handy, I find mostly, when you have a special needs child. That you want in the trust.

And we have a lot of clients that have that, and we work with their attorneys, and we set it up with their local people, so therefore they know exactly they can go see them and visit them and make sure everything is done for them because when you guys special needs child, that's a whole different animal. And we want to make sure that that's done correctly for you and for your special need child. So that's another thing. And you did mention, you know, your health care portion of it. You know, if you need a power of attorney, that's important. And do you need it? yeah, you should have it on there.

If you don't know what's going to happen to you, may they use it? Probably not. Hopefully you don't ever have to worry about that. But if something happens to you, you got a car accident. Now you're in a coma, and the doctors are saying to the family,

says what's going to happen. We can pull a plug or whatever, you know. You need a power of attorney to help with that. So that's important. You know, you have the right people in place for that. And you hope nothing like that ever happens. until it does. You know, you hope that you don't need to have full coverage on your car until you have an accident and all of those things. So we live in a society that, like they say, is very litigious.

Well, have some things in place to protect that. Well, have some things in place to make sure your family and your estate. And I think that in my mind, back in the old days, you hear the word estate and it's like, oh, billions of dollars, that's an estate. These days, I mean, an estate really is just what you got. You know, it's your house. house, your car. It doesn't matter the amount. It's like, if you want your stuff to go to the right people at the right time, then you need the estate plan. It avoids probate. You know, probate is so expensive and who makes money on it, the attorneys in court, okay? I swear that's what seems like they're the ones that make all the money out of it. Because it does cost money to do that. And it takes

time. And the other day, I was sitting down with a client, and her family, it just happened to be with her mom passing, and that's why she wanted to get this done now because she's going through probate. And it's going on almost two years now, and nothing's got settled yet because there's five kids in the family, and all five of them are thinking differently. She came to me, she goes, I want to take care of this because I'm not going to have my family go through that. My kids are not going to go through what I'm going through. So that's it. It is important. It's very much, you know, somebody, like you said, a lot of people think it's just for the rich. It's for everyone, okay? And it's not easy to talk about because it's something you have to plan, you know.

You have to make that decision. I'll say if you have a certain, you know, if you have one child, it's easy. Everything goes to that one child. But yeah, I'm not like people in the family, you can make sure that this is done right. And you don't want the family to fight about it. you should do it. You know, there's like we were saying that there's so many things we cannot plan for, but we can, you know, set some, you know, guidelines up again for that. What about long-term care? I hear that long-term care typically in relation to set it up for your retirement planning,

but you say that it also needs to be factored into estate planning. How does that work? Well, it's just, it's something that people, it's a good timing to do it, okay? and, you know, when that takes place, you want to make sure that the funds are going to, you know, to the right person to make sure that everything's going to help, you know, especially if you're going to a nursing home. You want to make sure that everything is done properly. And when you start talking about estate planning, that's when we make sure that you have long-term care in place. Because you don't want to start losing everything that you have to go to a nursing home. So that's the important part is, you know, have a long-term care.

long-term care plan, you know, so plan. So therefore, when it comes down to it, nothing of your estate is going to be gone or taken away. You know, and there's a lot of different rules, and every state is going to be different. So it varies per state. So we want to make sure that everything is set. So therefore, when you do or if you have to go into the nursing home, then you've got the long-term care to help with that and take the burden off your state itself. Yes, for sure.

And I guess one of the big things that we need to think about here is just like with the will or just like with advanced directives or state planning here. Don't just assume that someone remembered you said this about that. You got to have it down. You have it documented in writing, set up the right way so that what you want actually gets executed. Definitely. And that kind of reminds me of a set down with family. and we're going through their will, actually. And they had life insurance in there, and they said, well, do your beneficiaries off?

Let's pull your beneficiaries on your will. We pulled out the beneficiaries. He had on his policies. He still had his ex-wife on there. So his wife was like, we need to change that right away. Yeah. So we changed that. But then he says, well, we've got three kids between two of us,

and they should just divide up everything. I said, do your kids know that? And I was like, yeah, we told them that before. Like, okay, why don't you put that in writing? Well, we don't need it in writing. So one of the kids walked into the conversation, and I asked the kid, I go, hey, so if something happens to your parents right now, who gets all the mind? I'm the oldest.

It all comes to me. Oh, see? Look at that. You're assuming that I close them, but I said to the parents, I said, see, your kids really don't know what your wishes are. Okay, first of all. And more importantly, after they lose their parents, they're not thinking straight. Yeah. Okay.

They're in shock. You know, they don't know, make it easy for them. Have it in place, put it into a state plan. But your life insurance and all the policies you can have a business and fishery sign to them. So therefore, you don't have to worry about it. And it also prevents family bickering and infighting because, like in that scenario, you just mentioned, the oldest thought this and then the second oldest would say well hey hold on and then here's this fight but in reality if it's all written down just like well that's what we have to follow

exactly and we have a um a vault we call it our generational vault where you could put all your documents into it you know you put your well you're everything you put in there you can put in videos you can put in pictures you know this is online and it's safer than a bank okay but it's called the generational vault and what's nice about it's it is that you could actually do a nice video of your wishes and telling your family exactly what they are. So therefore, they could watch that and see that unfold for them right in front. Like, this is my wishes.

This is, you know, I want you to have the car. I want you to have the cabin, you know, and you could have my business. And, you know, that's important. It's nice to have that reinsurance to the family that your family's wishes were done on video and there's a little clip in there. So when you do pass, family can sit there and watch it and like, okay. You know, that's an interesting point. Yeah, as you were mentioning that, it reminded me of how tone and emotion do not get

communicated in text, whether it's a text message or an email. You just sometimes you can't read into the tone properly. Whereas that video, here's mom or dad going, here's this and why I'm doing it. And here's this. And I felt this was the best because. And all of that communication is delivered spectacularly because you took the extra 10 minutes to record a quick video. It works.

It's so amazingly easy. And when they go to that vault, you know, when their last parent dies and we turn around and we let the family, you know, now take a look at it. We sit down with the whole family, put them all together. And then we turn around and say, okay, this video is for the, the O2 to watch or the fan for the kids to watch. Here's a video for the grandkids, you know.

It's just their way that they could say goodbye and the wishes are and gives the reasons why they're doing certain things because they're in a state of mind of shock and, you know, it's tough and it takes time to adjust. I mean, at least

when the parent is sitting there and giving you the video clip of why they did this, at least gives some relief and feelings to the family like, okay, now I understand why mom and dad did this. It just makes people feel that more of relief, you know, the parent, they lost, just lost the parents, so they're not feeling good about that at all, but it gives them comfort, I should say, is the word, that their wishes are being taken care of.

Love it. Well, I'll tell you, Danny, this has been really educational, seeing some of these nuances that maybe we've not considered before on planning your estate. So if someone is interested in connecting with you and maybe learning a little bit more, what's the best way that they can do that? They can give me a call at 475-257-1807. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on today.

It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www. Influential EntrepreneursRadio.com