Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Sean Vazquez, Founder of PMV Financial Discussing Legacy Planning

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Sean has been in the Financial Advisory field for over 13 years. He has specialized in working with school district staff on educating them on how exactly their CalSTRs and CalPERS actually work, and their options to close the pay gap in their pension. He has enjoyed educating clients on how to maximize their pension as well as introducing them to tax-free alternatives. I have also worked with small businesses, Buy-Sell agreement options, and other opportunities for businesses to protect their interest as well as ways to retain their key employees.Sean continues to educate myself to make sure that he’s up to date with new products and services that will benefit his clients.Adding Long Term Care plans recently to their scope of service has been beneficial to many of the clients, and he sees it as an underserved market that will have a huge impact on their clients’ estates, taxes, and even dignity. Sean loves what he does and has a passion to serve.Learn more: https://pmvfinancial.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-sean-vazquez-founder-of-pmv-financial-discussing-legacy-planning

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, Sean Vasquez, who's the founder of PMV Financial and we'll be talking about legacy planning, protecting your loved ones. Sean, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. Hey, you know, I think that if you were to ask any, you know,

a head of a family that, you know, what's the most important thing about protecting your family? It's like, hey, I just want to make sure they are taken care of financially now after I'm gone. So I think this is such a powerful concept. Let's talk up first before we dive into some more detailed questions. Define what legacy planning actually is. I think that that's a phrase that sometimes people hear, but they don't really understand what legacy planning actually is.

Yeah, so legacy planning, right? Exactly kind of what it says, your legacy. What are we doing to leave our legacy? How are we making sure that our hard-earned dollars or investments and things of our nature that we're leaving to, who we plan on leaving it to is strategically placed to basically minimize what Uncle Sam's portion of that is, right? and basically in detail leave to that money or whatever we're leaving behind in accordance to, I guess, how you would say how we want it to be left, right?

So basically, how do we maximize what we're leaving to our beneficiaries and minimize Uncle Sam's portion of that? Yeah, because if you don't make a plan for that, a plan will be made and handed to you and it might not be the plan that you want. Correct. And by that time, you really don't have a say anymore. Yeah, it's too late. You know, it's very, very much like that's a life principle.

If you want to make a certain decision, most of the time, it needs to be made well ahead of the actual, you know, critical moment or else it's just too late, you know, whatever that might be. And we could use many examples. But let's talk a little bit about the steps that people need to take or be aware of that you guide them through to make sure that legacy planning, number one, is done, but most importantly, aligns with your family's needs. Yeah, I mean, that's huge, right? So I think one of the main things that comes to mind is making sure that they have a living trust or irrevocable trust,

depending on what they're trying to do, right? So that trust is going to usually have a will, which states your wishes and that trust is going to execute your wishes, right? Well, now we're opening up a can of worms in the realm of trust. So obviously, that could be like a nine-hour seminar just right there. But talk a little bit about the professionals that you want to make sure that are in place when you're working with your client to make sure that they understand all the options. correctly for a trust? Yeah, so with trust nowadays, right, there's several options you can use. One, which is probably preferred or most used, is to find a lawyer, find a lawyer that you

can utilize to implement that trust or some cases, a paralegal. And nowadays, there are actually websites and tools that you can utilize to start a trust. So it just depends. It's going to be so unique, Mike, because it is not a cookie cutter type of instrument that you utilize for each person's trust. It's going to be very, very detailed according to that person's wishes, what they have. And depending on how much assets they're going to be putting into the trust, that's also going to determine what the cost of the trust is going to be as well. And just like with many things should be done by a professional, and there's a lot of choices. So it's not just something you should just Google, right? Yeah, correct.

Right. If you want this trust to actually have validity and make sure that it's going to do what you had in mind for it to do, you want to make sure that you're working with a professional. And if you are going to be using maybe, let's say, some kind of website design. my suggestion is always to go ahead and pay the extra money to have either a paralegal or lawyer go over it to make sure that everything is sent. So let's talk a little bit about what you mentioned, you know, about Uncle Sam. What does a legacy planning do to help minimize taxes and keep Uncle Sam out of your pocket? Because I know you can't eliminate taxes, but we can minimize them.

Correct. So again, it's going to be determined on, on each. Each strategy is going to be different. I mean, there's things that you can put things into, let's say, life insurance policy or, you know, maybe some deductions like charities or gift strategies. So it's just really going to depend on what assets you have, how you want to leave them, and then what portion of that are we going to be leaving to who and when and where, right? That's going to determine what your taxes are going to be.

it's it's kind of hard to just kind of generalize it it's a very specific well and and the point too is because it's hard you can't do it on your own well sure sure I think that the human nature is oh I'm just going to go Google it or go to AI or whatever and now all of a sudden you're getting more confused than ever well here's another thing Just because you have one in place doesn't mean that you should not revisit that thing every so often. Let's say maybe every three years. Things change. Family members pass, right?

Someone gets married. Someone gets divorced. You know, so it just depends on what's going on in your life when you had that trust done. What if you acquired more properties, right? And they're not in that trust. So it's a living trust called a living trust for a real. reason, right, so that we can actively make changes and arrange things as you're living and you have that capacity to make those changes to make sure that, you know, everything's

left according to your plan. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, we talked about in a previous conversation, the peace of mind that you get with having guaranteed income and how powerful that is. There's emotional benefits to planning your legacy as well. talk a little bit about once you have a legacy plan in place to take care of your loved ones. What are those emotional and financial benefits that come up? Well, I think, again, right?

So we all have an idea. We know how hard we work for our money, right? We know how hard we work to acquire property, to acquire different things that are considered assets. And so I think by having a strategic plan and some kind of trust or some type of legacy planning, you understand and you know that if something were to happen to us, you know, something that's unplanned. And here's another thing. I'm not just talking about death.

What if something happens in when you don't have the capacity to make decisions anymore, right? And so we just knowing that you have these things that are taken care of, I think the worst case scenario is like in case of a stroke or something of this nature where you're still alive. You still kind of have an idea of what's going on, but you cannot make decisions and to kind of see all of your assets and all these things and everyone around you might have different ideas or expectations. You might still be alive and see that nothing that you had planned is coming to fruition, right?

But if you have this plan that's set up in place, you have a trust or whatever, you know that what you had designed for your assets to your beneficiaries is going to be taking care of in the way that you saw fit. And I think that's, I know for me, that's, that's important because again, I don't know if you have witnessed this, but I'm sure when someone dies and there's money and there's other family members, everyone else has an idea of what they think they deserve from that. And sometimes it's not in accordance to what that trusts as or the will or what happened. And again, we don't need to go into the weeds of financial benefits of having this put into place. But isn't it true that when you have this, this in place with whatever the proper trust is, you're avoiding probate, which could be long drawn out and super expensive. It could be super expensive. And, you know, I'm quite okay with lawyers on that end, you know, having that frown, right? You know, they sometimes are looking forward to,

no, we never had a trust. And this is going to take a couple of years. The only ones that benefit are the lawyers in that case. And again, I don't think a lot of us, having our strategy to be paying off lawyers to decide where our hard money is going to be going. Yes, that's a really, really good point. You know, so I think that, you know, when we're thinking about this setting up and ahead of time, it actually becomes a really big gift that you're providing to your family members because when you have everything set in place planned out, they don't have to go scrambling if you pass away and going,

what's going on, where is everything, what do I do, who do I contact? Oh, now I have to pay all this extra tax and I didn't know about. And now all of a sudden,

you know, it's just a lot of hassle. This becomes something that's a gift. It's definitely a gift. And in some cases, like let's say a trust, it can protect that gift. You know,

we've had clients that have passed on, had everything in a trust. and, you know, one of their family members that was, you know, the executive of that trust had something happen and they were getting sued. And because of that property and all those assets were still in that trust, they could not go after it. Right. So that little thing right there, you talk about preserving something that you've worked for, something that happened to someone else. And people were going to sue them and go after your assets. They were trying to go after that.

they couldn't touch it, right? It's protected. And so there's a whole slew of different benefits of making sure that you have your legacy planning, your trust and all these things in place, because it's also to protect what you've built. Yeah, that's huge. So I think that a lot of people might think, like many of us do in life, like, oh, that'll never happen to me, or I don't need that, or, oh, those statistics, those are just out there. But how do you overcome the common fear that people might have that all of this is too much hassle. Legacy planning is a lot of strings and work and levels. It's just unnecessary. You know, I had a good friend of mine in this business that he says, listen, if you are doing retirement planning, why not do your legacy planning

at the same time? Right? We start earlier in retirement planning. Most, I think the average person starts really looking at retirement and strategically planning for that about age 40. Well, let's let's get your legacy planning in at the same time, right? Because you're already having this conversation about what your lifestyle is going to be, what your income is going to be, what you have established and what you've done, because these living trusts and things of this nature, they're living. We can always change the momentum and do all these things later. But if we get them in place now, it's a lot easier to make these small little adjustments later rather than having to rush and do all these different things in at one time. So get it in all. So get it in all.

at one time, have that conversation with whoever you're talking about when it comes to retirement and get these things in place because they're going to be able to help you. I'd like to be the one to be able to help you, but whoever you're talking to you in regard to those things, make sure you have that discussion. You know, it becomes just more efficient anyway. You know, like for instance, if you're going to pull out all your financial data with your bank statements and retirement statement, whatever all that might look like, you may as well just have all the layers of conversation that are required for that. And I like that that point there. If you're going to have a build a retirement plan or have that, you know,

a discussion, have the legacy plan discussion there. And guess what? I would venture to say that this is something you would agree with too. It's not set it and forget it one time. You might need to re-approach it every few years just to triple check and make sure, okay, is there anything, any adjustments we need to make? You know, are there any beneficiaries that changed or did anyone in our family pass away that we need to add or change or whatever? What are some of those things that you recommend that once the legacy plan is put into place, that that needs to be done to make sure that everything is still the way that you set it up? Well, I'll tell you here at PNV Financial, we're really big on annual reviews, right?

Quarterly, no less than annual. So you should be meeting with your financial advisor annually to go over everything. Look at your statements, look at everything. And in the meantime, while you're there, have that discussion like, hey, so how's everything? thing going, how's your marriage, any more kids, any grandkids? Are you thinking about, you know, leaving a little portion to the new grandbabies that are coming or what have you? But always have that conversation. That's why the relationship in these types of partnerships or relationships that you have with your planners are so important so that you feel free to have these conversations,

be excited about what you're doing and what you're planning and things of that nature. Like this just not be like pulling teeth. This should be a very, very exciting time because you're, again, you're looking forward at making sure that whatever you've worked hard for is going to work in the way that you want it to later, right? You have a plan. Not only do you have a plan for retirement, but you also have that plan, that exit strategy when, you know, good Lord takes us and everything's going to be. taken care of and, you know, divvied out the way you wanted to be.

And also, I want to add on to the concept of annual review, at least, you know, whatever frequency, six months, one year, how important that is. But if you get to that annual review and you're looking at your retirement plan or legacy plan and there needs to be some tweaks or updates or changes, that doesn't mean that the plan was wrong. It just means that some external circumstances like inflation, you know, got. out of whack or taxes or whatever the case is externally might now be some forces that are pressing on to the plan we made. And now we just need to make a little tweak here and there. It doesn't mean like, oops, we made a mistake. Let's change it up and hope for the best. So I think that that's something that people need to keep in mind too, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just staying on top of these things, making the small changes

are a lot easier and more efficient than having to redo something. all over again or something of that nature. Or again, just having a review, remind yourself how often when we set these things in place, you know, three months later, oh, what did you do? I don't know. I don't remember what's written down somewhere, right? So just kind of a reminder of, oh, yeah, I'm leaving this here. This is going there.

This is this. And if you change your mind, then you can change it, right? Yep. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Sounds good. Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming on and chat. chatting about legacy planning. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can reach you? Yeah, they can reach me on my website at pmvfinancial.com

or send me an email at Sean at pmv.financial. Excellent. Well, Sean, thank you so much. It's a pleasure chatting with you again. Thank you, Mike. 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.