“Estate Planning 101: Protect Your Home & Assets with Oscar Vasquez”

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What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show in association with Believe Network, the podcast where we bring you the tools, strategies, and stories to build a better future. And I'm your host CJ Moneyway, and today we're talking about a topic that affects everyone, especially homeowners: estate planning. Our guest today is Oscar, founder of Estate Doc Prep dot com and an expert in estate planning. Oscar helps families protect their assets from the high cost of probate by creating living trusts and other essential legal documents. Did you know that 68% of Americans don't have a valid will or estate plan? For homeowners, that could mean expensive fees and months, if not years, of legal battle for that loved one. Oscar, thank you for joining us today, man. We're excited to have you on the show, bro.

CJ, I want to just say thank you for allowing me to, um, thank you for participating in my crusade of bringing awareness to estate planning and to protect people's assets from the government deciding on what happens to them. Um, you know, thank you so much. And, you know, I'm excited to bring you some value, some great stories, and and just kind of have a great conversation and educate some people, man.

I thank you for bringing this wisdom on, man. It's a subject that you don't hear a lot, you know, that, that we probably don't have a lot of people talking about, man. So I'm glad that you, you know, decided to come on and share these things with us. So Oscar, man, let's just start with the basics. For those who may not be familiar with what exactly estate planning is, why is it so important for homeowners and families?

Well, I'm gonna tell you, um, go back and I'm gonna explain what an estate— estate planning means, that what's going to happen to your estate. So our belongings, the, the term is estate. So what we own, the things we can't take with us when we pass, right? That's everything. Anything we can't take with us is our estate. So everybody has an estate. That means everybody has something. It just determines whether you need an estate plan to prevent the government from deciding on what happens to your things if— when you die. Now, if you die— when you die, because we all gonna die, right?

There's two things—

hey, there's two things guaranteed in life. One is we all gonna pay taxes, and two We definitely gonna die, we just don't know when. So, so what, what estate planning is, is a plan when things— for end of life, it's the plan on what happens to your things. Because so, and the, and the pillar of that is, it's called a living trust, is the legal document that is in there. Now, the living trust is a document, which is a contract between you, the parents, AKA the trustee, and your kids on what you want to have happen. And the reason why it's called the contract, because it's basically the contract so the government or the courts enforce it if there's any rules that needs to be broken. And so between your kids, and that's why they call it a contract. But in, in In layman's terms, in simplest terms, it's the instructions that you give your kids on what's going to happen to your things when you die. I'll give you an example. If you have a digital asset and it keeps giving— like, I just did a YouTuber's channel. He has 4— it's called Faceless YouTube channels. That was an aha moment. I mean, I learned all into that. I put that on my to-do list. I want one of them. But, you know, but he has a YouTube channel and he has videos that generate income from 4 years ago. They don't generate a ton of income, but it's still money, right? A dollar, a dollar that, that comes into your bank account and you ain't doing nothing for it, that's a gift from God, I call it, right?

Exactly.

But, but you did something, he did something right. So what happens to that income when you pass? It's still gonna live. It still lives. Things outlive us, and our assets do. So our digital assets, so assets are things of value. Every state— now, every state has a minimum amount of assets before the government gets involved. I'll give you an example. I always tell people, Google, Google, what is the mo— what is the minimum, or what is the amount of money or assets I need to have to avoid probate? Probate, right? So Google that and then put it in your state. In California, it's $184,500. In Utah it's $100,000, and in Colorado it's $60,000. Why do I say that? Because that means if you're a homeowner and it's worth— and you live in Colorado and your house is worth more than $60,000, the government is going to get involved to decide on what happens to you, to make the final decision on what happens to your things. An estate plan prevents that from happening. You avoid probate, you avoid the court costs, you avoid the aggravation to your children. Um, and so, um, and so what you're gonna do is, is make that happen for them and make it happen for them to— it's a simplified process when it transfers. So that's what a living trust is and the estate plan and the fundamentals of it. One of the, the biggest misconceptions that we get is like, man, you got to be wealthy. Now, right now, I'm gonna tell you, if you own a house, you wealthy, right? And be— and, and if you got a roof in your head, you got a roof over your head, you're not cold, you wealthy. Just a different kind of wealthy, not materialistic wealthy, but you're wealthy. You got to be grateful for the things that we have So that is considered wealthy to the government. And so what happened to probate, why it got started with probate and the government got involved in, in our things, because they said we want to make sure that our citizens' beneficiaries or the right people get the things that they leave behind. We want to make sure they get that, they get that, right? But it's a public process. And right now in California alone, the probate starts at $500,000, goes all the way up to about $180,000. Imagine that. You have a hundred— let's say you have— well, in California everything's worth a million, but, but, you know, I mean, it's, it's crazy. But let's just say, for example, you have a million dollar house and you pay $50,000. Your, your beneficiary just lost 5% of their money because you didn't create an estate plan, right, and have a living trust. So the misconception is I have to be— I have to be wealthy to have it. That's the first misconception. No, you don't. If you're a homeowner and you have assets, either a business, assets, collectibles, anything of value that exceeds your state amount, you should have a living trust. Google it, make that happen. So kind of give you an idea of that misconception that you have to be wealthy to do that.

I, I like that, man. I like that because you breaking down some knowledge, and this is a lane I have no idea about. So hey, man, so we just listening to it.

Yeah, so I'll get you— yeah, go ahead. Sorry about that.

Now let's— let me ask you, uh, Oscar, for someone who's just starting with estate planning, what are the first steps they should take?

Well, you know what, I mean, the, the first steps is one is, is make, make a decision of whether, um, make a decision if you can, um, if you need an estate plan, right? So that means, do you own a house, and does it— the house, does the value of the home exceed it? Because, because then that's the first thing is before you decide and start getting estate plan, do you own a house And do you have the asset? Um, do you have the assets that requires you to get into probate? Because let me tell you about probate before I get into how to get started. But understanding, if you don't—

you—

there's two plans that the government— the government already has a plan for you, has a plan for me, for you, for everybody, every listener out there. The government has a plan, and the plan is pay me to decide what happens to the things that you worked your entire life for. That's what the government's plan is. So we have to pay the government, or in other words, the courts and the attorneys, to decide on what happens to the things that we worked hard for. Now that's the first plan, and if you don't get an estate plan, that's the plan you're going to be on because the government already has that plan. The second plan is to have your own plan. Where you decide, and you don't have to pay the government to be able to decide on what happens to your things— your retirement accounts, your, your life insurance, your homeowners— all of that, the government gets to decide on what happens to it if you don't have an estate plan. Now don't get me wrong, when I say the government decides, I'm not saying that the government's going to take your stuff and not give it to your kids. I've never seen the judge say, oh, you know what, you got, you got, you know, a house, it's paid for, mom and dad live there, but no, you, you kids, you ain't getting nothing, I'm gonna get it. No, that doesn't happen. But they decide on how much you get and then they publish it. And then if somebody comes forward and says, hey, I saw CJ 10 years ago, I lent him 10 grand, he owes me 10 grand, right? Some guy come up and change that. Now that's litigation that you have to either fight, that costs you more money, because now it publishes, says, hey, CJ or Oscar's got all of these assets. If he owes you money, or you think you're his— you're his beneficiary, or you're his kid, come forward, come to court and claim your part, because this is what this guy's got. So then they got people coming out of the woodwork on that, right?

Yeah.

So, so, so that's what happens. What becomes— it becomes a public, a public, uh, announcement of all the things that you own. One, two, you have to pay the court and the attorney to make all those decisions. So then the worst part of everything, your kids or your beneficiaries— if, let's just say, okay, I grant it to my kids, okay, they get it to your kids, nobody came forward, it was a smooth process. You know, there was no, there was no history, right, that you needed to clean up or whatever. And so now you came in and you got that, then the court says, okay, great, we settled the case, you can sell the house, but you don't get the money for another 18 months after the house sells. Wow, that is a terrible— now that means your beneficiaries, or even the worst case scenario, or even worse You go to court and you say, I don't have an attorney to go to probate so I can get title to the house. The attorney comes to you and says, hey man, don't worry, sign right here, you can pay me $50 grand when you sell the house. I'm like, I don't want to sell the house, right? Yeah, I don't want to sell the house. I'll pay you the $50 grand in payments or do that. And then they just put you into a terrible situation where you're in debt and you have to pay these horrible rates. Or they force you to refinance it and get into a terrible loan. So probate is a, is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing to go through, and you could avoid it by taking action and being able to move forward and getting your own estate plan. That's how you can avoid it. So I would say that— so the, the first thing, let me— before I go in on how they can get in there I'll explain the process on how we work and how we're different than everybody else, because when you do business with us, there's one thing that we're going to guarantee. One is we're going to get your estate plan completed as quickly as humanly possible. And what— the reason why I say that is because there's a human element to doing an estate plan. Like, for example, when you ask somebody, if you become incapacitated Which one of your kids do you want to make the— if you have to have a procedure, which one of your kids do you want to decide on what's going to happen? Oh wow, you know, I said pick the one that, that loves you the most. But, but, but, you know, those are things. And then they go like, wow, I didn't think of that. And then you say, who of your kids do you want to be able to pay your bills while you're incapacitated, if you become incapacitated, right? And you're in the hospital. That's part of an estate plan. And then who, uh, who, uh— and then they go like, wow. And then you say this, right? Here's the, here's the biggest provision. They say— and then we always say, okay, do you have kids? Yeah. Do your beneficiaries, are they married? Are your kids married? Yeah, I'm married. Do you get along? You know, are you okay with the son-in-law? Getting the portion. If your daughter dies, do you want the money to go to your son-in-law or do you want it to go to your grandkids? Right? Grandma says no, to the grandkids.

To the grandkids.

The dad says, hell no, give it to my other son. Right? No. But they— so then those are provisions and those are called human elements, right? That take time. And then you go like, oh my God, I didn't think of that. Like, when you die, are you pro-life or are you, are you pro-life or you right to die? Right. And they're like, well, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't ever thought of that. I said, well, take a couple, take a day or two, think about that. Here's what that means. And, and then you got to tell your, you know, you got to be able to do that. So those are the human elements that we bring in because we explain that to you in layman's terms, simplify it. Because there's, there's 3 ways on how to get a living trust. One is you can get an attorney, and the average state, average attorney throughout the United States, every area is different, but the average is $3,500 to get an estate plan done by an attorney. And then they say, oh, you want a healthcare directive? It's another $500. Oh, you want this? You want this? You want this? You want this? And then before you know it, it's $5,000, right? But they always advertise at $3,500. So one is a— is an attorney and it's done for you. The second way is the lowest tier where you do it yourself. You go online and you pay, you know, I think it's like $800, $900, and you get a full estate plan and you fill it in yourself. And then the third option, and that's our option that I feel is the best option, because we do it with you. We sit down, we get on a Zoom, we have 3 Zoom calls with you, and then we go through the entire process with you. And then we— if there's anything that you need to know about, then we say, hey, you should look at this, look at this, look at this, this is how to use it. So we do it with you. You never do it alone. We're always on a phone call with you. We do 3 calls with you to make sure that everything goes through. And we do the most important part that none other of the other two options do, which is we fund the asset into the trust. Because here's the thing, if you have a living trust and you don't put no assets in there, it's like you didn't have it. And, and so what attorneys do, they give you a 9-page document, says, here, how does— is how you transfer the asset. Here's here you go, right? That's what they tell you. Then, then when you do it yourself, they just— you just reading it and they tell you how to do it. So you got it. It's the same thing as them. What we do is we walk you through the process. We say, okay, now send this letter, now follow up on it, now call them, now get this in there, now go in there, walk it in, talk to your banker, give them you the letter so they have it. Ask them what time, you know, and kind of walk you through that process. And so what we do— and so that's what we do. So I got, I got 3 gifts for you today. The first one is for every one of your listeners that's out there, that, um, every one of the listeners that's out there and they have a, um, a phone number and they have questions, we have an artificial intelligence artificial intelligence, 24 hours a day hotline that you ask it anything and this Lisa will answer all your questions. She shows up every day, she doesn't take breaks, and she doesn't pressure sell you. She's there to give you information, and then if you want an appointment, she'll set one with us, or if you, if you want an appointment, if you want to talk to a human. But that phone number is 8— 805 909-4689. That's 805-909-4689. That's the first gift, and then that way you don't have to feel like, oh, this guy gonna sell me something, or I'm gonna get— no, we're here to give you information because we want you to be educated. Because here's the thing, if 68% of people don't know about a living trust or how to prevent you from going to court, Guess what? It's because they don't have one is because I think they don't know. It's not they don't care about their kids. So that's the first gift. The second gift that I want to give you is, is a comprehensive estate plan. You can print this out if you want a book, we can mail you one, but you have to pay for shipping. You can go to estateprep.com, estateprep.com/guide. And that guide will give you— you can download it. It's about 35 pages, 34 pages now. Um, when I first started the book, it was like 2, and then every time we get a lot of questions, we start adding stuff to it to make it as comprehensive as you can. Now, full disclosure, just because you can fill this out doesn't mean you created an estate plan. This is not an estate plan. This is just a guide of all the questions that you really have to think about. And you go like, wow, I didn't think about that. Oh, I— what about this? What about that? And that would be, that would be the second gift. And the third gift is for the first 10 listeners, the first 10 listeners on that take action, you could use a discount code called Moneyway So if you use Moneyway or money— yeah, you can do Moneyway, you can get a $1,000 discount. That means you get lifetime access to the software, um, for $1,495. That's it. And we even take— there's a, there's a place that we get zero interest for zero payments for 6 months on PayPal or firm. You can get financing, you can get— if it's not in a hardship I always tell people this, listen, the beneficiaries are, are going to benefit. If you got 3, 4 kids, have them pay for it. You know, they're the ones that are going to save for it, you know what I mean? If it's a hardship, because, you know, some, some of our elderly people, they ain't got no income. They got Social Security, right? They ain't got a pension, they ain't got the money. So I say the kids are the one that are going to save the money. I mean, it's a— and, and every child or every beneficiary I've ever spoken to And I explain it. They're like, nah, ma, we'll pay for this. Nah, you know, my mommy, my mommy got that money. Nah, you know, we'll handle this because we're the ones.

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When it goes into action, the parents— the parents are going to be dead, so the kids are the ones that are going to benefit, and it's to make their life easier.

So yeah, it's all good, man. Like I say, I'm sitting back listening and learning myself, you know, just thinking about, you know, my parents and then, you know, being a parent and things that you have to plan for, these hard discussions that sometimes you don't want to talk about. But you said it earlier, you say it's two things that we gonna do in life: pay taxes and we all gonna die. That's— that is a given. There ain't no option and ain't no getting around it. And I thank you, man, for, uh, sharing these gifts with, with, with our audience today, man. So let me ask you, uh, Oscar, do you have any success stories or real-life examples where proper estate planning saved a family significant time and money?

All kinds, man. I can tell you, I tell you, I call this the— when we had a customer that had, uh, he left a family in Texas, had a— left the family in Texas, came to California, came to California and got married, had 4 kids. He wanted to leave everything to his kids in California. He did not have an estate plan, he had a will. He, he, he— they went to probate. He had like 7 properties, and back then there were probably— the 7 properties were probably, you know, probably $1.5 million back then. And they went to court, and the 3 kids came to California and claimed that they were— should be a beneficiary of his estate. So his kids, his 4 kids that he wanted to give his estate to, did not, did not get all of their inheritance. They got cut out of portions of their inheritance that their dad wanted to leave them because he didn't have a living trust or an estate plan.

He—

the kids from, from Texas were happy because they all got 1/7. They got 1/7 apiece instead of getting 25%. Now they got 1/7 apiece because instead of giving it to 4 kids, he ended up— the court awarded 7 kids part of the estate, right? They came prepared, they came and they were raiding, and the court awarded them because the court's going to do the fairest thing. They go, you know what, Your dad didn't say that he didn't want— he disinherited the kids, so they have rights, and I'm here to protect that. They're getting it. That was a terrible story. The probably the, the biggest, the biggest aha story that I have of somebody that had an estate plan was a, was a client that called us on a Wednesday, um, saying that he got diagnosed with cancer. And he wanted— he got diagnosed with cancer and he wanted to create an estate plan so his kids didn't have to pay taxes or go through probate on the property. Called us on Wednesday, we went in and saw him on Thursday. He was very— he goes, listen, I just want to protect the house, just make it as simple as possible, get it done as quickly as possible. Thursday, Friday, we went, we recorded the property into the living trust. The following Friday, the man passed. That saved the family though, because he had, he had 3 properties. That probably saved the family about, um, I would say about 80, maybe 1.5. It's probably going to be about $80,000 in just attorney fees because he had an estate plan and he paid 25 paid $2,500 full price from the website to get the estate plan. Now, all day long, and I always tell people, you know, CJ, would you give $2,500 today if you knew 100% for certain you were going to save $26,000 tomorrow? Right? That's what it is. That— and, and what— let me rephrase that. Not you, your kids because you won't be here. You won't. You're done saving and spending because you got— but you can't— would you do that? And, and, and so that's— and then you say, do you want to have your kids grieving and, and, and moving on with their life, or do you want them leaving this mess behind? And that's the thing that we should do and we should talk about and think about when, when creating an estate plan is, look, protect your family. It's not, it's not super expensive. There's financing available. There's absolutely no reason. I mean, if you own a piece of property, protect it. Protect your kids. I mean, we, we already, we already give up enough money, um, for not knowing things. I mean, how many times have, how many times have we spent money on things because we did not know that that exists. Like, I'll give you a perfect example. How many people do you see a week on Facebook on a GoFundMe for burial? Yeah, right. Okay, watch. A burial policy is $35 if you buy it at 35. 30 years old, 30, it's about $35. At 55, because I, I mean, I'm, I got my burial policy because, you know, I started getting my affairs in order at You know, when you turn 50, you start to think, man, I'm gonna die soon, right?

At some point. Yeah, yeah.

At 30, you're walking on fire, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't think of that. But, but what— on my policy, I'm paying, I'm paying $80, $80 a month for $50,000. But I was, I was 300 pounds when I got the policy. Um, I wish I would have got it sooner, but You know, I had, I had a lot of medical conditions. I was taking a lot. Now I'm down to 2— I'm down to 248, so I'm losing some weight. So I'm gonna get— I'm gonna try to get the insurance policy to reassess the, the premium. But those are things like, you know, you— so I always tell people, like, what do you think about burial policy? I said, look, there's two, there's two choices there. One, pick out your photo that you want to be put on Facebook on the GoFundMe. So that way you can stay here, you know. When you put on Facebook, use this photo, or cop up the $50, $60 a month, you know, or whatever you— whatever you want. To bury somebody in California, it's like 10 grand. Oh no, $15,000 in California. It's pricey. And to do cremation in California, it's $8,000, you know.

That's cremate.

Yeah, that's expensive.

Yeah, it is.

You know what I mean? But, but you think— but, but that's just one. Those are, those are examples of the things that people that died and put— they put them on GoFundMe. They did not do that on purpose. It's just they did not know. They did not know to go get a burial policy. They didn't know, hey man, I'm gonna die. Right? I mean, we all know, but we don't know. We don't— we, we're not conscious about it, right?

Like, everybody's supposed to brush their teeth, not everybody does, you know, or put on deodorant, all that. Yeah, I'll let you know that with, uh, Oscar, man. So Oscar, man, as we get ready to wrap this up, man, Just let me ask you a couple more questions.

Okay, I'll give them short and sweet.

Sorry, no, it's all good, man. Be you, do you. I give them.

All right, all right.

Hey, Oscar, you know, this has been an incredible conversation, man. Very insightful as far as, you know, real estate planning and the thing, the dos and the things that we probably should start thinking about in life. You know, I, I like the, you know, the burial policy, you know, things of that nature. Some of us you know, we take it as, uh, you know, your job, because you got insurance for your job, and if anything happens, you know, you got insurance from your job. But one, if you don't— if you don't have the job, say if you lost that job, uh, one week and then passed away the next week, you no longer had that life insurance, uh, policy from the job. So it's best to start doing things on the outside. I think my wife, she's pretty good at that, at that type of stuff, man, as as far as setting outside the boundary. And it's funny that you say that too, because my mother has been talking about certain things where she want to talk to me and my brother about, you know, things that— the hard conversations that you don't want to talk about, but it's necessary to talk about. Because as you said earlier, and it's the truth, one day that will be us sitting in front of the church or wherever you go, or being cremated It will be you. It's not— there's no getting— there's no getting around that. That is a fact. So Oscar, man, what is the key message you want listeners to take away when it comes to protecting their asset and legacy?

You know, I think the, the key message, um, is that now you know. Now you cannot unknow. Now you know. And now, as, as an adult, you could either take responsibility or ignore it. And, um, the message is, you know, now that you know, you know. You cannot— now you've seen it, now you cannot see it. And you can't— you cannot wait for tomorrow because tomorrow's not promised.

I promise, right?

I mean, our day could be, you know, our day could be today, right? And, and, and yesterday is too late because we never gonna be— yesterday will never be back. So the only time that is, is the right time is today, right now, right? Decide, make, take action, make it happen. So if I can tell you Um, if you can't, the message that— and why— what I want you guys to all know is now you know. Now you know that the government's going to get involved and your kids are going to have to pay this. So take action. That's all I can tell you. That's the thing. If you can take away from something, is you— there's 3 things. Either you decide on what happens to your things, you allow the government to decide, or you ignore it. And, and, and, and you can't ignore the elephant in the room. It's because it's reality. We all gonna die.

Yeah, I like that. I, I like that. So yeah, hey, check out my man Oscar, estate.prep.com. Hey, did you say slash guide?

Uh, yes, I'm gonna send you— I'll send you all the links and everything on, on the, on the, on, on on the email. I'll send it to you so you can have them all. See, it'll all be broken down for you.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Oscar, man. And so, just one more, what can we find you on social media, man? What's your—

yeah, you know what, I'm, I'm at Oscar— you can just— Estate Doc Prep. I'm on all social media. I don't know all the addresses, but they just look up Estate Doc Prep. I'm, I'm out there. Um, I'm out there. Connect with us.. But you know, if you have an estate question, just pick up the phone, call the AI. You know, it's simple, it's simple, it's proactive, and it'll give you as much detailed information.

Man, thank you again, Oscar, man, for sharing your expertise with us today. Uh, estate planning is one of the most important steps anyone can take to protect, to protect their loved ones and their legacy. And to our listeners, if If you're a homeowner or someone who wants to secure your financial future, I encourage you to visit estateprep.com. Don't wait until it's too late. Start planning today. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review, subscribe, and share it with someone who might benefit from Oscar's insight. Until next time, stay proactive, stay informed, and keep building your legacy. It's your boy CJ Moneyway Johnson signing off. We out of here. Peace.