My Street Money Live

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I'm here today with a heavy heart. Going to talk to you about some specific questions that people are sending us regarding people who are being deported and what they can do. And so this time, what I want to do is I want to share with you a little bit of my background. And what happened is, just so you know, my parents are Mexican immigrant parents who came to the United States with a dream to have a better life for themselves. Eventually had three kids. I'm being the eldest and with a father who started a business when I was very young to help him out with his business. That's how I kind of learned the financial planning profession. Ended up going to some of the best colleges here in the country. I went to UCLA and then got an MBA at Claremont Graduate School. Went into financial planning. Long story short, hated it. Thought it was basically a facade to sell product. It was bs. And then I ended up at a big accounting and consulting firm in Newport Beach, California. And then in 1990, tragedy strikes and something great happened to me. It's all documented. You guys can Google me or read some of my books. I have the stories in there. But I ended up going back to the Baidu in East LA to help the community out and help build wealth where I grew up. That was back in 1990, before the Internet, before there was any financial literacy. I was one of the very first authors to write a book on personal finance for Latinos. But my book was a little different. It was more of when I went back to the community, it was not as much on financial literacy, because what I realized that was holding our community back from building wealth was, was a specific cultural financial mindset about money. And that's when I wrote a book called the Latino Journey to Financial Greatness. The first book has my ugly mug on it. The second edition was A Latino Journey to Financial Greatness. Estad libros tan espanol. El camino La vendesa financiera. Where do you find it? It's on Amazon.com and all my other books are on there.

And, you know, we grew and grew and grew. And over the last almost 35, 40 years that I've been working with Latinos and immigrants, we've helped them build wealth. And most of them were basically blue collar workers who really kind of all lived paycheck to paycheck. But we figured out a way to help them, which was nothing genius. It was just basically a lot of common sense and working with our community and being respectful and having financial dignity for that community. As well. I continue to do that. A lot of my clients have built wealth over the years. That's how you build it. And fortunately, we've been able to attract a lot of people of high profile status in the Latino community. But I'm here again right now trying to share with you information for a lot of your loved ones that right now are living in panic or living in fear. Some of them have already been deported. And we're going to talk about issues that I've been talking about. If you're not following me on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, I'm putting out information right now almost on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day in English and Spanish. I'm starting to do in Spanish as well because a lot of people are asking me to do them in Spanish. But please, what I'm asking you to do is I can't get all this information out, Share my stuff, learn my stuff, tell other people about it. But I want all of you to protect yourselves. And for the people that are here that were born here from parents that are immigrants, there's still things that I believe that we're not doing, that we can build wealth and we can do it literally in one generation if we make finances our priority. Okay? So if you're listening to me, send me questions right now. We're live. Please, please, please follow me. The only way that we can get more of these messages or this information or advice out to you. Again, I can't give you specific advice because you're not in front of me. You know, if you have specific questions, email us at infouisbarajas. It's L O U I S Barajas, B A R a j a s1r in barajas.com and again, you guys can Google me. You'll see that over the last, I don't know, so many years, I have been doing the exact same thing as try to empower the Latino community. Nobody's trying to sell you any products here. And so what we're doing now is talk about what is happening. If you are in fear that you are undocumented and you're going to be deported or have been deported, okay? The very first thing you need to do right now is create what I call a general durable power of attorney. Una cata de poder financiera. And all of these that I'm telling you right now, you can go online, you can go to Google. We're going to try to right now work on our website. We're doing a lot of stuff at one time. So we're trying to get caught up here. So we're going to try to put a lot of this information into the blogs, onto the website@luisbarajas.com but the general durable power attorney, you assign the right to somebody in the United States if you're not here to make financial decisions for you. Now here's the thing. You must have complete confidence in the person that you're assigning this to, okay? And so you must assign this. So the thing is that you have to assign.

The person that you assign it to. You have to trust them with your life because they can sell your assets.

They can sell your house, they can take your money. So again, you're assigned it to someone and it could be a family member. And I've seen worse things happen where family members have done that before, okay? So it's somebody that you completely trust to do that for you, okay? It could be your parents, I mean it could be whomever, it could be a thea, it could be a brother, sister, it could be a friend. But you got to trust this person. Now, one thing that we have not talked about. What if you are an adult and you have children and your children are U.S. citizens here and you're being deported? They're not going to take your kids. Now your kids can go with you, but what if your kids stay? Okay, we have not talked about this. You're going to need a pre need power attorney or a pre need P R E N E E D guardian power of attorney. You can Google this as well and you can get these documents online for free. Complete them where you actually give the right for somebody to be the guardian for your child in this country to make decisions for your children, okay? If they do not go with the United States because if you want them to get a quality education or whatever, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter, whatever your specific reason, if your kids are going to stay here, the person that's going to take care of them, that guardian, el tutor que los vaquidar necesita nuna cata de poder que sema pre need paracer desiciones financieras para susijos tambien. So it's again, we'll get all these up onto our website@luisbarajas.com.

And also you can reach out to me at infoewisbarajas.com I'll get those emails if you need help. We'll try to figure out and set up an appointment to meet with you as well. So that's What I had not talked about on social media and that's really, really important.

Other things that we've not talked about is you've been here, you've been living here, you've been paying taxes, you've been participating in your retirement plans, you've got savings accounts, checking accounts, and you've even bought life insurance, right? Let's say you've got a term policy. Well, one of the good things to note is that I've got people from different parts of the world that have, that come to the United States, do business here and they get life insurance. So you don't have to be a resident of the United States to get life insurance. So now that you've bought, bought it here and you're going back to my situation where most of my family are from Mexico, you go back to Mexico.

That life insurance is still good. Now here's the biggest issue that I have is that a lot of parents, a lot of single parents, mostly single mothers, name their minor children as beneficiaries. And you can't do that. And the reason for that, and I don't understand why insurance agents allow that to happen. But the thing is that if you were to pass away, God forbid something were to happen to you, you pass away, that money's going to go to probate because the courts are not going to give or the insurance company is not going to a 5 year old, a 7 year old, 10 year old, a half a million dollar life insurance policy or a million dollar in cash to a seven year old, it's going to go through the probate system and they're going to need to name someone to administer that for your children. So that's why I've said that you need to get an estate plan. Okay, now let's talk about what an estate plan is. Because for most of us who have grown up poor or have never had that, we think, oh my God, it's like something so foreign to us. But it's not that complicated once you get it done. It's just a document that you complete now and I'll walk you through it. But I'm going to give you some of the reasons why people don't do it. One is for superstitious reasons. I don't want to do an estate plan.

If I get it done, I'm going to die. The superstitions or one, the reality is they're really freaking expensive. If you go to an attorney, they're charging $2,500, $3,000, $4,000. I'm here in Orange County, California, I'm in Santa Ana, and some of the attorneys are charging 5,000 to $7,000 to do estate plans, and most people cannot afford it. But I keep saying that financial technology AI everything else is democratizing finances. For the rest of us, you can go online to LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, Google.

Estate plans that are inexpensive, that do it yourself. For the very simple cases we're not talking about, for the guy who's been married three times, for the gal who's been married, they got together, they have a blended family, they have three businesses, they have rental properties, they have all sorts of stuff. This is not good for you. You need to see an attorney. You need to pay the fees. You have the money. Pay the fees, get it done. Right? But for the average person who. For the mom who bought her condo in Santa Ana or in El Paso, Texas, or McAllen, Texas, or New York or whatever, who has a little bit of assets and who has children, you can get an estate plan done for very inexpensive. They'll charge anywhere from maybe like $400 to $600. I know for you that might be even a lot of money. But you know, guys, we have to make our finances a priority if we're going to take care of our children. I know working with people throughout the years that people will spend more on a lot of other stuff that's just not as important. So at this point now we have to hunker down and make it a priority. And we've got to take care of ourselves, we've got to take care of our children, and we got to take care of our future generations. All right, so you can get an estate plan. Now, what is that entitled? Well, when you get the estate plan done, you're going to do a trust. Okay. And in Spanish, comiso. Now, for example, in Latin American countries, they use trusts for different purposes. But most of the time, like if you're going to leave assets to your children, in Mexico, you use un testamento. Well, in the United States, un testamento's own will is a will. But a will will not transfer assets. If you own a piece of property to your children, you're going to need a trust. The will will just basically say who your beneficiaries are, where you're going to, you know, where do you want to be buried, yada, yada, yada. And so you're going to get a trust. And if you own property, okay, if you have life insurance, you're going to name the. And you've got minor children instead of naming your children, you're going to name the trust as a beneficiary, because on that trust you're going to name a trustee, someone that you trust to administer or manage the money for your children. If you are no longer here, if you need to transfer property, we'll transfer property. Without going through the probate system in California right now to go through probate, God knows where the courts are right now. They're taking a year to almost two years to settle. And the attorneys make a lot of money because they charge you like, you know, a percentage of all the stuff that you own to go through the court system. And so it gets rather expensive. So if you get a trust done, you're going to name someone that you trust to say that if something were to happen to you, if you were to pass, what would happen to when would your children get the money they're going to be having to pay for their health care, for their food, for their shelter. Okay. So that's a trust. A will will also be completed. And most of the time they call them a pour over will, meaning that if you forgot to put something under the trust that you should have put under the trust, the intention was that it should have gone to the trust. And instead of going through the probate, the attorneys can file, I think they call it a Hegstead petition.

For maybe a thousand bucks or something, a couple thousand bucks. And then they could get that asset that you forgot to transfer into the trust and put it into the trust and it'll go to your kids. Okay. And then you're going to have a nomination of guardian. If you have minor children, it's going to name in Spanish, they call it El Tutor. Right. Who's going to be the guardian for your children? Who's going to be able to take care of them? And sometimes you're going to name. The trustee is going to be a different person in the guardian. You can have two different people. You're going to have an advanced health care directive. Who's going to make medical decisions for you? This is not if you die. They're making medical decisions in case you become incapacitated, you're in the hospital, somebody's T bone, some drunk driver has hit you and you're in the hospital and they need to make medical decisions. They have this law, the HIPAA law, which they cannot give medical information just to anyone. And that includes your children who are 18. If your kids are in an accident and they're over the age of 18, they can't even give that information to you as a parent, because they're now adults. So you need to get one for your kids as well.

And then the other thing is you're going to do is the durable power of attorney or the financial power attorney that's going to give the right to someone again, not if you're dead, if you're incapacitated, if you've got Alzheimer's, you've got Parkinson's, or even if. And if you. You know that they're making decisions, because once you die, that durable power attorney is no good. Right? You need the trust now. You need the trust. And that's why also I'm saying that for people who are also now leaving the country and unwillingly leaving the country and something were to happen to them in the United. In Mexico or in Colombia or Venezuela, whatever, and they have assets here, that durable power of attorney that I've been having you do was not going to be good any longer. So you need to get that trust done. Okay? You can get it done inexpensively. It's really not that complicated. There are paralegal services that do it for a minimal cost as well. You also have to get the documents notarized. All right? Basically, someone who's actually seen that you've actually signed it, and they can prove that you were there in front of them to sign that document. All right? Now remember, like for example, un notario in Mexico, I think that they normally call them also the attorneys in Mexico here, they are not attorneys. There's just somebody who gone through. Like here in California, you take a test, you get approved, and then you can create a little business and then you can charge for every signature. They'll usually charge you like $10 a signature. I don't even know what the going cost is right now, but it's not that expensive. That's a notary. Okay? So notario es un notary. No sunotario como es.

So we've got that going on on the estate planning. I'm going to talk to you about.

Seizing assets. I can't tell you how many people have reached out, can the government, if I'm being deported, seize my assets? Look, it's unconstitutional to seize your assets. You do not have to be a resident of the United States. You don't have to be resident of the United States to have assets here. I've got clients from all parts of the world and Latin America mostly who bought property here, created businesses here, still live over there, and are making really good money here. So they're not going to Seize your assets unless the government suspects there's suspicious activity for any kind of criminal activity. Now, somebody wrote to me and said, yeah, but right now, the current administration, what's constitutional for them or unconstitutional? I don't know anymore at this point. Honestly, I wake up the last few days, my wife and I wake up, Angie looks at me and she says, what's going to happen? And I thought that there were rules and laws. And right now I feel like either we're living history again or we're back in the wild, wild west. And so, you know, I'm telling you from what should be happening. So again, they can't seize those assets. But ideally, I've got. I know people right now that are actually selling their homes and clearing out their bank accounts and they're going to be leaving. And they don't want to leave any assets here because they're afraid that they will seize the assets. But it's unconstitutional for a bank to hand the money over to the government. They need a court order. All right? They need a court order. Unless somebody in Washington, D.C. states that no more court orders, I don't know. Everything's changing day to day. Just do the best you can. Take a look at what you have. I will be giving you information. As I learn, there's things that are in my head that are popping up that I don't think a lot of people are even thinking about. So, for example is I was thinking about taxes, right? So right now, if you're in the United States, you're filing tax returns. And if you and your wife bought a house, okay, I know and document people who purchased homes, right. They bought it through an itin, they saved a lot of money, paid down, made big down payments, got loans, purchased their home. And if they sell their home when their tax returns are filed, they get an exemption from capital gains for each person. It's 250,000. So let's say you bought a house for half a million. It's now worth a million dollars, and you sell it and you and your wife sell it. Well, you just made half a million dollars in capital gains. If you held it on more than a couple years, it's got to be two years or more, right? And so you get a half, 250,000 each. My wife and I would not pay any taxes on the sale of the house. Well, what's going to happen if you're deported? Right. Because right now, technically, under the.

Substantial presence test, if you live in the United states more than 183 days you have to file tax returns like a US citizen or a green card holder, okay? And you get the same rights. But the problem is that if you've not lived here now, your home is still here, you go back to Mexico and you're there for a year or two, then you know, will you be given the same rights? Well, you have that 250,000 exclusive. I don't know yet. Those are all new things that are going on that I don't know what's going to happen there.

What else?

Social Security benefits. Okay, Social Security benefits. If you are receiving Social Security, if you've worked here the last 10, 20, remember, you need 40 quarters of work in the United States, which is equivalent around 10 years of working. I know so many people that have been undocumented working here for 10, 20, 30 years and have been reporting and filing their tax returns and they've been paying their Social Security taxes and their federal taxes and their state taxes, and they've never taken a dime and they've never collected unemployment. And all of a sudden now they're 62 or 63, 64, 65, and they're collecting Social Security. If they are deported, they will lose their Social Security benefits. And for example, they have Social Security in Mexico, I'm not sure if you're aware, but they won't qualify because they didn't have that work experience in Mexico or the years of working in Mexico, what's going to happen there, Right? They're going to lose that, I guess, if you get reinstated. I was on the Social Security website yesterday saying, well, if you come back and then get documentation, then they'll continue giving you your Social Security. You won't lose it then. But if you are deported, you will lose that. Things to think about as well. What else are we thinking about? Oh, let me just share with you. So when you are a resident of the United States and you have assets and you die, believe it or not, if you are wealthy and own assets over a certain amount of money, you have to pay estate taxes. Not the State of California or State of New York or state of whatever. It's estate, estate taxes, death taxes, and usually right now, under the current law, it's around 14 million. If I have a net worth of $14 million or less, there are no estate taxes for me. All right, that's going to sunset on the 20, the 20, 25, December of this year, and they're thinking it might go down to 5 million. But we don't know what's going to happen. There's under this new bill that they're trying to pass.

But if you are not a resident of the United States, if you die with assets of $60,000 or more, you have to pay a 40% tax on that. So what's going to happen to the people that have owned property here for forever? You know, a lot of Latinos aren't invested in the stock market. They love tangible because in their countries, they didn't trust their government. So they don't want anything that was paper. They didn't invest in the stock market. They invested in real estate and they bought their casita and then they sold it and then they bought a rental property, and then some of them are living off the rental income and their homes. If they're in California, if they're in Miami, their value of their property has gone up a lot. What happens when they pass? Will they end up having to pay? Will the family have to pay an estate tax on anything worth 40%, anything worth of $60,000 or more? Okay, so stuff to think about in the future. Again, this is stuff that I'm right now just. It's coming into my brain. I'm trying to figure out what the heck is going to happen and how do we protect ourselves? Do we need to do foreign trust for people that have been deported who own assets here? There's going to be a lot of work for estate planning attorneys, that for sure. But right now we just have to get over everything that's going on and figure out what's going to happen, what else we got going on.

Yeah. So again, one of the things we talked about, that if you've been here in the United States and even if you're undocumented, you're working, you're earning money, if you've been here over 183 days, you have to declare worldwide income. A lot of people don't know that. Another thing that we got on the taxes side that I just remembered right now, well, if all of a sudden you have family members that are being deported and they're going to need help, they lost their parents, they've lost their Social Security. Well, you can send them money and you can claim them as a dependent on your tax return, Right. But here's the problem. It's only for Canadians and Mexicans. It is not for any other country. So when people are saying, hey, my mom got deported, she's back in Venezuela, in Argentina and Colombia and whatever, and I'm sending them money, can I claim as a dependent on my tax return? Well, first of all, they have to be earning less than $5,200, I think in 20, 20, 25.

You have to basically say that you are supporting more than half of their living expenses. Right. And they have to have an ITIN number, right. Which they probably have because they've been filing tax returns here. Sometimes they'll have Social Security numbers that they got here. And so you'll be able to take them only if they live in Mexico and in Canada you cannot take them. But again, don't forget, if you're going to be sending money to Mexico, you can take that a deduction as well. I hope I am not overwhelming you with information, but when it comes to finances, there is a lot that's affecting our community and we really need to stay on top of it. Like I said, please follow me. We'll be standing. This is my priority right now. It's always been my priority to build wealth. And that's why I've been saying that the golden rule is he who has the gold rules. And guys, it is not complicated to save money and to make money and to build emergency reserves. We all live paycheck to paycheck. When I was poor, I didn't know that people who were earning. I thought, when I make $100,000, I'm going to be rich. I'm never going to have to worry about money again. And then you live in Southern California and then you realize that most people here who are living are making a couple hundred thousand dollars and are living paycheck to paycheck. And then I realized that there's people who are wealthy who are spending all their money, who are living paycheck to paycheck. You've got to sacrifice just like our parents did. I've got clients who are the kids of immigrant parents who are blue collar workers, who are now attorneys, who are now doctors, whatever, who borrowed from their parents to buy their for the down payment for their first home. How did your parents do it? They sacrifice and they saved money. Right? You know who you are. Some of you are making more money in one year than your parents made in a decade. And you've still borrowed from your parents. So you have to learn that at some point we have to sacrifice. We have to save money. Because our future right now is never safe, it's never stable, unsteady. We don't know what's going to happen. We've had wars, we've had Covid. We've got this going on right now that's disrupting the community I see in Southern California that they're going into manufacturing companies where they're taking 30, 40, 50% of the workforce. Who knows what's going to happen to all that product. Nothing's going to go out. I don't know if we're heading into a recession because of this. I don't know, nor do you. But you need to be prepared for it. Okay? All I know is that I also handle a lot of wonderful entertainers who are performing in the United States and now people are not going to go see them. And the reason for that is because people are scared that there are going to be ICE raids there. Okay? And I will share with you as a well educated Latino in the United States, when I'm driving, I'm wondering, I wonder if somebody's going to stop me over and ask me for my documents, right? I don't know if they're asking for people in Vermont or somebody else for their documents. But I know, I mean, I'm here and I've even thought about that. What am I going to do? And so the other thing is that I want you to focus on is something that I thought about this morning that I have on my computer.

Where I work at, a little thing, this formula called E plus R equals O. That the events plus how you react or how you respond will equal the outcome that you want. And right now, because there is a lot of fear, people are going to be making some really dumb mistakes because of fear. And the problem is that right now we have to settle down, look at our situation, decide what kind of outcome we're going to have. We don't have control over at this point, at least I don't have control over to, you know, unvote for a president or whatever. I, I have to deal with what is going on right now and how am I going to respond? Well, I'm going to do if again, I have the fear that I'm going to be deported. I'm going to sit down, I'm going to go online. If I don't speak English, you're going to sit down with one of your kids, one of your nieces, your nephews or grandkids, whatever, they'll walk you through it and you'll go online. Everything is online right now. Ask Google, ask ChatGPT, ask me. Okay, go to info luisbarajas.com or just go to the website, call us and schedule a time with one of our staff with me. But the thing is that you need to be proactive, not reactive. One of the other mistakes that I constantly see in Latino communities is where parents will put their children on title to their home because they are not even aware of an estate plan. And let me just share with you what the problems could be with that. All right, So I am now in my 70s or 80s and I'm not feeling well. And I have my adult children and I'm thinking, what happens if I die or I get sick or how am I going to transfer the property? Well, the uneducated or the maybe not so savvy real estate agent, or maybe they hear from one of their friends is why don't you just walk into a, an escrow office and for 50 bucks or $250, you can add your children onto the title of your house. And if you were to pass away, your kid's already on title to that house. And they get it, okay? We see that all the time. But we've seen horrific. Over 40 years, I've seen some of the worst things happen ever. Some of these kids are not the most financial responsible children. And then they're not paying their taxes. And guess what? The IRS does. They lien anything that they own, especially a property, or they get into an accident, they don't have car insurance, or they get sued, and guess what? They go after any assets that that person has on title. So they go after their parents assets as well because they're on title to it.

What else? So there's a thing called step up. Here in California, when my wife and I die, we have our house under our living trust when we die. We bought our home years ago. We've been kind of buying. We bought our home years ago, we bought a home and let's say we bought it for $500,000 and it's now worth a million dollars or Maybe it's worth 2 million if I'm living in Orange county, right? And so if I were to sell the house right now, I'd get that $500,000 exclusion and then the difference, I'd have to pay capital gains taxes on it, right? Well, the thing is that if my wife and I were both to pass and I leave it in a trust for my children, when the kids get access to that piece of property and they can sell it. But guess what? They're not going to pay any tax because on the date of the second death, and the first death and the second death as well, there's a step up in basis, meaning that I'm going to hire an appraiser to appraise that piece of property after the second spouse has Passed away. And now that house is worth $2 million. And my three kids are able to sell that piece of property and pay zero taxes on it. But if I then were to add my kids to the piece of property and they get the same basis as I did when I bought that house at 500,000, so when I die, they still own that house. Like if they would have bought it at half a million dollars, now worth 2 million, my kids are probably not going to live in it. They're probably going to want to sell it and get the money. They're going to have to pay taxes on it. Okay, so some people are not even aware of that.

So again, that's why it's important to get information and to get information from valid sources. Okay.

What else, what else? What else do we got here?

Taxes, estate taxes, real estate taxes, non resident. I think that's all I have for today.

I really want to make sure that you follow me, subscribe. I think I'm on YouTube as well. I'm sure I'm on YouTube. I've got my son Eddie, who has been my right hand to all of this. He's behind the scenes. If you're seeing any video, if I look the semblance of looking good at all, it's because of him. If any information is going out there, it's because of him. We're working in tandem to try to help the community out. This is what I live for. This is what my whole life purpose has been about. Please reach out to us, let us help you in any way that we possibly can. Sometimes I won't be able to help you, but I can hopefully guide you in the right direction to people, to attorneys, to bankers, to people that I trust, that I've been working with for years in the community that I know that are good people. Okay, all right, I think that we're going to stop for today and we'll see you next Tuesday with a lot more information. I'll be watching the news. We're glued to the news right now to see what's changing, what's happening. Follow me again on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube and we'll get that out to you. Everything go to our website, luisbarajas.com if you haven't. Again. You know, I think I make like 50 cents a book here. The Latino Journey to Financial Growing Greatest. El Libro Stan Espanol, El Camino, La Grande Financiera. I have several books go on Amazon. This is on the cultural mindset of Latinos. In the United States and how to overcome that so you don't sabotage any kind of financial behavior that will stop you from getting wealthy. We'll see you next Tuesday. Have a wonderful day. Stand proud, heads high, be brave. Bye.