Roccy DeFrancesco is a "recovering attorney" who puts popular financial advice on trial. Each episode, Roccy — founder of The Wealth Preservation Institute and author of over a dozen books on asset protection and wealth preservation — breaks down the claims made by big-name financial personalities like Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, and Ken Fisher, and shows you the details they leave out.
Topics include annuities, indexed universal life insurance, whole life insurance, 529 plans, estate planning, and how to spot a bad advisor before they cost you. Sourced, on the record, no sales pitch — just the numbers most advisors won't show you.
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Most people don't really understand how much risk they're taking with their investments. That's Roccy DeFrancesco's view, and in this episode he walks through his Understanding and Reducing Investment Risk presentation: how to measure your risk, why one bad downturn near retirement can wreck a plan, and the tools he uses to reduce that risk. Three questions your advisor should already have asked you: Risk tolerance: how do you feel when the market drops 20%, 30%, 40% or even 50%? Do you want ...
30 Oct 2026
How to Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster With a HELOC
Most people know about biweekly payments or making one extra mortgage payment a year. This episode covers something different. Roccy DeFrancesco walks through what he calls the Home Equity Acceleration Plan (HEAP), a strategy that has been around for nearly 30 years (it goes by other names in the industry) and uses a home equity line of credit to pay off a mortgage years early, without changing your normal spending habits. The idea in one line: use every available dollar, every single day, to...
23 Oct 2026
Estate Planning Basics: Wills, Trusts and Power of Attorney
Roughly half of Americans don't have an estate plan in place, and Roccy DeFrancesco estimates only about 30% have a will. In this episode Roccy, an attorney who has worked in this area for about 30 years, walks through the documents everyone needs, the pitfalls he sees most often, and three issues he thinks belong in every estate plan: living longer than you expect, guaranteed retirement income and long-term care. Start with your beneficiary designations. Life insurance, annuities, retirement...
15 Oct 2026
10 Roth Conversion Mistakes That Can Derail Retirement
Most advisors treat a Roth IRA conversion as a no-brainer, and most consumers hear the same thing from the internet. Roccy DeFrancesco thinks that's wrong for most people. In this episode he walks through his Top 10 Roth Conversion Mistakes white paper: the ten errors he believes can cost you or your heirs tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. The 10 mistakes: Working with a bad advisor. Roccy says most CPAs and planners come up with conversion advice by guessing ("tax-free is better...
8 Oct 2026
Should I Do a Roth Conversion? Why Most Don't Pay Off
Everyone says a Roth IRA conversion is a no-brainer. Roccy DeFrancesco disagrees. After years of running the numbers, his view is that about 85% of the time a Roth conversion leaves the IRA owner with less money to spend while they're alive. In this episode he explains why, and when a conversion does make sense. Design for the right goal. Most advisors and CPAs build Roth conversion plans around three things: lowering taxes, cutting required minimum distributions (RMDs) and avoiding the IRMAA...
1 Oct 2026
Lifetime Income Annuity: Guaranteed Retirement Income
Guaranteed income for life is one of Roccy DeFrancesco's favorite products in financial services, and also one of the most polarizing. Some advisors love annuities with guaranteed income riders; others won't touch them. In this episode Roccy walks through how they work, runs the numbers on what they do for a retired couple, and explains why he thinks they make sense even for affluent clients who don't need the income. Who wants guaranteed income? Almost everyone, according to the surveys on R...
25 Sept 2026
Bonus Annuity to Pay Roth Conversion Tax? Why It Fails
“Convert to a Roth with no out-of-pocket cost.” If you haven't seen that ad yet, Roccy DeFrancesco says you will. The pitch: buy an annuity with a 20% bonus and use the bonus to pay the tax on your Roth IRA conversion. Roccy believes it's a financial loser basically every time, and in this episode he walks through the math. Why everyone is talking about Roth conversions: there's roughly $40 trillion sitting in tax-deferred accounts — IRAs, 401(k)s and government plans — and advisors want to m...
17 Sept 2026
Fee-Only vs Fee-Based Financial Advisor: Which Is Better?
Fee-only advisors market themselves as the least biased advisors in the industry. Roccy DeFrancesco argues the opposite: he believes they are the most biased — against every product that pays a commission. This episode walks through his Fee-Only Advisors: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly presentation, drawn from chapter six of his book Bad Advisors. What “fee-only” means: Fee-only advisors are paid only by their clients — usually an up-front planning fee and then a fee on the assets they manag...
11 Sept 2026
How to Protect Your Assets From Lawsuits and Creditors
A man stands holding a puzzle. He's got most of the pieces — estate planning, long-term care, tax planning, life insurance, annuities, investments, market protection. The one piece still in his hand is asset protection, and he doesn't know what it is. Roccy DeFrancesco's point is that he doesn't know because nobody around him knows either — not his attorney, CPA, financial planner, or insurance agent. Most people Roccy meets have no asset protection plan at all. This is pillar one of five, dr...
3 Sept 2026
How to Pay for a Nursing Home You're Already In
Every long-term care product you've ever been pitched has the same catch: you have to buy it before you need it. Miss that window — you're 84, you're in memory care, you're burning $8,000 a month — and the industry's answer has always been the same. Spend down to $2,000 and apply for Medicaid. Roccy DeFrancesco says that's no longer the only answer. This episode is a full walkthrough of the Immediate Care Plan: a medically underwritten single premium immediate annuity, available from exactly ...
27 Aug 2026
Bad Financial Advisors: Red Flags and Questions to Ask
Roccy DeFrancesco has spent his career inside the insurance and financial advice industry — as an attorney, a licensed agent, the co-founder of an insurance marketing organization, and the co-founder of a registered investment advisory firm. This episode is the long-form version of his book Bad Advisors: How to Identify Them, How to Avoid Them, narrowed to the three advisor types most consumers actually deal with: insurance agents, financial planners, and investment brokers. Everything below ...
13 Aug 2026
Who Is Craig Wear, the Roth IRA Conversion Guru?
Roth conversions are one of the hottest topics in financial services right now, and Roccy DeFrancesco's view is that a lot of what's driving that is fear-based marketing: click this, download that, learn why I'm the expert who can run your numbers. Craig Wear has become the most visible name in that space — a CFP and fee-only advisor, founder of Q3 Advisors LLC, who markets himself around million-dollar Roth IRA conversions. This episode is Roccy's account of trying to engage him directly, an...
6 Aug 2026
529 vs IUL for College: 6 Examples, One Clear Winner
Episode 1 gave you Roccy's opinion on using cash value life insurance for college. This one gives you the math — six worked examples, real illustration numbers, and a head-to-head against the 529 plan. Roccy DeFrancesco stacks every assumption in favor of the life insurance policy: best health class, non-smoker, and the single best indexed universal life product on the market (he estimates 27 of the roughly 30 IUL products out there aren't worth using). He then gives the IUL the same 6% rate ...
4 Aug 2026
IUL vs 529 Plans: The Truth About College Funding
Thousands of insurance agents pitch cash value life insurance as a college savings vehicle. Roccy DeFrancesco makes money when agents sell life insurance — and he's telling you not to use it for this. In the debut episode of Roccy Knows, Roccy breaks down the two competing pitches for using cash value life in college planning: repositioning assets to qualify for more financial aid, and funding the tuition bills themselves. He explains why the first one largely stopped working (your income dri...
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