🚨🚨🚨Watch Christa's free training here: christabiegler.com/blueprint

This week, Michael Pereira joins me to share his family’s journey after his son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. He opens up about moving from denial to acceptance, how COVID revealed behaviors they could no longer ignore, and the stress it placed on his marriage as they navigated uncertainty about their son’s future. After struggling to find practical, parent-centered resources that were not tied to a sales pitch, Michael left corporate America and created The Autism Voyage®, a platform designed to help families understand the emotional and financial realities of long term planning.

We talk about why so many families feel frozen when it comes to planning and how to move from fear into clarity. Michael explains what it means to become the quarterback of your child’s care, why building a trusted team matters, and how thinking in short term, midterm, and long term timelines can bring stability to an otherwise uncertain path. This is an honest conversation about parenting, partnership, and preparing for the future without losing yourself in the process.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Acceptance creates forward movement
• Fear shrinks with clear planning
• Be the quarterback, build a team
• Protect income before anything else
• Start trust and guardianship talks early
• Rest and marriage are part of the plan

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ABOUT GUEST:
Michael Pereira is the founder of The Autism Voyage®, a platform supporting families raising children with autism and other neurodivergent diagnoses. As a father of two, including one neurodivergent child, he brings lived experience alongside professional collaboration to help families navigate long-term planning with clarity. His work focuses on education, trusted resources, and insurance-based strategies within a team-oriented approach to promote long-term stability. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://theautismvoyage.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theautismvoyage

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
More Links + Quizzes: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

SPONSOR:
Thank you to Jigsaw Health for being such a great sponsor. 😎 Use code LESSSTRESSED10 anytime for 10% off!

I released a free training that shares the 4 steps I use to help clients reduce eczema, inflammation, and food-reaction symptoms by 50%+ in a few months — without restriction or overwhelm. The feedback has been incredible, and I answer every question inside the training. Watch here: christabiegler.com/blueprint

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Michael Pereira : I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know when he might be independent or if he ever will be. What happens if that I'm not here. And start asking myself these dark questions and what if my wife's not here as well, who's gonna take care of her?

[00:00:15] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stress life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together. 

[00:01:08] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on the Less Stress Life, I'm pleased to welcome Michael Pere, which he will correct me if I say his name incorrectly, who's the founder of the Autism Voyage. A blog, an informational and awareness driven platform designed to help families raising children with autism related developmental conditions and other.

Neurodivergent diagnoses better understand the emotional and practical realities of long-term family planning, drawing from his experience as a father of two, one of whom is neurodivergent and Michael offers a grounded parent-driven perspective that bridges lived experience with professional collaboration.

We're gonna chat all about kind of some of the things, how Michael has merged his professional experiences with these things that happen in real life today. So let's jump right into it. Welcome to the show, Michael. 

[00:01:56] Michael Pereira : Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:01:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So let's hear a little bit about your story.

I been something on my mind a little bit lately is that. Yeah, things that are surprising or unexpected or that create new stress in our lives rarely happen at convenient times, typically. And so I don't know anything about your story, but I, sometimes there are things that happen in our lives that sort of just stop us in our tracks and make us assess everything.

So tell us a little bit about your story, the birth of your son, and how that may have changed your life trajectory. 

[00:02:28] Michael Pereira : Of course. So basically I came from corporate America. That was a different type of stress there.

But traveled a lot, met my wife. We decided to create what we call our old American dream and got married, bought a house and obviously we were able to get pregnant with Christian Omar, which is our son, our firstborn. And we believed that was gonna be our lifestyle. Me and corporate, she was going to be a stay at home mom and just raise the children as is. Things happen in Life.

Curve falls and around when he was 1-year-old 

We started seeing a lot of symptoms that were concerning at that point. But I would say that at the same time we were in denial. And that denial phase fueled also by having families that would say, Hey, don't worry, you were the same.

Sometimes can procrastinate a early intervention. So we just decided at that point, let's leave it some time to see if these behaviors reduce, they increase. Let's see what happens. Again, the denial phase it was there a lot of things was happening, but I wasn't so used to seeing them because I was always t traveling, always working.

So I really didn't see a lot of those behaviors, even though I on the weekends and so forth. But the really. Bad ones. I couldn't see it until COVID came by. COVID. I was able to stay here. A lot of no travel and a lot of the behaviors, obviously my wife was sharing with me that at one point I would say, don't worry, maybe he's just.

 it is a tantrum or anything, hitting his head against the wall, tippy toe, aligning stuff, a lot of behaviors that we, you would say, this needs to be addressed. But again, COVID came by some behaviors reduced because maybe I was here, I'm a little bit more stricter than my wife or, but when COVID released that I started traveling again, that transition was not good for him.

So a lot of the behaviors that we believe that reduced, just came back full force. 

And that's where we decided, you know what, this needs to be addressed. We need to leave the denial at one side. And concentrate on his wellbeing and let's see if we can get any help and resulting in him being diagnosed with autism, mild autism spectrum disorder, but mild because there's different levels.

And that I would say that fueled a lot of things. And my wife and myself, now we went from denial to acceptance throughout that period of years. We were looking for blogs that. It didn't address what we wanted to look for. So it was very academic based blogs.

Or nonprofits. But reading, there was no like a blog that families can go, at least families like ours wanted to seek information. Long story short, left corporate. Left corporate opportunities because I wasn't in the mind. Mindset. Decided to create our own blog. We just have 120 articles right now.

We have our own newsletter. We have 2000 families right now, over 2000 families. We have our own directory of professionals and we have our own insurance planning practice because at the same time we were looking for our own financial planner and everybody just wanna sell us something or recruit us. So very difficult to find somebody who can talk about these type of topics without just pitching a sale of something.

[00:05:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I wanna understand the family dynamics a little bit. So was he about one or two when 2020 occurred? Yep. So he is one or two. And then when did you do the diagnosis for Christian 

[00:06:01] Michael Pereira : 23? 

[00:06:02] Christa Biegler, RD: 2022. Yeah. And then when does your other child, you have two children, so when did, yeah, 

[00:06:07] Michael Pereira : so Christian's seven.

Yep. And Amanda's four. She just turned four last month. 

[00:06:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Right about the time you had Christian diagnosed, it was, you were pregnant with your next child, and so you've got these couple of things going on. And I'm curious, I think you have a background in essentially business, is that correct?

And so were you trying to navigate some of the things that don't often get talked about? So as a person with a health background, I am used to, I look through that lens a lot, right? So people doing all kinds of health adjustments for whatever diagnoses going on, but with your lens that you're looking through, if you're looking through it from a business lens or like you said, finance lens.

What were some of the issues that started to come up around insurance, et cetera? So what happens with insurance issues, both from health insurance and other types of insurance? When you've got a child that's got some form of a disability, because there's quite a giant spectrum, when did you start to realize oh, of course your story started to show you that there was an issue.

But I think about. People that sometimes will be taking care of their children for their entire lives. So I'm trying to understand what were some of the problems that you were trying to solve with the education? What was some of that information you were looking for that you could not find related to this finance and long-term planning and all that kind of stuff 

[00:07:25] Michael Pereira : and insurance?

Yeah, so of course, so in that denial phase, I would say we would feel maybe judgment from families, friends. We didn't wanna really talk about a lot of things with close friends or family, so we decided to look for information, Hey, what happens when our child's hitting the head, or flapping, does that go away? 

And we went into this, at least for myself in this dark phase of now thinking about, okay. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know when he might be independent or if he ever will be. What happens if that I'm not here. And start asking myself these dark questions and what if my wife's not here as well, who's gonna take care of her?

My mom's like the best grandmother and the best cook, but physically she cannot take care of him. So we started asking ourselves all these questions and it became a point that every time we would meet with a professional. Nobody could really address this because they were only concentrated on the product that they were trying to obviously provide.

Not somebody who can talk about from a holistic standpoint, Hey, this is all the areas you should watch out for. If you're concerned about this, there's something called a letter of intent, which is a profile of your child, or if you're thinking about.

Trust and you do have assets in your home. Put it in the trust. So nobody really knew about this. Or maybe they could, but we didn't. Get upon somebody who knew. So we just decided again to see that because we were seeing gaps that nobody was addressing from our experience. 

[00:09:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So specifically some of those gaps, like you were saying, because you were maybe in a place of this business or financial mind.

So some of these gaps might've included. Trust in will planning, but that is like quite distant. It's also planning for the short term, if someone like who can care? 

[00:09:17] Michael Pereira : Yeah. 

[00:09:18] Christa Biegler, RD: For your child and I think we are faced with, okay, am I providing care for this child through age 18 or even longer?

Yeah. Those are some of the real big questions, like how does someone plan for that? Financially and also from their own taking care of themselves.

[00:09:35] Michael Pereira : Yeah. I think it's, there's a lot of ways to address this. So if we're looking at, from a parent standpoint 

A parent should look at.

Like you just mentioned, short-term, midterm, long-term, but for themselves, I would say start, it's like going on an airplane. You wanna put your mask first before you improve somebody else's. So you wanna make sure, because if you're the head of household, you're the one that's providing income and something happens to you, most likely it will interrupt your child's care.

But what we try to do is gain clarity, understand where the parent is at this moment from a financial standpoint. And create a plan around that. Then after there, I would say that we're tackling all these areas. Then we talk about, okay, long term, how does this look? We collaborate a lot with lawyers.

Talents and all that to be able to develop that roadmap long term. Then we talk about, okay, now we have yourself. Now we try to look at the whole family. Not only the child, siblings. Siblings may become guardians in the future. So we obviously always suggest you have those early conversations as soon as possible, because that's a conversation that often is not talked about because a sibling has their own plans their own career, their own goals, and.

If there's something that's, I would say expected around that sibling, it should be talked about, not at the last moment. So I think there's a lot of ways of tackling this planning, I would say conversation. 

But I would say it always starts with the immediate parent. 

And then understand the dynamic.

[00:11:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, you know I have been diving into just financial things the last few years as well. 'cause we're only, as I said before, we tend to look at things through the lens of ourselves, right? So I was always going through things from a health perspective. So I started looking at finance.

'cause I guess I'm at that age. Or it's time to start to understand that stuff. And what you are describing is not very different than what we all have to do. Which is to put your oxygen mask on first and then figure out what do I want this to look like? It's just that, I suppose when you have a curve ball or something unexpected, which is.

It's almost realistic to expect that all of us will have a curve ball, right? It's just that your curve ball was, oh, I need to maybe make sure that my son's welfare is cared for in the long term. It just may accelerate how we wanna start thinking about that, right? And we all arrive at that journey in a different way.

Like you said, yours took a few years to unpack, which is I think probably pretty typical. We saw these gaps with, who can care from the child, from a parent standpoint, sibling standpoint, et cetera. And considering some of the financial stuff. What about insurance? And insurance has several layers as well.

So when you're dealing with, and I almost wonder, what kind of trust fall was happening if you had a wife that was staying at home and you chose to leave your job. I think a lot of people struggle. With insurance and benefits, or they do not leave their job when they have a child that's got major medical issues.

And in fact, I have a friend who's got two children with major medical issues and she feels like she cannot leave her job because her husband is self-employed. So let's start with that medical insurance piece first before some other types of insurance. How did you navigate that personally?

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[00:14:50] Michael Pereira : Yeah. And from a personal standpoint, obviously it's.

Planning, right? Because even though we plan to leave corporate, it took me some time to, to digest the situation, right? And a lot of the benefits, even though we as professional, we don't provide health insurance, we only focus more on insurance planning using life insurance and all that. But from a health insurance perspective, it's very difficult for a lot of parents to, even being employed.

And having the right insurance to be able to cover, because this is the other thing that happens a lot of employers change health insurance every year. And maybe the benefits you have today may not be the ones the following year. And if you already have a plan with a agency or any therapy agency, now there's a different plan.

They might be out of network now you need to get approved for another agency. It's very difficult. There's no one way to 

Be able to. tackle that difficulty, it's more adjusting and understanding that 

If you're employed, healthcare changes all the time. If you leave your job, you don't carry those benefits, you need to now tackle yourself and plan.

I think that's where I would say the main thing I see is you need to start having conversations now with professionals. Don't delay. And even though most people's believe, A, you're procrastinating, no, sometimes you're paralyzed. You'll know where to start. 

[00:16:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:16:21] Michael Pereira : That makes a 

[00:16:21] Christa Biegler, RD: lot of sense. 

[00:16:22] Michael Pereira : If you really are, have anxiety and you're trying to see how you're going to deal with this, start having conversations with professionals doesn't mean because you have a conversation, you're committing to buying something or moving forward, but you are gaining clarity as of what's the next step.

[00:16:40] Christa Biegler, RD: there's some real good things that come from what you just described. So the way our brains work is that when we have this overwhelm our prefrontal cortex, our logical intelligent mind sort of shuts down. And so you just, you said, are you procrastinating or paralyzed?

So anytime we succumb to overwhelm, which is very natural, right? Our prefrontal cortex is gonna shut down, we may freeze. And then what happens is we somewhat. Times become reactive, live in fear and worry, et cetera. And I only share that because it's this is the human experience.

Oh yeah. This is how we are as wired as humans. And I'm sure you were unprepared for that. Like I was unprepared for that, started working with humans and I really had to start to dig through that for myself. And I'm sure you encountered that as well, starting to work with other people. 

[00:17:23] Michael Pereira : Yeah. What I can say is also from my side, that denial was.

Also, I would say my ego. 

[00:17:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:17:30] Michael Pereira : And it hit my ego very hard, and I would say that. What I did understand after I accepted this reality is that for me, not for everybody, but for me, my definition of denial is how selfish you are. 

You're only thinking about yourself, right? You're only thinking about now the, your career changes now, and you're not really thinking about, hey, the child.

[00:17:52] Christa Biegler, RD: In 

[00:17:52] Michael Pereira : this case, that's why I think that acceptance phase, just being open and being able to accept it, understand again, conversations. Having different type of conversations always helps because you gain other people's perspective, right? 

[00:18:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. If I was to outline, and I've been thinking about this as we've had a conversation, where does someone start?

It's before you can even go into action mode, you have to reach it. Place of neutrality with your feelings and emotions related to acceptance. And then collect information and then stop and sit with that. And then take action, which is a very human thing we wanna do is jump straight to action. And so sometimes that can make us feel like a little bit of a ping pong ball.

Or jumping around. Yeah. In a lot of ways. So I wanna go back to something related to insurance. I was just thinking about this out loud, depending because. The conversation is if you've got a child that, or a family member that may require some additional medical care and you may not have the answer to this, I'm curious about how common is it for the neurodivergent population to need prescription medications, which can, or surgeries, which can be the big medical costs, or is it actually a lot of, more one-to-one care and some other things?

What's usually that kind of plan of care looking like in general? 

[00:19:06] Michael Pereira : It depends on the child, it depends on the dynamic. In, I would say sometimes surgery, unless it's like a complex medical need surgery, I would've imagine that it's required that. But for example, in our case, it was more, he wasn't focusing nonverbal.

So we. Went more towards the therapy route. And something that we did that helped him with his focus is we took him away from screen time. We put him in Juujitsu, we gave him activity. 

We changed his diet, we tried as much as possible to help him. Gain that focus that he wasn't having.

He started talking, he was nonverbal. At one point he started talking, and now, today, for example, he. Does talk, but not conversational. So for example, if you ask him, how are you, he's gonna say Kung fu panda. 

But for us it's a huge blessing to just see that he's responding.

[00:20:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:20:05] Michael Pereira : Each one, it's based on one-on-one. But we believe in just being a support system for him and his support. 

[00:20:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And what I heard you say there is that you actually had a lot of out-of-pocket expenses that you would've chosen for your child, despite whatever condition.

Potentially, right? It was like you found this pathway to channel it. You weren't really saying, oh, I'm putting all the onus and responsibility on these doctors to have all the options. For me, it's okay, what can I do? What resources? How can I be resourced and what angles can I come at to help my son?

[00:20:38] Michael Pereira : Yeah. We. And again, this is just our way of thinking. I, they come from Puerto Rico and in Puerto Rico everybody would just play in the streets. It was every, everybody knew each other and just playing all, and you would come in exhausted. And I believe in that. I believe in just, outdoor activity, just putting himself, having that. Exercise. 

Will help and at the end of the day, exhaust him to a level that when he's exhausted, at least for Christian, when he's exhausted, that's where he focuses on, and that's when he's exhausted. That's where we start doing homework.

And that's where we start reading to him before he goes to bed and, but we're constantly present in his life and we're constantly looking for ways to be able to provide him. I would say Christa help. Healthy habits. That's what we're trying to look for. 

[00:21:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I wanna ask you more about other types of insurance, but I'm gonna pivot for a second because when I hear you talk about, how you're navigating this in the family, I wanna hear about things that are hard to plan for, like what happened in your relationship with your wife and.

Whatnot as you were navigating this, I can feel that there's so many stressors Oh yeah. For relationships, right? It's like , there will not be a no stress scenario. So what advice might you give to someone who is trying to navigate hard stuff in relationship? What were some things that you learned with each other?

[00:22:03] Michael Pereira : Yeah, that's a tough one. We almost got divorced at one point because, this either makes the relationship or breaks it. But it came to a point that, that for us is not an option. Even though we thought about it. We believe that, if we're together, we are a team.

And I think that what helped us was. Having those again conversations, but this was basically our own conversation to see how aligned we can be in decisions. 

[00:22:32] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:22:32] Michael Pereira : Because at the end of the day, those decisions may have a benefit, may have a consequence, and we really need to be aligned in regards to. How are we making decisions for the future for both of the children?

We don't fight because I left the toilet of the seat up. 

[00:22:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:22:50] Michael Pereira : We're more having conversations about, okay, this is happening, , this child Christian depends on us a hundred percent and magnitude of course, but because Christian has autism. Like I mentioned before, we don't have a crystal ball as of if he might be independent or not.

So every decision we're making or anything we're planning is always putting their best interest first. So by having that shift, I would say, and having time for us, ourselves, making that time, I think it's helped us. There's no one size fits all. Advice. But for us was.

Doing as much as possible to get alignment. 

[00:23:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. What I hear you saying is you, at some point you used curiosity and love to make decisions instead of resentment. It's pretty easy to make decisions from resentment oh yeah. Throughout relationships. And I also heard you mention something that could almost be an afterthought, but is really important, and I think this is the case in all.

Types of relationships but especially in this scenario where you are pouring out of your cup a lot to make sure and you've really rearranged your life around supporting your child. You said making time for yourself. Where did you start to navigate that? You needed to do that, and how do you support yourself each other in that?

[00:24:09] Michael Pereira : Yeah. I think our bodies taught to our, ourselves. So when I start feeling that burnout, when I start e even for Ellie, my wife, when she starts feeling, feeling tired because it is exhausting, and we understood that it's very hard to be a functioning parent while being exhausted.

[00:24:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:24:29] Michael Pereira : So we have those timeouts that we would say, Hey, I'm just going to have a nap. Stay downstairs. Or, Hey, , I just need to read something because I'm doing a podcast with Christa or something like that. We, try to give ourselves times and respect that, we're requesting a time and that it's non-negotiable, I would say.

[00:24:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:24:49] Michael Pereira : So just separate and the same time, not only by ourselves, but together as a as marriage, right? We also try to make time for ourselves as well. 

[00:24:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:25:00] Michael Pereira : Yeah, makes 

[00:25:00] Christa Biegler, RD: sense. How about, yeah, no, it totally makes sense. I think what's nice is that sometimes the lessons. In a situation like you have are similar to the lessons we can all take in all types of relationships as well.

I wanna hear about how you approach, we're talking about the relationship with both yourself and with your spouse. How do you approach this? Is there any changes, anything that you've had to learn or shift or change as you have another child? Because what can. What might happen, I could see a really easy thing to happen is that it feels 80 plus percent of the time is spent on Christian and maybe less with your other child.

And so what kind of advice or what would you offer to parents in that type of situation? 

[00:25:44] Michael Pereira : Yeah. Actually for us, it's not that 80 20. Yeah. I think it's we're trying to be fair, but there's a lot of things that come out of their relationship. Like for example, Amanda's four, she's still having challenges with her speech.

We. Believe it's one of the factors is because Christian at some point didn't talk. 

So she didn't have maybe any, anybody to practice with. 

[00:26:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:26:10] Michael Pereira : So there's a lot of things that come, challenges that have come down because of the dynamic of both of them. But I think Amanda is, comes with a different type of energy.

And we're trying to see how we can always, and this is something that again, is one of the. The things we are putting as a goal, always involving her in Christian's, life in vice versa. So it's not that it's 80 20, we try to do 50 50 or whatever, but we always try to both of them to feel that they're involved in each other's life.

[00:26:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. All right let's pivot back to some of these planning things. I got into relationships. 

[00:26:51] Michael Pereira : No. Perfect. 

[00:26:51] Christa Biegler, RD: And so we talked a little bit about health insurance, but there's other types of insurance that you might wanna consider when you've got, in your case with Christian, what are you preparing for?

Are you preparing for caring for him through age 18? And then what happens next? So what kind of things are you planning for? And I guess what types of support is available for long-term care? When are you considering that in general with his age, et cetera? Yeah. 

[00:27:18] Michael Pereira : And okay so let me see.

I'm gonna answer this. So from a planning perspective, anybody that's listening, I would say that everything starts with an approach of building a team. There's no life insurance agent that will solve everything that has to do with the full planning of a family waste.

Especially that, that, that's not the way, even though if social media tells you something different, you need to build a team. So you as a parent need to become a quarterback, I would say. 

So you need to have a good lawyer and you need to click with that lawyer because they were giving you advice and all that financial advisor, if you do have any assets.

An insurance planner who, if you do want to protect any type of those assets or so forth. So it's more about the first thing I would say is getting the approach of. A quarterback and building a team. That would say that. That's the first thing. Now, when it comes to planning, and I do insurance planning, I don't do financial planning because I don't do investments, but we do insurance planning.

What we do is, we see this in a couple areas, and I'm gonna answer the long-term care question now, we tackle three categories, or three areas, or however you wanna say it. The short term is that we focus on income protection. Why? Christian depends on us, and again, I'll know until when, but if I get cancer, I get a stroke or something happens to me, most likely I will be a couple months out or years and my income may be interrupted.

Resulting in his care or Amanda's care or just the household will be affected. So we try to develop an income protection strategy for that type of scenario. For midterm, we obviously work with attorneys and collaborate if there's a special needs trust required. And when I say that, let's say if they're, that child may require some sort of support later on in life and they have benefits, government benefits.

You wanna make sure as a parent that any assets that you do have or anything that's going to be inherited should go to the trust. Why? Because it's not going to be considered, for example, as ordinary income. His benefits will not be his or her benefits will not be jeopardized. So if there's a revocable trust or a special needs trust or whatever the you're doing with the attorney, which I'm not, so I may not be able to answer any questions around that, but if you are creating a plan and it requires a trust, we use life insurance.

As a funding mechanism for that trust. Why? Because if you're putting real estate as a funding mechanism, brokerage account savings, me as a father first, I believe that those fluctuate with the market. So you don't wanna put, you do, but you wanna plan with something that's predictable. So that's why we use life insurance and that's the midterm long term.

That's the question you asked about later on. We see it in two things, in two ways. One, as a parent, if your child requires support throughout the life of the life, his lifespan or her lifespan, you may wanna also check some long-term care for yourself. Why? Because you may not count with your children to help you in tho those elder years.

So you wanna make sure assisting living facilities, nursing homes are becoming very expensive. So you wanna make sure having a conversation with your team, that you are tackling those later years and most likely you're not talking about it's gonna be become very expensive. And also plan

how does the dynamic look for your child later on? Should he go to a group home? If he's highly functional but still cannot make a decision, is he going to stay with you perfect. Or does he, will he be able to live independently but still requires some support? There's no one size fits all, but these are conversations that need to be held because you need to plan for different scenarios that you might not know if will be, will happen, right?

But you still need to plan. 

Make sense? 

[00:31:34] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, there are so many scenarios. I was just pondering some that I even think about, right? Where children moving back with their parents. And I actually was having that conversation with a trust and will attorney recently, at what point would I consider long-term insurance?

And she said I would consider what the cost of that is and the cost benefit, et cetera. How would you wanna ask you a little bit on income protection? Because you described having cancer now. We, this is something we've covered a little bit on the podcast because we're currently at rates of Cancer one and two in the population, and so it's something Oh, yeah.

And when we talk about that prefrontal cortex shutting down, something I am working on is advanced decision making. And that's what really all you are describing is like when you make decisions in advance, then whenever possible, in this case, if this happens, what do I think I want to do?

It allows you. To almost relax in your brain a little bit when you have that unexpected worst case scenario thing happen. Because naturally your brain wants to go to fear and worry and concern. Yeah. And then sometimes we make decisions we don't really love later. Understandably so anyway.

When you describe income protection, like if you got cancer, but you wanted to make sure your family's needs were cared for. Cause you're an insurance person, what does that look like from an insurance perspective? Because I think this is not really discussed or talked about. 

[00:32:51] Michael Pereira : No. So there's different type, I would say of.

Coverages. So there's one that could be, for example, an income protection disability. Income protection. That is basically, it replaces your income up to a certain age. If something were to happen that you would become disabled. There's other coverages, like for example, it could be a policy, but may have living benefits, like you can access.

Some of the portion of the death benefit to be able to, sustain yourself while you recuperate. 

And I think it's, that's one of the things that I was looking for when this started because a lot of the professionals, which they were very nice, but. They were talking about 20, 25 years from now, Hey how does it, how do you feel when retiring?

Where do you want to drink your pina colada? I'm like, no. I'll know what's gonna happen to here to next year because of my son and his treatment and whatever therapy I need to think about today. And that's where I think it's so important that even though you're having conversations of where to do, where to invest or what not, make sure you're talking about.

What if something happens today? Most likely if you don't have an income protection strategy, Christa, those investments or whatever you're doing may be interrupted. So that's why it's so important for me. So it's very simple. Again, if you do have an income and you may wanna have a short-term plan, I would say include an income protection from an employer standpoint.

Sometimes they provide short-term, long-term disability. Usually they fall short and usually they only cover your salary. So if you do have any commissions, bonuses, it will not be covered. And if you are a small business owner, I would say start having those conversations because most likely if you do have any type of benefits, this will be obviously not now there.

And it's very important that you can tackle if something happens to you now. 

[00:34:48] Christa Biegler, RD: Michael, you're able to talk about these things from a ground perspective, which usually comes from someone who's had some experience. The reason I ask this is because I think it's natural to have a level of oh my gosh, what are we going to do type thing.

How long did you swim around in the uncertainty before you started putting these pieces together? 

[00:35:09] Michael Pereira : Yeah, I think a long time I'll have like a date per se, but I think just. I would go into conversations again, and with that intention to be able to make a decision, but because of the advisor I had in front of me just gave me the sales vibe.

I didn't make a decision. In some cases, and that's why obviously I'm doing what I'm doing today. I'm leading with a blog with education. I'm leading with a newsletter as a community. I'm leading with that first. To be able to raise awareness of these type of topics. So when any family's ready, we can have a conversation, not a sales pitch.

Yeah. So for me, it's wasn't just navigating and seeing or procrastinating or paralyzed, it was. I was having conversations, but I couldn't find the value I was looking for, I would say. But it took me some time. Of course. 

[00:35:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. What has all of this done overall for your mental health, and how do you handle when someone comes in and they're in such a state of activation overall?

It's a tough, when you're dealing with anything related to this finances, et cetera, yeah. It can really trigger a lot of things for a lot of people. 

[00:36:14] Michael Pereira : Oh, yeah. I would also say that this applies to me as well when I started, is that try first gain clarity where you are today and come into peace for that.

No judgment, but just understand where you are. 

Secondly, I would say, and this applies to me because I did it as well at one point, don't do things yourself. Try to look for professionals that do this day in, day out. And I'm gonna give you an example. There's a lot of offerings on social media.

Say, Hey, do it yourself. Do it yourself and it's costless. Do it yourself, or buy a policy online and do it yourself. Chris is sometimes when you have that approach in such a complex dynamic. Like with special needs, it looks like you're in cruise control, but you're going the wrong way. 

Because you're not talking to the professionals who can really help you think outside the box and help you think about those scenarios that you might not think about right now.

So I would say just gain clarity and understand that, that do it yourself approach. Most likely doesn't apply to your family dynamic today, just because there might be a loved one that requires support and you'll know in which stage. So again it's just being open and just being curious.

To talk to different type of, I would say professionals who know what they're doing. 

[00:37:41] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Michael, you've been amassing these resources online for a number of years now. First of all, where can people find you online? And if someone's dealing with X, Y, z, maybe they have a family member with special needs or whatnot, where would you suggest they get started in some of your online resources?

[00:38:01] Michael Pereira : So they can find me at www the autism for it.com. And, there's a quote of the previous CEO of IBM, which I love, which is, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, just every, anybody listening, but it's growth and comfort cannot coexist. 

And you cannot expect to be comfortable and grow.

You cannot expect to grow and be comfortable, right? Does not coexist. And when we have family, families like myself, like mine, that require you getting outside of your comfort zone to be able to defend them or talk on behalf of a loved one that may not be able to express themselves, I think you know.

You start gaining a lot of skills that CEOs have, you start being able to multitask. You can defend on somebody, on behalf of them. You can think outside the box, you can think five steps ahead. You can put their benefit on top of yours. I would say those parents who are navigating this, just understand that if you do have anxiety or anything, you're in the right place.

But also just understand that, just be the best version you can be and just try to seek help and knowledge and curiosity, because there's a lot of things out there, but it doesn't mean that, they're Right. So it's just about building the team, becoming the quarterback, and just being accepting of acceptance of this new curve ball in life, which is a blessing for us.

[00:39:31] Christa Biegler, RD: And I think honestly that first step can feel, we, I think we wanna skim past it really quickly and it actually can be the hard one to work. 

[00:39:38] Michael Pereira : Oh yeah. 

[00:39:39] Christa Biegler, RD: To neutralize there. I have to smile. I worked in a healthcare setting for eight years before I went into private practice and we had a handout about, it was very complex medical care, and that was a handout we had.

It was like, you are the. Captain of your team, you must assemble, like other people are taking care of many people and you've gotta care for yourself and assemble this overall team in general. And one of the tenets, or one of the main missions of this podcast is that people always have options.

And I think you've been quite a voice around that topic. And that's why I wanted to have you on today just to talk about this. Underused topic in general. What does it look like? How do you navigate when life hands you curve balls? So you can meet Michael and some of his [email protected].

Thank you so much for coming on today, Michael. 

[00:40:25] Michael Pereira : Thank you so much, Christa.