02-25-25 Interview - Maria Fraietta - How to Get Your Life Together For When You Die

And you drop dead and all of your affairs are left to your children. Well, i'll tell you what happens. It sucks, that's what happens. And joining me now is a woman who recognized the suckiness of that situation has created.

A product to address it.

In Knockbox, Maria Frietta, Welcome to the show. She's the founder, the CEO, the inventor, the chief bottle washer. She is a lot a lot of hats going on over there at Knockbox. Welcome to the show, Maria.

Thank you so much, thanks for having me.

Where did this idea come from?

Well, several years ago, about three and a half years ago, my father passed away in upstate New York, and it was relatively expected, and I went up there with my two brothers, and he had a will and a box full of.

Things, and you know, we thought it would all be fine, and.

We went up there to figure out what to do next, and we learned we had no idea.

You know, a will isn't quite good enough.

You know, you can't just start driving a person's car or living in their house or you know, doing all those things. So you know, we learned how to operate probate and how to make friends with the county.

Clerk and do all those things.

But in the meantime, I said, we have got to get organized with this pile of papers that we've got, And so I created a very small system to organize the whole process, organize the key to the golf cart and the snowmobile and all the things that he had, and we divided all the work up in those holders and went about our merry way and managed the estate, which did take, by the way, a full year for a really small estate in New York.

It was a lot.

But then I got home and realized that if something happened to me, my brother, who would be my next of kin, who would come take care of everything, would not have a clue how to start. You know, I had a will, I have a trust, I have all the things that I thought it was.

Really prepared, you know, I thought, Wow, I've got this covered.

And I thought he wouldn't know how to pay my electric bill or take care of the dog, or drop my daughter up at school, or you know, all those things that we make up our lives that are complicated, and all the things we have online.

You know, I was like I've got to get a handle on this.

And so I made my own kit, and then friends wanted a kid, and then neighbors wanted a kit, and I started making the kid and without me even trying, it turned into a business.

Well, let's be real, this is a topic. No one wants to talk about this, No one wants to think about the fact that they're going to die someday, even though we all are going to die someday.

So if you can just make.

It idiot proof, which it looks like you have made this idiot proof, then people go, Okay, I'm just doing a task.

I'm not thinking about when I'm going to die.

I'm just doing a task that just happens to put all this information in one place, So well, go go ahead.

Yeah.

Not only that, you know what people do is they go through the kit. Is they realize I haven't done these life things I need to do anyway. Yeah, so maybe they start going through their insurance policies. And many people write us and say, wow, thanks because I had my ex wife on my life insurance, or you know, I have this coverage I don't need, or you know, whatever it is. It kind of requires you to go through every little aspect of your life, and we don't take the time to do that either.

You know, I forget about dieting someday.

It's like you still have to see when your car insurance is due next, or when the registration's coming up, or manage the pins on the different bank account cards, you know, all of those different things.

So the box really helps with all.

Of that as well, and sort of districts you from the fact that you're preparing for, you know, your ultimate demise.

Well.

And I mean I look around my house and like in my home office, I have all of this memorabilia that listeners have sent me over the years, and it's just full. To me, it means something. For my children, it's going to mean a bigger dumpster.

You know what I mean, It's not right.

So that's the last thing I want to do is leave them trying to figure out how to cancel my Netflix account.

So what kind of things are in this box?

Everything that you just said, You know, one thing is our possessions that maybe mean something to you and not to your next of kin. And we advise you with some tips, you know, make a video of those things and say verbally to your next of can you can throw this away right so that they don't hang onto it with guilt, you know, So we sort of address that piece, and then we say, go to all those

Now, do you guys recommend that people sit down what once a year just to update make sure that everything is still good because passwords change. They will not let me just keep my password. I have to keep changing it even though it's I have no passwords left in me.

Yeah, it's an ongoing process, just like our lives are anyway, right, you always have to change these passwords and that sort of thing. We do suggest that you revisit the box regularly, depending on which section. You know, maybe you've gone through those possessions and you don't need to do that again.

Ever, right, But maybe your.

I don't know, your bank accounts change for LA, or you get new ones or something like that. You know, as your life gets updated or changes happen, we just say toss a little of that information into the box.

Somebody just asked, has Knockbox been on Shark Tank?

Were you on Shark Tank?

No?

You know, in the beginning, we wanted to.

I was going to apply, and I was ready to go, and it was covid was finishing and it was all online, you know. But then as I kept going, we actually don't need to you're doing it, really have any other investors in the company.

I don't really need any other investors in the company.

And you know, We've been super profitable from day one, so I've never had to ask for money. That is, and I don't really want to go on Shark Tank. That's how I really wish I did. Seemed like a lot of fun.

But I say that you've got the basic box, and you also have a fireproof box.

What is that fireproof box rated to?

It is rated, you know, and we disclaim this. You know, it is rated for a fifteen minute fire house fire. It will not sustain. Neither will any thing you can buy really commercially or on Amazon or anywhere. A Colorado wildfire where the cars melt, right, you know that that sort of thing. You need a big, heavy industrial something to withstand that kind but it is it is rated for a kitchen fire, you know, just something like that.

So it gives you a little protection.

Yes, a little bit of protection.

But you know, we do say we have that product because people want it and demand it. But we we say everything in that box, it doesn't need to be it's replaceable. Right.

It's an index for your life. Like here's where you'll find this online, right, right, you're sure you'll go for this, So it's.

You would have to do the box again, which is a lot of work, but the information in it is replaceable.

Right.

It's not the olden days where there's one copy of this one thing.

Right.

You know, you're simply just again creating an index or a paper trail for everything that you've got digitally. We do give you a separate little bag to put things like passports and birth certificates, things that are harder to reprice, right, and we say take that, here's a list of what goes in it, and put that in your safe or somewhere really secure so that it's protected.

But inside the.

Kid is it's like your stack of bills, your stack of online accounts, you know, just all those things that we have. You know, I always sew people there wasn't a need for this product twenty or thirty years ago.

It's because we live online now.

You know.

Everyone says, why isn't it online.

I'm like, because because of online, we sort of need this tracking system for everything that we do have online. And that's why we're a paper product rather than something digital.

Somebody, and also, I think a lot of people are more comfortable with a paper situation. They feel more secure, They feel like that you know that they're going to.

Be able to hand.

Maybe you give it to your kids, you know, if you live near your kids, you take it to their house. Here you go, here's all our stuff. Somebody just asked a good question with passwords, what do we do with the password managers? So do you just sort of say, here's my password, manage your account? I mean, because that's like a whole, that's a horse of a different color.

You can we we simply give people advice on different ways to store passwords. Use a manager, use the password book, put them here, put them there, you know, because everyone wants to secure those in a different way and your next of can Really you can give them your passwords legally.

As they change. You may not.

You may want it to be a little more secure than that. So there's all kinds of ways to track passwords. But what we do do is we were we encourage you to reset them all. Okay, we're going to start the vehicle section now, so let's think of every password you can think of for XM radio, for a toll pass, for your DMV log in account, Like, go right now and do all those passwords today, so that you have them and you know that that section of your life is under control.

I am the action.

I have multiple people on the text line that are making statements like this. Knockbox is a lot of work, but so wonderful to accomplish. I love my knockbox. Thank you so much for talking about this. After friends, I have lost parents or spouses, I know how important this is. Thirty seven year old and I tell my friends about this all the time. Maria Frayetti, it's a great idea. By the way, knock is no ok box, and I told her this morning. A little light bulb went on

I put a link on.

The blog today where you can go and find out more information.

Maria.

I really appreciate you making time for me today. This is just such a good idea. I know my listeners need to know it, so thanks. Thanks for coming up with it.

Thanks so much.

This was great, all right.

Thank you.

That is Maria Frayetti with Knockbox.