Answer: Let’s be clear: You have no assets. Your mother does, and she may plan to give those to you, but those plans could change. She may well need her money for living expenses and long-term care, which could easily eat up that nest egg.

So you need to start saving on your own for retirement. You may think you can’t live on less than you are now, but make no mistake: You’ll be living on significantly less if you don’t save. Your Social Security benefit, if you retire at 66, will be around $1,000 a month.

If you have a workplace retirement plan such as a 401(k), start contributing to that. If you don’t, put money aside in an individual retirement account. If your adjusted gross income is under $27,750, you may qualify for a tax credit that can help you, known as the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit or Savers Credit. (You’ll use Form 8880 to figure the credit; visit http://www.irs.gov for more information.)

Answer: Use your grandfather’s generous gift to both help you retire most of your debt and get a start on an emergency fund.

After you sell the car, take $500 to $1,000 of the proceeds for your emergency fund. That will cover most minor emergencies and should keep you from adding to your credit card debt. Put the money in a safe account that’s accessible but not too accessible. If it’s too easy to tap, you might be tempted to raid it for non-emergencies. A savings account at an online bank or a credit union are two good choices.

Take what’s left and pay down your credit card bills. Stop using your cards and figure out how much you need to put toward your debt to get the rest of it paid off in a few months. Then trim your expenses to come up with the money and set up an automatic transfer from your checking account to your cards.

Despite what you may have heard, credit card debt isn’t normal — a majority of U.S. households don’t carry credit card balances, according to Federal Reserve statistics — and it’s a real cancer on your finances. While you’re young, you should get out of the habit of carrying balances and into the habit of paying your cards in full every month. You’ll be richer for it, and less likely to find yourself in the sad position of being old and in debt. Read on:

Answer: You need to take a small chunk of that money and invest it in a session or two with a fee-only financial planner who can review your entire situation and give you personalized advice.

In all likelihood, the advice won’t be to pay off the mortgage. You’re on track to have your home loan paid off before retirement age, and most people have better things to do with their money than pay off a low-rate, often tax-deductible debt.

It doesn’t make much sense to let your inheritance languish in a savings account, however, when you’re likely to need more money for retirement. A planner can help you come up with an investment allocation that takes somewhat more risk but that should bring you greater returns.

You can get referrals to fee-only planners from the Garrett Planning Network at http://www.garrettplanningnetwork.com and from the National Assn. of Personal Financial Advisors at http://www.napfa.org.

Answer: Your scores are actually below average. The median FICO credit score in the U.S. is between 700 and 720.

You’re not going to improve your scores by closing accounts (that can’t help scores, and may hurt them). And your credit card issuers may well cut your limits when you pay down your debt.

But that should be the least of your concerns. Your credit card balances indicate you’re living beyond your means. Fewer than 1 in 10 U.S. households has credit card debt of $10,000 or more, and carrying credit card balances not only erodes your financial well-being through expensive interest payments but also puts you at greater risk of bankruptcy.

So use your windfall to pay off your high-rate debt and then create a budget that ensures you spend less than you make so you don’t run up future debts.

By the way, it’s a bit unlikely that both of you are receiving an inheritance. Typically the money comes to one half of a couple and can be kept as separate property if he or she so chooses.

Answer: If you expect to use the money within a few years, you’ll want to keep it safe and accessible. These days, that usually means in an FDIC-insured savings account, since yields on money market funds are pretty miserable.

You’ll typically find the best rates at online banks or your local credit union. You also can consider boosting your yields a bit by laddering some CDs. That just means breaking your money into chunks and investing those chunks in CDs with different maturities. If you arrange your ladder so that some money comes due every three months or so, you can take advantage of rising rates while protecting the bulk of your cash from falling rates. Just make sure that your money isn’t locked up past the point when you’re likely to need it.

But you may want to reconsider your goal for this money. Unless the retirement money you inherited was in a Roth IRA, you will pay income taxes on your withdrawals. You may be better off in the long run by delaying those taxes as much as possible.

That would require putting the IRA money into a new account, called an Inherited IRA, that you open for this purpose. You would be required to take minimum distributions each year, but those would be based on your life expectancy. The bulk of your inheritance would be left alone to grow tax-deferred for many, many years.

Another option, if the original account owner died before age 70 1/2, is to use the five-year rule. That basically means you could leave the money in the Inherited IRA for up to five years. You could withdraw any amount at any time and pay taxes on it, but you must withdraw everything within five years. That would give you the benefit of at least some tax deferral.

Either way, you would need to establish the Inherited IRA by Dec. 31 of the year after the original IRA owner’s death.

Take a minor portion of the inheritance and spend it on some indulgence you would never have done otherwise. About 15 years ago, I used about 20% of a sizable inheritance to take my family, including kids, spouses and grandkids, on a three-week African safari. The result? We all have wonderful memories of a trip in which family members bonded closely with one another, and of once-in-a-lifetime sights and experiences.

The rest I invested, spent on college tuition and used for retirement. I can’t account for it all, but I have no regrets about that Africa vacation.

Answer: Your advice is terrific. It’s important to enjoy our windfalls and even more important to invest in experiences and memories that last. Your family is lucky to have you.

We owe $132,000 on our house and have no other debt. We pay off our one credit card in full monthly. He puts the maximum into his 401(k). We have two sons, ages 5 and 8.

Should we use the money to pay down our mortgage? I’m not interested in saving for college. We will be retiring about the time the kids are ready for college and we plan to have them take out student loans.

Answer: If you can save for college, you probably should.

College costs show few signs of moderating, so your older child might face a bill of $140,000 for an in-state public college or $200,000 or more for a private or selective public college. The cost for your younger child will be even higher. If they borrow the entire cost, they’re likely to remain financially disadvantaged for years. Students who overdose on loans often can’t save enough for retirement and delay starting families and buying homes because of their debt. Anything you save for them could reduce that terrible burden.

You also might want to rethink the idea of retiring when they start college. Even if your husband has been maxing out his retirement fund, it’s unlikely he’ll have saved enough by age 52 to last the rest of your lives, particularly if you have to start paying for health insurance on your own. (Medicare isn’t typically available until you’re 65.)

You didn’t mention savings. Most people should have an emergency fund equal to three months’ expenses, but families with just one earner typically should shoot for six or even nine months’ worth.

In any event, you almost certainly have better things to do with your money than pay down low-rate, potentially tax-deductible debt such as a mortgage.

A better approach might be to divide your inheritance into thirds, investing a third into an emergency fund, a third into your boys’ educations and a third into retirement funds.

A visit to a fee-only financial planner could help you sort through your options and clarify your goals.

We have been giving our daughter financial assistance that we have not given our sons because we don’t feel they need it. Our daughter is in her mid-20s and has a learning disability. Our sons know we have been helping, but they don’t know the exact nature or value of the assistance.

We want to ensure that our daughter gets a larger inheritance to compensate for her disability, but how do we do that while being fair to the others? Our attorney helped us set up a family trust in which our three children will receive equal shares of the bulk of our estate.

At his suggestion, the special assistance will go to our daughter by naming her a sole beneficiary of one or more of our retirement accounts. Does this sound like a good plan?

Answer: Tread very, very carefully here.

There’s a fundamental difference between doling out assistance unequally while you’re alive and doing so once you’re dead.

While you’re alive, your sons are paying the “success tax” — not getting as much from you because they’re doing well. Many grown children in this position are able to accept the disparity because there’s an unspoken understanding that you would help them, too, if they fell on hard times.

Once you’re gone, though, there are no more opportunities for help. How you bequeath your estate is pretty much the last word, and your kids may very well see in your distributions a reflection of your love for them.

That’s why even minor inequalities in estate distribution can set off nasty, hugely emotional battles among heirs. These bad feelings can, unfortunately, translate into lifetime estrangements, which is surely not an outcome you’d want.

Of course, if your daughter’s disability is severe and will clearly affect her lifetime earning potential, then an unequal distribution may well be justified. You shouldn’t necessarily assume, however, that her disability will translate into failure. Plenty of successful people have overcome learning disabilities, including Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson, inventor Thomas Edison, actress Whoopi Goldberg and artist Pablo Picasso.

You also can’t assume that your sons’ success will continue unabated. Accident, illness and business reversal can affect anyone, so that the child who seems like a highflier now could be the one who needs the most help in the future.

If you do decide on an unequal distribution, consider discussing your estate plans with your children.

This is probably a talk you’d rather avoid, but openness now will avoid an unpleasant shock later and give all concerned a chance to discuss their feelings about the situation. You may or may not hear something in this discussion to change your mind, but at least you’ve given your heirs a chance to be heard — an opportunity that’s obviously lost once you’re gone.

I live in it; my brother and his wife live in another state. He and I share taxes, insurance and a home equity loan. Other than that, all expenses are — and should be — my responsibility. He is livid that I am not leaving him my half of the house when I die, even though he is leaving his half to his wife — which I completely understand.

When I realized he was furious about this, I offered to make him the sole beneficiary of the house in my will if he will do the same for me. He will not, yet he remains angry, somehow believing that my being single should restrict my choice of beneficiaries. What am I missing here?

Answer: Once you step back a bit from the spat, you might see that neither of your positions is entirely unreasonable.

A home is typically a major asset, and you want to be able to leave it to a beneficiary of your choosing. So does he, and his wife is the natural choice.

But he’s also probably dreading the idea that you’ll die first and he’ll end up owning the property with someone else. The constant negotiations and decisions required in homeownership can be excruciating and a cause for major conflict even when you have familial ties to bind you. It can be much worse when you don’t.

The other problem with your solution — “I’ll leave you mine if you leave me yours” — is that you’d need to have a lawyer draw up what’s known as a will contract to make your promises binding, said Los Angeles estate planning attorney Burton Mitchell.

But remember, things change, and your agreement may not seem so good years later.

“The sister could always marry in the future. The brother could always get a divorce. Either could adopt a child,” Mitchell said. “No one should assume that the future is static and the facts won’t change.”

Before you do anything, you should check how your home is currently titled. If you and your brother are joint tenants, then he typically would automatically inherit, regardless of what your will or other estate planning document says.

If you want to leave your share to someone else, you probably would need to hold title as tenants in common.

There are a number of options you might want to consider and discuss. Among them:

• Take out a mortgage and buy him out. This could have financial implications for both of you. You might have trouble making the payments on a new loan, and he probably would owe capital gains tax for half the appreciation since your parents died.But he would get his share of the asset in cash, and you should be relieved of any future recriminations on the beneficiary issue.
• Sell the house and split the proceeds. This means that you’ll have to move and that both of you could have a tax bill. (Because this is your primary residence, you’re allowed to avoid paying tax on up to $250,000 of the gain since your parents died. If your profit is more than that, you will owe capital gains tax on the excess.)But this could solve the issue of who leaves whom what.
• Wait a decade or so and then get a reverse mortgage to buy him out. Reverse mortgages allow you to tap the equity in your home without having to repay the loan until you move, sell the house or die.You can get a lump sum, a line of credit or a stream of monthly checks. The older you are when you apply, the more money you can borrow, although there are limits depending on where you live.

  If you’re interested in this possibility, check out the information about reverse mortgages at the AARP website or consult Tom Kelly’s book “The New Reverse Mortgage Formula” (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

• Do nothing. This is always an option. You should be advised, though, that your brother may have a trump card whether he knows it or not. As a co-owner, he could sell his share of the house or go to court to force a sale of the property. If that’s not an outcome you want, you’ll need to find a solution that works for both of you.