Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Q&A

Q&A: Did this child get ripped off?

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Dear Liz: My niece’s father remarried when she was a child. Her father and her stepmother bought a house as community property in California. Ten years later, her father died. Not long after that, her stepmother died. The stepmother had no children, and my niece was the only child of her father’s. The stepmother’s niece took the house and sold it, and kept all the proceeds. Was my niece entitled to any of the proceeds?

Answer: Your niece needs to consult an experienced attorney, because the answer depends on a number of factors.

Estate planning attorney Jennifer Sawday of Long Beach points to California Probate Code Section 6402.5, which could give your niece priority over other heirs for the property’s proceeds — but only if the facts line up. If the stepmother died no later than 15 years after the father, didn’t remarry, didn’t have children, didn’t put the home in a trust and didn’t make a will after the father died, then the California probate court could consider your niece an heir, Sawday says.

That’s a whole lot of ifs, and your niece will need expert advice to proceed.

Q&A: House sale implications for retiree

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Dear Liz: I’m 67, divorced since 1992 and retired with a good government pension, a retirement investment fund, some stocks and cash savings. I plan to sell my home of 33 years soon for a hefty profit and buy a smaller home. I owe $100,000 on the mortgage. I worry about a significant increase in payments to Medicare and tax obligations to the IRS. What financial advice do you have for me? This is my first time selling and buying a property on my own.

Answer: Now would be a great time to consult a tax professional about your options. You can exempt as much as $250,000 of home sale profit, but gains beyond that would incur capital gains taxes and could increase your Medicare premiums.

The amount you owe on your mortgage doesn’t affect the tax you owe on a home sale, but other expenses might. For example, you may be able to reduce your taxable profit if you kept good records of the amounts spent on home improvements. What you spent on maintenance and repairs over the years won’t help, but any work that improved the value of your home may be added to what you paid for the home to increase your tax basis. This basis is what’s subtracted from the sale price to help determine your taxable profit. Certain expenses you incurred to buy your home, such as closing costs, and to sell it, such as real estate commissions, also can help reduce the taxable portion.

IRS Publication 523 goes into detail about how to calculate home sale profit, but an enrolled agent (you can get referrals from the National Assn. of Enrolled Agents) or a CPA could be extremely helpful in advising you about these calculations.

Q&A: How a new credit card can help your credit score

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Dear Liz: I’ve received a notice stating that a retail credit card I’ve had for more than a decade will be converted to a Mastercard. I already have an American Express charge card and a Visa rewards credit card. I don’t need another credit card. But I’m concerned. Will the conversion hurt my credit scores? Or is having a credit card versus a retail card better for my credit scores?

Answer: Congratulations! Such conversions indicate you’ve been using the card and your other credit accounts responsibly. If you continue to do so, the new credit card could help your credit scores more than the retail card.

Although getting new plastic is both good and bad for your credit score, a credit card is typically factored into more FICO scoring variables than a retail card, said Ethan Dornhelm, FICO’s vice president of scores and predictive analytics.

“So to the extent that you have positive behaviors, it’s more likely to have a broader positive impact,” Dornhelm said.

The flip side is that if you mess up by missing a payment or running up big balances, those mistakes could have a greater effect on your scores, Dornhelm said.

Closing the account probably would be one of those mistakes, since closures reduce your available credit and in general should be avoided unless there’s a compelling reason, such as a too-high annual fee. The benefits that came with the retail card, such as discounts and free shipping, probably will transfer to the credit card, so you can continue to benefit from the account without worrying that it will hurt your scores.

Q&A: Worried about identity theft? Here are some things you can do

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Dear Liz: Last week I received my annual mortgage interest report. The envelope was not sealed and my full Social Security number was exposed. Two days later, I received an e-mail from PayPal for a purchase made online in my name with a different address. What do I need to do to protect myself from identity theft and are there any penalties my mortgage company could face?

Answer: The penalties for exposing your information depend on your state’s laws. You can contact your state attorney general’s office for more information.

At the very least, consider reporting the issue to the mortgage company and demanding that your Social Security number be redacted in future mailings. Better yet, see if you can go paperless and download your tax documents, a process that is typically more secure than having your private financial information sent through the mail.

It’s entirely possible the fraudulent purchase was unrelated to your mortgage company’s sloppy practices, but you should still take steps to reduce your odds of being victimized again. Obviously, you need to change your PayPal password but you should also make sure all your accounts — especially your financial and email accounts — have unique, complex passwords. A password manager such as LastPass or 1Password can help you keep track.

Good computer hygiene also can help reduce your risk. That means turning on your computer’s firewall, using a secure browser and keeping that browser up to date. Update and frequently run antivirus software as well.

Another important step in reducing identity theft risk is freezing your credit reports at all three major bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. This should prevent someone from opening a new fraudulent credit account in your name but won’t prevent account takeovers, such as what may have happened with your PayPal account.

Detect account problems as quickly as possible by regularly reviewing bank, payment and credit card transactions. Consider putting alerts on your accounts for foreign transactions or transactions over a certain size or signing up with a credit- or identity-monitoring service.

Q&A: A gray area in required distributions

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Dear Liz: I’ve reached that “certain age” when I should be taking required minimum distributions from my retirement accounts. I retired from full-time work at age 65 but continued doing small jobs at an hourly rate for that same employer. I set my own hours and earn just a couple thousand bucks a year. The company that holds my retirement funds says I don’t have to take the required minimum distribution because I never retired. I don’t want to be penalized for failing to take the RMD, and I can’t believe I get to delay taking the funds. Have I found a little-known loophole?

Answer: You’ve found a definite gray area.

People who are still working for the employer who provides their 401(k) may be exempted from the required minimum withdrawals that are otherwise supposed to start at age 72. The exemption does not apply to IRAs or retirement plans from previous employers. The exemption also doesn’t apply if you own more than 5% of the company, and not all 401(k) plans offer a “still working” exemption.

The IRS hasn’t offered a lot of guidance about the still-working exemption. For example, there doesn’t seem to be a clear minimum number of hours that an individual must work, said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Luscombe says the exemption may depend in part on the minimum number of hours required to participate in the plan. Even then, though, it’s not clear that an employee could reduce the number of hours working from a full-time level to a part-time level and still qualify for the still-working exception, he said.

“This could be a discrimination issue if higher-paid employees were allowed to reduce their hours and lower-paid employees were not,” Luscombe notes.

The company might need a written rule that all employees are allowed to reduce their hours at a certain age, Luscombe said.

If a particular plan permits part-time employees working at least 500 hours per year to qualify for its 401(k) plan, for example, then perhaps working at least 500 hours per year meets the still-working standard for that plan.

You’ll want to get some clarity about this, because the penalty for not taking required minimum distributions on time is high — it’s 50% of the amount you should have taken but didn’t. If the plan doesn’t have clear rules, ask your company to create some to guide you and others in your situation.

Q&A: Government pensions and Social Security

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Dear Liz: Both of my parents have been retired for over 25 years. My father collects Social Security but my mother didn’t have enough quarters to collect. Both have Postal Service retirements. Can my mother file and get half of my father’s amount? Can they get back payments for 25 years?

Answer: The answer to both questions is “probably not.”

Your parents’ situation is complicated by the fact that the federal government changed its pension system for civilian employment in the 1980s. Prior to 1984, civilian employment was covered by the Civil Service Retirement System and workers did not pay into Social Security. Starting in January 1984, new hires were covered by the Federal Employee Retirement System and were required to pay into Social Security. Current hires had the option, but not the requirement, to join FERS, says William Meyer, founder of Social Security Solutions, a claiming strategy site.

Normally when someone receives a pension from a job that didn’t pay into Social Security, the government pension offset would reduce or eliminate any Social Security spousal benefit they might otherwise receive. However, there is an exception: The offset doesn’t apply to government workers who pay Social Security taxes for the last 60 months of employment. This exception applies to employees paying into FERS, Meyer says.

If your mother paid into FERS during the last 60 months of her employment at the Postal Service, she would be eligible for a spousal benefit on your father’s record, Meyer says. If your mother didn’t pay into FERS those last 60 months, the government pension offset would apply and would reduce or eliminate any spousal benefit.

That option should have been explored when your parents applied for their Postal Service retirement benefits, Meyer says. Social Security also would have looked into it as part of your father’s application process. If she’s not receiving a Social Security spousal benefit, she probably didn’t switch to FERS and did not pay into Social Security during the last 60 months of her employment at the Postal Service, Meyer says.