Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Q&A

Q&A: What to do after coronavirus takes away your job

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Dear Liz: I’m a single mom who just lost my job because of COVID-19. I have a mortgage, a car payment, credit card debt and a child who is headed to college in the fall. What do I do? I am very scared.

Answer: This is a very scary time. Your job now is to identify and use all the resources that may help you. You’ll need to be patient and persistent because millions of people are in the same boat.

Your first task could be among the hardest: applying for unemployment benefits. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, signed into law on March 27, expanded unemployment relief to include the self-employed (including contract and gig workers), people who work part time, and those whose hours were reduced because of the pandemic.

The act also adds $600 a week to the benefit amount that states offer, a supplement scheduled to last four months, and extends benefits for eligible workers until Dec. 31. In normal times, benefits end after 26 weeks.

The expanded benefits, plus an unprecedented number of job losses, have overwhelmed state unemployment offices. If possible, apply online with your state’s labor department rather than over the phone or in person. You’ll be sent important follow-up information; to avoid delays in starting your checks, carefully read that information and respond to any requests.

Unemployment benefits vary enormously by state. You may get enough to sustain you if you cut unnecessary expenses — or you may not. If you come up short, you have other options.

If your mortgage is federally backed — and most are — the CARES Act gives you a right to forbearance for up to 12 months. There’s also a moratorium on foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions for these mortgages.

Forbearance means you don’t have to make payments, although interest will typically still accrue. Federally backed mortgages include loans owned by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and various federal agencies.

If you’re not sure whether your mortgage is federally backed, call your loan servicer — the company that takes your mortgage payments — and ask. Even if your loan is not federally backed, you may be eligible for some kind of relief. Explain your circumstances and ask what help is available.

Many other lenders, including credit card issuers, offer forbearance options as well. Some have information and application forms on their websites while others require you to call the customer service number to request help. Again, be prepared for long hold times.

You also can ask for more financial aid from your child’s college based on your changed circumstances. Check first to see if the financial aid office has an online form you can use or has outlined its preferred procedure for appealing a financial aid offer.

You may be tempted to put off asking for help, hoping that you will land another job before your household is on fumes. It would be more prudent, though, to assume you could be out of work for many months. Not only is unemployment skyrocketing, but a vaccine also could be a year or more away, indicating the economic disruptions likely will continue.

There’s one other part of the CARES Act that could help you: the “coronavirus hardship withdrawal.” The new law allows you to withdraw up to $100,000 from your 401(k) or IRA without penalty.
The withdrawal is taxed, but you can effectively spread the tax bill over three years. If you can repay the money within three years, you also can amend your tax returns and get a refund of those taxes.

Taking the money and not repaying it could have a devastating effect on your future retirement, but if you’ve run out of other options, a retirement plan withdrawal could help keep you afloat.

Q&A: Volatile markets and retirement

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Dear Liz: With the tumult in the stock market, I’ve been thinking of a strategy which may be safe but not prudent. I have about $315,000 in a trust account which pays me about $9,000 a year in dividends. I’m 81. If I sell all the stocks in my trust account, I could draw the same $9,000 for over 10 years, not counting about 2% growth on the $315,000. What are your thoughts?

Answer: Many people have discovered they’re not as risk tolerant as they thought they were. The volatile stock market has unnerved even seasoned retirement investors. Most, however, should continue investing because they won’t need the money for decades, and even retirees typically need the kinds of returns that only stocks can deliver long term.

There’s no reason to take more risk than necessary, however. If all you need from your trust account is $9,000 a year, you’d be unlikely to run out even if your money is sitting in cash. But you may need more than $9,000 in the future — to adjust for inflation, for example, or to cover long-term care costs.

One option to consider is a single-premium immediate annuity. In exchange for a lump sum, you’d get a guaranteed stream of monthly checks for the rest of your life. At your age, you could get $9,000 a year by investing about $100,000 in such an annuity. Because your payments would be guaranteed by the annuity, you might be more comfortable leaving at least some of the rest of your account in stocks for potential growth.

Q&A: Giving away your relief funds

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Dear Liz: My wife and I are retired. We are comfortable financially, with a generous pension, maximum Social Security benefits due to start in a few months, and three years’ worth of ready cash in the bank. We don’t anticipate touching our investments until mandatory distributions from our IRAs kick in. Now we’re apparently going to get $2,400 tax-free as part of the coronavirus stimulus package. We don’t need the money, nor do we particularly want it. We’d welcome your thoughts on how we can give it away to generate the greatest good, on the individual and societal levels. Where is the “multiplier” effect the greatest?

Answer: Thank you for thinking of others. Donating money to a food bank is always a good choice. These charities often have deals with food suppliers that allow them to create far more meals using donated money than they would be able to produce with donated food. Cash also allows food banks to offer perishables. In some cases, food banks work directly with farmers to supply fruits and vegetables that are too imperfect to sell, which reduces food waste.

One option is to give through Feeding America, which represents a network of 200 food banks nationwide that feed more than 40 million people. Meals on Wheels is another option that helps 5,000 community-based programs.

There are many other ways, of course, to help people hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Before you give to a charity, check it out at one of the watchdog organizations such as Charity Navigator or CharityWatch. You’ll want to make sure the bulk of your money supports the cause, rather than fundraising efforts or overhead.

You also can use the checks to directly help people or businesses in need. Buying gift cards from local restaurants and small businesses offers a potential two-for-one benefit: You can give the cards to people who need the assistance while you help keep the businesses afloat. Or you can subscribe to newspapers and public radio stations that are working hard to bring you accurate and timely information about staying safe in the pandemic.

Q&A: How to figure out if your student loan qualifies for coronavirus relief

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Dear Liz: I’m confused about what help is being offered to people with student loans. At first I heard interest was waived but payments had to be made. Then supposedly the stimulus package made payments optional. Is there something I have to do to get relief or is it automatic?

Answer: If your student loans are held by the federal government, relief should be automatic. You won’t have to make a payment until after Sept. 30, and interest will be waived during that time. In addition, federal collection efforts on defaulted student loans have been paused.

These provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act apply to federal student loans made through the direct loan program, including undergraduate, graduate and parent loans. You can log on to studentaid.gov to see if your loan qualifies.

If you have Perkins loans or Federal Family Education loans that don’t qualify, you can consolidate those loans into a direct consolidation loan, which would qualify. The provisions also don’t apply to private student loans, although your lender may offer other hardship options.

Q&A: Inheriting an IRA can get messy

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Dear Liz: My brother passed away at age 47. My mother was named beneficiary of his retirement account. We opened an inherited IRA under her name. Sadly, my mother recently passed away, and my father is the beneficiary of the account. Does my father open a regular IRA or inherited IRA? How would the title on the account be listed with my mother and brother deceased? Are they both listed?

Answer: Inheriting an inherited IRA complicates an already complex set of rules.

The regulations are different depending on whether the person inheriting is a spouse. Spouses can treat the inherited account as their own. They can leave the money where it is, make new contributions or transfer the funds to another retirement account they own. They also have more flexibility in how to take required minimum distributions from the account.

Non-spouse beneficiaries, like your mother, don’t have the option of treating the IRA as their own. They must set up a new inherited IRA and start distributions. Until this year, non-spouse beneficiaries could take distributions over their lifetimes. Now non-spouse beneficiaries are required to drain their inherited IRAs within 10 years.

How the account is titled is important, because improper titling can cause it to lose tax deferral and accelerate the tax bill. Let’s say your brother’s name was Tom Johnson and he died in March 2019, leaving his IRA to your mother, Mabel Johnson. A correct title for the new inherited IRA would be “Tom Johnson (deceased March 2019) Inherited IRA for the benefit of Mabel Johnson.”

Your family’s situation creates a hybrid of the two situations. Your dad would have an inherited spousal IRA, but his mandatory withdrawals would be based on your mother’s required minimum distributions, said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Your dad should open a new inherited IRA, Luscombe says. Assuming his name is Bill Johnson, the title of the inherited IRA should be “Tom Johnson (deceased March 2019) Inherited IRA for the benefit of Bill Johnson, successor beneficiary of Mabel Johnson.”

Q&A: Car repo is a nonstarter

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Dear Liz: I had to move to assisted living due to a stroke. I no longer need my car — or the car payment. Can I simply stop paying and let it be repossessed? There are about 18 months to go before it’s paid off. I don’t need great credit anymore and our current expenses exceed our income.

Answer: If you’re that close to paying off the loan, then you probably have a good chunk of equity. It would be a shame to lose any of that value to the costs of repossession.

Typically repossessed cars are sold at auction, often for less than their resale value. The proceeds, minus the expenses of repossessing and preparing the car, are applied to your loan. You’d only get what’s left over. (If what’s left over is less than what you owe, the amount is added to your debt.)

This bad financial outcome is on top of the damage done to your credit, which can be substantial. Even if you think it unlikely you’ll need credit again, you don’t know for sure that you won’t.

If you have the option of selling the car to a private party or dealer — or asking a trusted friend or relative to help you do so — that’s usually a much better way to go than letting the vehicle be repossessed.