Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Q&A

Q&A: If long-term care insurance costs too much, you have a choice to make

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Dear Liz: We were told to buy long-term care insurance early because waiting too long would make it more expensive and perhaps unavailable. I bought mine when I was 55. At the time, it was $2,400 a year. Unfortunately, the premiums just kept going up. I am now 77, and the premium this year was $4,470. The letter informing me of this increase said that next year it will go up 6% to $4,738, and 6% again the following year to $5,022. It’s very clear to me that buying the insurance early was definitely not an advantage. The insurer will obviously keep raising the premium at will. Since I am, like most people my age, on a fixed income, the time will come when I simply cannot afford these premiums. I will then lose the insurance plus all I have paid into it all these years. People should be told that the premiums will continue to rise, and that the time may come when the cost is beyond what anyone on a fixed income can afford.

Answer: Many people are in the same unfortunate situation. They purchased policies because they thought it was the prudent thing to do, only to face the possibility of losing coverage as premiums continued to rise.

Companies that offered long-term care insurance starting in the 1980s and 1990s discovered they didn’t price the coverage accurately. Far fewer people dropped their policies than expected, while the costs of long-term care increased more than anticipated. Many insurers stopped offering the coverage, and massive premium increases were the norm for a while.

Insurers can’t raise premiums “at will,” by the way. The increases must be approved by regulators, who weigh the effects on customers against the possibility an insurer might go under and be unable to pay anyone.

The companies still selling long-term care coverage now offer less generous policies that probably won’t require huge premium increases. Still, many financial planners advise their clients who are buying coverage now to expect their premiums to increase 50% to 100% over their lifetimes.

It’s important to keep in mind that insurance is not like an investment or a savings account. You don’t buy homeowners insurance hoping your house will burn down someday so that you can get your money back. You buy it to protect your finances against catastrophic loss. So it’s not as if you received nothing in return for your long-term care premiums: You were protected against a potentially catastrophic cost that — fortunately — didn’t happen.

That doesn’t mean you were wrong to expect your premiums to remain affordable. Given your current reality, though, you’ll need to decide if you want to risk dropping coverage entirely or if reducing coverage might be an option. Many people in your situation have opted for longer waiting periods, lower inflation adjustments or a reduced benefit period to keep premiums affordable.

Q&A: Should you pay off student loans or save for retirement? Both, and here’s why

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Dear Liz: What are your recommendations for a recent dental school graduate, now practicing in California, who has about $250,000 of dental school loans to pay off but who also knows the importance of starting to save for retirement?

Answer: If you’re the graduate, congratulations. Your debt load is obviously significant, but so is your earning potential. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median pay for dentists nationwide is more than $150,000 a year. The range in California is typically $154,712 to $202,602, according to Salary.com.

Ideally, you wouldn’t have borrowed more in total than you expected to earn your first year on the job. That would have made it possible to pay off the debt within 10 years without stinting on other goals. A more realistic plan now is to repay your loans over 20 years or so. That will lower your monthly payment to a more manageable level, although it will increase the total interest you pay. If you can’t afford to make the payments right now on a 20-year plan, investigate income-based repayment plans, such as Pay As You Earn (PAYE) or Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE), for your federal student loans.

Like other graduates, you’d be wise to start saving for retirement now rather than waiting until your debt is gone. The longer you wait to start, the harder it is to catch up, and you’ll have missed all the tax breaks, company matches and tax-deferred compounding you could have earned.

Also be sure to buy long-term disability insurance, even though it may be expensive. Losing your livelihood would be catastrophic, since you would still owe the education debt, which typically can’t be erased in bankruptcy.

Q&A: Medicare has a prerequisite

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Dear Liz: In a recent column, you mentioned that Medicare Part A is free, but that requires 40 quarters (or 10 years) of U.S. employment to qualify. There are, unfortunately, many of us with offshore employment who have found this out too late. Even if one has worked in a country with a tax treaty with the U.S. that allows you to transfer pension credits to Social Security, that will not allow you to qualify for Medicare. I think it would have been very helpful if I had known this about 10 years ago!

Answer: Medicare is typically premium-free, because the vast majority of people who get Medicare Part A either worked long enough to accrue the necessary quarters or have a spouse or ex-spouse who did. (Similar to Social Security, the marriage must have lasted at least 10 years for divorced spouses to have access to Medicare based on an ex-spouse’s record.)

But of course there are exceptions, and you’re one of them. People who don’t accrue the necessary quarters typically can pay premiums to get Part A coverage if they are age 65 or older and a citizen or permanent resident of the United States. The standard monthly premium for Part A is $437 for people who paid Medicare taxes for less than 30 quarters and $240 for those with 30 to 39 quarters.

Q&A: Benefits’ disappearance is no accident

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Dear Liz: You recently indicated that restricted applications for Social Security spousal benefits are no longer available to people born on or after Jan. 2, 1954. Who is responsible for this change, and when was that enacted? Is there any way it can be reversed?

Answer: Congress is unlikely to revive what was widely seen as a loophole that allowed some people to take spousal benefits while their own benefits continued to grow.

Congress changed the rules with the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. As is typical with Social Security, the change didn’t affect people who were already at or near typical retirement age. So people who were 62 or older in 2015 are still allowed to file restricted applications when they reach their full retirement age of 66. They can collect spousal benefits while their own benefits accrue delayed retirement credits, as long as the other spouse is receiving his or her own retirement benefit. (Congress also ended “file and suspend,” which would have allowed one spouse to trigger benefits for the other without starting his or her own benefit.)

Q&A: Social Security spousal benefits

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Dear Liz: My wife plans to file for her Social Security benefit when she turns 66 in April 2020. I plan to file for my benefit at age 70 in July 2022. Can I file for a spousal benefit when my wife files in 2020? Can my wife claim a spousal benefit in 2022 when I file for my own benefit, assuming it is more than her own benefit? Will my wife’s spousal benefit increase like my benefit does between my ages of 66 to 70, or does it max out at my age 66?

Answer: Because you’ve reached your full retirement age of 66 and you were born before Jan. 2, 1954, you are still allowed to file a restricted application for spousal benefits once your wife applies for her own benefit. When your benefit maxes out at age 70, you would switch to your own because there’s no incentive to further delay.

Restricted applications are no longer available to people born later. Instead, when they apply for benefits they are deemed to be applying for both their own and any spousal benefit to which they might be entitled. They’re given the larger amount and typically can’t switch later.

One of the exceptions could apply in your case, however. Your wife won’t be able to take a spousal benefit when she applies because you won’t have started your benefit. Once you start, if her spousal benefit based on your work record is larger than what she’s receiving based on hers, she could switch.

Because only one spousal benefit is allowed per couple, you’ll want to investigate which could result in more money before you apply.

As for your last question: Spousal benefits don’t earn the delayed retirement credits that can increase a worker’s retirement benefits by 8% annually between full retirement age and 70. If your wife had started spousal benefits before her own full retirement age of 66, the amount would have been permanently reduced — she would receive less than 50% of the benefit you’d earned at your full retirement age. But she won’t get more than 50% if she starts them after her full retirement age.

Q&A: Mortgage payoff pros and cons

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Dear Liz: Should we use a $350,000 inherited non-spousal Roth IRA to pay off our mortgage? We have $285,000 left on our mortgage and would like to retire within 10 years. This is our dream home, and we don’t think we can otherwise pay it off before retiring. We have $1.1 million in other retirement accounts, an emergency fund, a $40,000 pension, and no other debt. Our home is worth $900,000.

Answer: In general, paying off a mortgage before retirement makes a lot of sense. Doing so reduces the amount of money you need to take from retirement funds, which can help make those funds last longer.

Being mortgage-free is not a goal you should pursue at any cost, however. You could end up having too much money tied up in your house and not enough in savings or investments. Also, the inherited Roth has significant advantages. Although you must take minimum distributions from the account, those are tax free and can be based on your life expectancy, which means the bulk of the money can continue growing for quite some time.