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Q&A

Deceased dad’s rock triggers bitter family fight

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Dear Liz: We are settling my dad’s estate. My dad found a rock, and it sat in my parents’ frontyard for years. He worked in a gravel pit for decades, and that was the only rock he found interesting enough to bring home. When my mom died, we held an auction of their household goods. My dad told me to take the rock home. I said that to be fair, the rock should be sold at auction. A family member then stole the rock and has been hiding it for more than two years. This person says it’s going to be placed on my dad’s grave site. I’m an executor, and I feel that the decision wasn’t the relative’s to make. It’s the only possession of Dad’s that I really want as a remembrance of him. We were extremely close. Dad knew the rock was taken to spite me, and it really bothered him. What are your thoughts?

Answer: Many of the items that trigger bitter family fights after a death don’t have much fair market value. Family members imbue these objects with sentimental value and then go to war over them. They might insist it’s the only thing they really want, or that they want it for their kids. Some go so far as to destroy their relationships with their loved ones to gain control of the supposed heirloom. (Which, often as not, winds up in the next generation’s yard sale, as appraiser Julie Hall once noted.)

Maybe this relative did swipe the rock to spite you. Maybe this is just the latest chapter in a drama that’s been playing out since childhood: “Dad always liked you better!” Maybe you’re especially chafed that your relative took advantage of your attempt to be fair.

But again, the rock probably has only the value you give it. If you decide it’s not worth fighting for, then it’s just a rock.

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Don’t obsess about Social Security “breakeven”

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Dear Liz: I read your recent article in which you advised waiting before starting Social Security benefits. Is this good advice for everyone? You probably know that there is a break-even age around 85, so that if you die before 85, starting benefits early is better, but if you die after 85, starting late is better. “Better” means you receive more money. So, right off the bat the advice to delay is wrong for half the people in their 60s, since about half will die before the crossover, and if they had delayed, they lost money.

Answer: The problem with do-it-yourself financial planning is that people often focus their attention too narrowly and ignore the bigger picture. That’s what leads them to do things like pay down relatively low-rate student loan debt while failing to save for retirement. They may focus only on the expected returns of each option, while ignoring the tax implications, company retirement matches and the extraordinary value of future compounding of returns.

Obsessing about the break-even point — the date when the income from larger, delayed retirement benefits outweighs what you’d get from starting early — is often a mistake, financial planners will tell you. There are a number of other considerations, including the value of Social Security benefits as longevity insurance. If you live longer than you expect, a bigger Social Security check can be enormously helpful later in life when your other assets may be spent. Also, if you have a spouse who may be dependent on your benefit as a survivor, delaying retirement benefits to increase your checks will reduce the blow when she has to live on just one check (yours) instead of two (yours and her spousal benefit).

In his book “Social Security for Dummies,” author Jonathan Peterson offers a guide to figuring out your break-even point based just on the dollars you can expect to receive (rather than on assumed inflation or investment returns). In general, the break-even point is about age 78. That means those who live longer would be better off waiting until full retirement age, currently 66, than if they started early at age 62.

Currently, U.S. men at age 65 can expect to live to nearly 83, and the life expectancy for U.S. women at age 65 is over 85.

You can change that break-even by making assumptions about inflation and your future prowess as an investor, but remember that the increase in benefits you get each year by delaying retirement between age 62 and 66 is about 7%. It’s 8% for delaying between age 66 and age 70, when your benefit maxes out. Those are guaranteed returns, and there’s no “safe return” anywhere close to that in today’s environment.

Don’t forget that those benefits will be further compounded by cost-of-living increases. One researcher published in the Journal of Financial Planning found that an investor would have to achieve a rate of return that exceeds inflation by 5% to justify taking benefits at 62 rather than at full retirement age.

“At higher inflation rates and/or higher marginal tax rates, the rate of return may need to be even higher, perhaps in excess of 7% or 8% above inflation to justify taking benefits at age 62,” wrote Doug Lemons, a certified financial planner who retired from the Social Security Administration after 36 years.

You can read Lemons’ paper, as well as other research that planners have done on maximizing Social Security benefits, at http://www.fpanet.org/journal.

Keep Credit Cards Active Without Slipping Into Debt

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Dear Liz: Recently I’ve paid off almost $20,000 in credit card debt and am determined not to go down that path again. Because I haven’t used these cards in a while, though, I’m starting to get notifications from the credit card companies that they’re closing my accounts because of inactivity. I know having long-standing accounts on your credit report is a good thing, but I don’t want to be tempted to use these cards just to keep the account open. Is it a bad thing if almost all of my credit card accounts get closed?

Answer: Your good histories with these cards should remain on your credit reports for years. But if you stop using credit entirely, eventually your credit reports won’t generate credit scores. That could cause you problems if you later want to borrow money (say, to buy a home) and could even affect your insurance premiums, since insurers use credit information as well.

It’s not too hard to keep accounts active without slipping into debt again. Simply set up a bill to be charged automatically to each account, then set up automatic payments with the credit card issuer so the full balance is taken out of your checking account each month.

 

Widower may be out of inheritance

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Dear Liz: My wife of 34 years died five years ago. Her father is 94. He has accumulated a large amount of wealth over the last 40 years. I always made a point of staying out of financial discussions between my father-in-law and his daughters. He told us for years that upon his death all his wealth is to be divided between us (my wife and me) and her sister. Recently, a gold digger reappeared on the scene. My father-in-law and his late wife took her in at a young age when her parents died. I don’t know if she was ever formally adopted or not, or how that affects the situation. My question is, do I have any legal rights, upon my father-in-law’s death, to any distribution of his estate if I am not listed in the actual trust or will?

Answers: Your chances of inheriting from your father-in-law may have died along with your wife.

Sons-in-law don’t really have inheritance rights. If your father-in-law dies without an estate plan, state law would dictate who his heirs would be: typically his surviving spouse (if he has one) and any living children. Even his kids would have no legal right to inherit if he has a will or trust that disinherits them.

Estate plans sometimes make provisions for a child’s spouse, particularly if the money eventually will be inherited by the grandchildren. Such a trust might give you the right to income from assets that on your death would go to your wife’s children, for example. If there aren’t grandchildren, though, the money your wife would have inherited may simply go to her sister (and possibly the “gold digger,” as you describe her, if she’s included in the estate plan).

Of course, if the old man likes you, he could make a bequest to you in his will. But you have no legal right to demand that he do so, and any attempt to pressure him could raise the question of who is the actual gold digger here.

Moving student loan debt

Dear Liz: My daughter has $30,000 in student loans from obtaining her masters degree. The loans have about a 7% interest rate. She will be eligible to have $5,000 forgiven if she works five years in a low-income school. Although she is currently so employed, she does not know whether she will stay there for five years. I have a line of credit available with a 4.8% interest rate. It seems to me that she will pay less overall if she uses my line of credit to pay off her student loans and makes the monthly payment on the line of credit. Does she miss out on developing a good credit score by using my credit? Is it worth paying the higher interest rate to develop that credit history?

Answer: There are several reasons not to use your credit line, and they don’t have to do with her credit scores.

The student loans are helping her scores now and will continue to do so even after they’re paid off, since most lenders continue to report closed accounts for years.

If she uses your line of credit, though, she won’t be able to deduct the interest she pays. Student loans provide a valuable “above the line” income adjustment for most borrowers. They don’t have to itemize to take advantage of this adjustment, which is the smaller of $2,500 or the interest actually paid. The ability to take this tax break is phased out in 2013 when modified adjusted gross income is between $60,000 and $75,000 for singles and $125,000 to $155,000 for married couples filing jointly.

Also, your line of credit carries an adjustable rate that can (and likely will) go higher. The rate would have to rise only two percentage points before it equals the fixed rate on her federal student loans. Federal student loans offer a number of other protections, including income-based repayment options, forgiveness after 10 years in public service jobs (after 25 years otherwise) and forbearance or deferral should she experience an economic setback. She can learn more about these options at studentaid.ed.gov.

Finally, if she failed to make payments on your line of credit, your credit scores would be on the line — as would your home, if the account is secured by your home equity.

It’s commendable that you want to help your daughter, but in this case you both may be better off keeping the debt in her name rather than putting it in yours.

How to pay off your credit card debt

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Dear Liz: I’m confused about paying down credit card debt. Some say to pay the lowest-balance cards first and others say the highest balance or the one with the highest interest. I have almost $16,000 on credit cards ranging from a $4,930 balance on a card with an 8.24% interest rate to $660 on a card with an 18% rate.

Answer: Actually, the first question you should ask is “How much credit card debt do I have compared to my income?” If your balances equal half or more of your annual earnings, you may not be able to pay it all off. You should make appointments with a legitimate credit counselor (such as one affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at http://www.nfcc.org) and a bankruptcy attorney (referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys at http://www.nacba.org).

If your situation isn’t that dire, the fastest way out of debt is to pay the minimums on your lower-rate cards and send as much money as possible to your highest-rate card. Once that’s paid off, concentrate on paying off the next-highest-rate card, and so on. Some people instead like to target balances from smallest to largest to get a quicker feeling of victory, but you typically pay more in interest with that approach.

Credit card fraud alerts: don’t be too impressed

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Dear Liz: My wife and I have had our bank’s airline cards a long time, but we want to change because it’s become almost impossible to cash in the miles. What I don’t see in various card-comparison articles are ratings of the card issuers for customer service and fraud protection. Our bank has been quite good at both, but what about the other issuers?

Answer: People are often unduly impressed when their credit card issuers contact them frequently about possibly fraudulent charges. The issuers are the only ones at risk in these situations, since under “zero liability” policies you can’t be held responsible for bogus charges. Also, if their software were better, they might do a better job of separating legitimate from fraudulent transactions and have to bother you less.

In any case, it’s tough to tell as a customer how good the issuer’s fraud prevention measures are. So perhaps a better metric to use is customer service, and J.D. Power publishes an annual credit card satisfaction study that tries to gauge six factors: interaction; credit card terms; billing and payment; rewards; benefits and services; and problem resolution. American Express has ranked at the top of the survey every year since it started seven years ago. Discover ranked second for 2013 and Chase ranked third.