How to help someone else build credit

April 30, 2023 5 AM PT

Dear Liz: My 30-year-old son lives in Southeast Asia. He has some U.S. bank accounts but no U.S. credit cards. If I add him to my credit card, will that help to establish credit? Or is there another way for him to start getting credit in the U.S.? At some point, he and his wife will move back to the U.S.

Answer: Adding someone to your credit card as an authorized user can be a great way to help them build credit. Your history with the card is typically added to the other person’s credit reports and used in calculating their credit scores. If you can add him to more than one card, even better. As long as you use the cards responsibly — paying the bills on time, using only a fraction of the available credit — his scores should benefit.

You don’t have to give your son access to the cards for this to work. If you do, keep in mind that authorized users aren’t responsible for paying any charges.

Authorized users typically can be added or removed with a phone call to the issuer. You also can add an authorized user online by logging into your credit card account. But removing them may require you to pick up the phone.

Your son can build credit in other ways, including credit builder loans and secured cards, but those may have to wait until he has a U.S. address.

Taxes on account withdrawals

Dear Liz: We have two large expenses that need to be paid this year. I’m in my late 60s. My wife is in her 50s. I think that we should pull the money from our brokerage account (which is taxable) and protect the money in our IRA and Roth IRA accounts so that it can continue to grow tax deferred (and tax free in the case of the Roth). My wife feels that the withdrawal should come from the IRA or Roth IRA, saying that the money used from the brokerage account would be “double taxed.” Which account would you pull the money from?

Answer: There should be no double taxation when you sell investments in a brokerage account. You pay taxes only on the growth in value of the investments you bought.

She may be confused if you’ve paid taxes in the interim on dividends and capital gains distributions. If those were paid out to you, they’re no longer part of your investment and won’t be taxed again when you sell. If the dividends and capital gains were reinvested, those amounts should be added to the original purchase price to determine your tax basis, or the amount you can deduct from the sales proceeds to determine your capital gains.

You typically benefit from favorable capital gains rates if you sell investments in a taxable brokerage account that you’ve held for at least a year. By contrast, withdrawals from traditional IRAs are typically taxed at higher income tax rates. A large enough withdrawal from a traditional IRA could throw you into a higher tax bracket. And withdrawals from either the brokerage account or the traditional IRA could increase your Medicare premiums.

Qualified withdrawals from a Roth may not affect your taxes or premiums, but as you noted you’d be giving up future tax-free compounding, which could be an even stiffer price to pay.

It also matters who owns the retirement accounts. For example, a withdrawal from your wife’s IRA could be penalized as well as taxed if she’s not yet 59½.

There are enough moving parts to this decision that you’d be smart to consult a tax pro who can model how the various transactions will affect the rest of your finances.

Dear Liz: I am 67 and am delaying taking my Social Security until age 70 to take advantage of the 8% annual deferral. I was told by an individual at the Social Security office that I won’t get any inflation adjustments, such as the 8.7% increase for this year, and that people only receive the inflation adjustments if they’re actually receiving Social Security. Is that correct?

Answer: No. The Social Security Administration makes that clear in its two-page document, “Your Retirement Benefit: How It’s Figured.” Here’s what that document says verbatim:

“You’re eligible for cost-of-living benefit increases starting with the year you turn age 62. This is true even if you don’t get benefits until your full retirement age or even age 70. We add cost-of-living increases to your benefits beginning with the year you reach 62. Benefits are adjusted yearly to reflect the increase, if any, in the cost-of-living as measured by the Consumer Price Index.”

Your experience unfortunately isn’t unique. Other readers have reported getting misinformation or bad advice from Social Security reps. Social Security is a complicated system with many nuances, so it’s important to get a second opinion from a knowledgeable source, such as a fee-only financial planner, before making decisions regarding your benefits.

Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist for NerdWallet. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the “Contact” form at asklizweston.com.