A resting place with Fido, and what to do when a Roth IRA changes hands
Q: While reading about buying a burial plot in advance, I had a question about pets: Can you include a deceased pet’s remains in your coffin or urn?
A: Most funeral directors are willing to tuck an urn with your pet’s ashes into your casket or place the urn in your mausoleum. But be discreet about the decision.
“Most cemeteries for people do not allow pet burials if they know about it,” says Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance. So don’t plan on including Fido’s name on your gravestone as that would tip off your plan to the cemetery. Some cemeteries are changing their zoning so pets and people can be near each other, says Coleen Ellis, founder of Two Hearts Pet Loss Center, a resource for those grieving the death of a pet. These cemeteries may have a peopleonly section, a pets-only section and an area where a person’s grave can be next to a pet’s. Many pet cemeteries also allow cremated human remains to be buried with pets, but pet cemeteries are less regulated than those for people.
Q: I had my Roth account at one firm for eight years before moving it to a different brokerage two years ago. I am now 69 years old and would like to take a withdrawal. Will I have to wait three more years before I can take out money from the account to satisfy the five-year rule?
A: Nope, you’re good. The five-year rule requires that you must have been contributing to a Roth at least five years in order to withdraw the gains tax-free, but the clock does not restart every time you switch to a new IRA custodian.
You should, however, keep good records and make sure the new brokerage knows how long you had been contributing to the IRA at the other firm “so that they can properly code the account,” says Taylor Hammons, head of retirement plans at Kestra Financial in Austin, Texas. “They’re the ones sending copies of your 1099-R to the IRS.”
Note that it’s only the gains the fiveyear rule applies to. Your contributions to the Roth can be withdrawn tax-free any time no matter how long you’ve had the account.