Dear Liz: I have too many credit cards that I opened to get frequent flier points. I understand that closing a credit card lowers your credit scores. How long does the ding last? How long should I wait before closing another card? Do you have any other advice on this subject? You probably have discussed this in previous columns but it might be worth repeating.

Answer: If you have a lot of cards, closing a few is unlikely to significantly hurt your credit scores as long as you do so strategically.

A big chunk of your credit scores is determined by how much of your available credit you’re using. You want a large gap between the amounts you charge and your credit limits. Try to keep open the cards with the highest credit limits. If you have multiple cards with the same issuer, ask if the credit limit from a card you’re closing can be transferred to one you’re keeping.

Even if your scores do dip because of a closure, the effect is likely to be short-lived if you continue using credit responsibly.

Ideally, you would review your portfolio of credit cards every year or so to determine which cards to keep and which to close. Travel rewards cards typically have annual fees, sometimes significant ones, so you’ll want to make sure every card you have is at least paying for itself in annual rewards and benefits.

Also consider the mental load involved. As you age, you may find it more difficult to monitor multiple accounts and keep track of all the details. You may want to simplify your finances by winnowing your cards down to just one or two. At that point, keeping your finances manageable will be more important than maintaining the highest possible credit scores.

Dear Liz: If someone inherits my retirement account, is there any way they can avoid having their Medicare premiums increased for one year?

Answer: A large-enough retirement account could affect their Medicare premiums for up to 10 years, not just one.

Normally inheritances aren’t taxable, but retirement accounts are the exception. Withdrawals from inherited retirement accounts are usually taxable as income, and most non-spouse inheritors must drain a retirement account within 10 years. Withdrawals from inherited Roth accounts aren’t taxable, but the accounts still must be drained by the inheritor within a decade.

If the inheritor is on Medicare, taxable withdrawals could boost income enough to increase their Medicare premiums, thanks to the income-related monthly adjustment amounts (IRMAA). This surcharge starts once modified adjusted gross income exceeds certain amounts, which in 2025 is $106,000 for single filers and $212,000 for married couples filing jointly.

Anyone who inherits a retirement plan should get advice from a tax pro, but that’s particularly important when withdrawals might affect tax brackets and Medicare premiums. The pro can help determine how quickly or slowly the money should be withdrawn to maximize how much the inheritor gets to keep.

Dear Liz: I waited until age 70 to start collecting Social Security. My wife turns 65 this year so her full retirement age is 67. Can she start collecting Social Security benefits now based on my benefit or should we wait until her full retirement age?

Answer: If she applies for Social Security now, she would be “deemed” to be applying for both her own benefit and her spousal benefit and given the larger of the two. She would not be allowed to switch to the other benefit later.

Most people are better off waiting at least until their full retirement age to apply, and many will maximize their lifetime benefits by delaying until age 70. Her mileage may vary, of course, so it’s worth using a Social Security claiming calculator and consider getting advice from an objective source, such as a fee-only financial advisor.

Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist. 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.

Investigators have begun sorting through the wreckage of Thursday’s plane crash in India, the nation’s deadliest in three decades. It could take months before a definitive explanation emerges, but videos of the accident and other evidence have begun to offer clues about what may have brought down the Air India flight, killing more than 260 people.

Here are some questions that investigators hope to answer in days and weeks ahead, according to aviation safety experts.

Were the wing flaps and slats properly extended?

Thursday’s crash occurred moments after the plane departed the airport in Ahmedabad, India. A short, blurry video showed what appeared to be the start of a routine takeoff, aviation safety experts said. But soon after leaving the ground, the plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, began to descend before crashing and exploding.

At its most basic, the crash reflected a failure to meet the fundamental requirements of flight. To fly, a plane needs to generate enough lift to overcome gravity and enough thrust to overcome the air’s resistance, known as drag. The flight on Thursday seemed to fail on both accounts.

“There appeared to be an issue with the thrust and there appeared to be an issue with the lift,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety consultant. “And we unfortunately saw what the result was.”

When an airplane takes off, flaps at the rear of the wing and slats at the front are typically extended to provide more surface area to create more lift as the plane gains speed.

“Just given the fact that this was a takeoff accident, begs the question regarding the settings of the wing slats and flaps, which is critical for taking off in a big jet that’s fully loaded with fuel,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.

It was not clear whether those flaps and slats were properly extended. If they weren’t, experts said, investigators will want to know why. Did the pilots choose not to extend them or fail to do so? Was there some kind of mechanical failure that prevented the pilots from extending those parts? Even if the slats and flaps were extended, it would be difficult to know if they were appropriately deployed because they can be configured differently for different situations. It’s also possible that they were extended but retracted too soon.

“The video is just too grainy, but that is something that’s clearly recorded in the flight data recorder,” said Mr. Guzzetti. “So hopefully, the recorders will tell the tale.”

Why was the landing gear down?

The video shows that the landing gear remained extended throughout the plane’s ascent and descent, which experts described as unusual. Landing gear creates drag, so retracting it is typically one of the first actions a plane’s pilots take after the plane is off the ground.

But experts said the pilots may not have retracted the gear for a number of reasons. A mechanical problem may have prevented the pilots from lifting the landing gear, for example. Or the pilots may have been preoccupied with another, more pressing problem.

“The airplane will climb fine leaving the gear down,” said Shawn Pruchnicki, a former accident investigator at the Air Line Pilots Association and an assistant professor of aviation safety at Ohio State University. If something else had gone wrong in the plane, the pilots may have focused on addressing that first, he said: “You have bells and alarms going off — there’s all kinds of stuff happening.”

Were there engine problems?

Engines provide thrust and investigators will want to know if they failed for any reason. An engine breakdown sometimes comes with telltale signs — smoke, fire, a flash — but experts said none of those are clearly apparent in the blurry videos of the crash.

One video shows what appears to be a dust cloud shortly after the plane leaves the ground. That could have been caused by an engine or it could have been caused by the wingtips disturbing the air, experts said.

Planes are designed to fly with just one engine, a situation that commercial airline pilots train for “excessively,” Mr. Pruchnicki said, adding that he believed the 787 Dreamliner probably didn’t experience a single engine failure, but both engines could have malfunctioned.

If that were the case, it would have happened at the “absolute worst time,” said Mr. Pruchnicki. A double engine failure occurring shortly after takeoff, when the plane was only several hundred feet off the ground, would have left the pilots without sufficient time to respond to the emergency.

“You can’t manage a double engine failure that close to the ground,” he said, recalling the 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson,” when a US Airways jetliner landed in the Hudson River after the aircraft lost power in both engines after striking a flock of birds. “These guys were in a residential area, a business area. They had no place to go either. There was no field to set it down gently. So, unfortunately, they ended up in buildings.”

A failure of both engines could have many causes: a bird or drone strike, inadvertent fuel shut-off, issues with automated thrust management. There is no evidence that these problems played a role in Thursday’s crash.

“There’s easily a hundred different explanations of possibilities,” Mr. Pruchnicki said. Analyzing the flight data recorder and inspecting the engine itself would provide an “unbelievably forensic” look at what happened, he added.

What was happening in the flight deck?

Investigators will also probably be sharply focused on what unfolded in the flight deck, or cockpit, before the crash.

There were two pilots on the Air India flight, which is typical in commercial aviation, with one pilot in charge of flying and the other providing support, monitoring the plane’s various systems. Were those duties split appropriately? What were the pilots saying to one another? And did they perform their jobs adequately?

Planes are also equipped with various warning systems to alert pilots of problems. Investigators will want to know if those warning systems worked as intended.

“Did they get the warning that they were supposed to receive or were they misconfigured? If they didn’t get a warning, then why? If they did, what did the crew do when they heard it?” said Mr. Guzzetti.

What other sources of evidence are there?

Investigators will also be on the hunt for more evidence.

Typically, they scour and analyze wreckage for clues and collect testimony from witnesses, such as airport personnel who may have seen the crash. They will also look for additional videos.

But their most important task will be recovering the wealth of technical information and audio recordings contained in the plane’s black boxes: a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, both of which have been recovered.

“Once they have that information, it will help focus the investigation into specific areas,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot and chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm. “So right now, it’s about gathering of documentation and evidence and keeping an open mind.”

A nonprofit controlled by Anne Wojcicki, former chief executive of 23andMe, has won the bidding process to buy the bankrupt genetic testing company.

If approved by the court, the sale would put Wojcicki back at the helm of the company she co-founded and previously attempted to take private.

23andMe, which helped popularize at-home DNA test kits and was once valued at $6 billion, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March.

The potential sale of the company has raised questions over privacy standards for genetic data, which experts say is uniquely sensitive, immutable and irreplaceable if stolen.

More than 11 million customers have given DNA samples to 23andMe, putting a trove of genetic information under the company’s control.

Wojcicki’s nonprofit TTAM Research Institute agreed to comply with 23andMe’s privacy policy and committed to adopting additional consumer protections, according to a 23andMe statement. TTAM has offered $305 million to buy 23andMe and the company’s assets.

“I am thrilled that TTAM Research Institute will be able to continue the mission of 23andMe to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome,” Wojcicki said in a statement. “We believe it is critical that individuals are empowered to have choice and transparency with respect to their genetic data.”

New York-based drug maker Regeneron Pharmaceuticals was poised to buy 23andMe before the bankruptcy judge reopened the bidding process to allow for a bid from TTAM. The final round of bidding was conducted by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and concluded when Regeneron declined to make a higher bid.

Dozens of states have filed a joint lawsuit against 23andMe to block the South San Francisco-based company’s sale of its customers’ genetic data without explicit consent.

“This isn’t just data — it’s your DNA,” said Oregon Atty. Gen. Dan Rayfield in a statement. “People did not submit their personal data to 23andMe thinking their genetic blueprint would later be sold off to the highest bidder.”