Beware of the 'churn'

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

Problems to watch for in your will

Estate planning can be more complicated than just having a will, said Ashlea Ebeling in The Wall Street Journal. "Many people assume their will is the final word on who gets what when they die," but there are some documents that can override wills. They include "beneficiary forms for retirement accounts, life insurance, and some bank and brokerage accounts." Under federal law, married spouses are entitled to the 401(k) "no matter what the beneficiary form or will says," unless they formally waive it, which must be notarized. "With individual retirement accounts, by contrast, in most states (other than California or Texas) you can name someone other than your spouse as beneficiary without a waiver." If your insurance policy was purchased on your own, "the insurance company’s rules govern."

A grim decline for bonds

"The bond market is back in the doldrums," said Krystal Hur at CNN. Worry that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates higher for longer has driven U.S. Treasury yields to their highest level in over a decade. That’s good news for anyone buying a bond today with the intention of holding it until maturity. But traders are seeing the prices of their existing bonds tank. One widely tracked exchange-traded bond fund, the iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF, is on pace to decline for the third straight year, something that hasn’t happened since its launch in 2003. "A flurry of new government debt issuance" has also "inundated" the market, pushing down prices.

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Beware of the ‘churn’

"Credit-card churners" are purchasing expensive concert tickets for resellers to maximize their reward points, said Jason Koebler at 404Media. "Churning" is a once-obscure practice in which people try to take maximum advantage of credit-card signup bonuses and other rewards programs. One company, PFS Buyers Club, incentivizes churners to get points by buying expensive concert tickets for artists like Taylor Swift on behalf of ticket resellers, who add a small commission. But this "human-buying botnet" system can backfire. Recently, "PFS told its members to buy as many tickets to Travis Scott’s shows as possible," and his entire tour quickly sold out. But prices on the resale market for Scott tickets have plummeted to $12, threatening PFS’s ability to reimburse its members. 

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.