The week's best financial advice

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

Growing your health savings
If your employer offers only limited options for investing your health savings account dollars, "you aren't trapped," said Kimberly Lankford at Kiplinger. HSAs are a great way to pay for medical expenses if you have high-deductible insurance, since the money goes in sheltered from income taxes, grows tax deferred, and then can be withdrawn tax free. But not all employers offer plans that allow you to invest your savings. The good news is that you can contribute to any HSA, even one that isn't offered through your employer. The downside is that if you don't contribute through payroll deductions, you might have to pay a portion of Social Security and Medicare tax on contributions. A good compromise is to take advantage of your employer's HSA and then transfer the funds once or twice a year to an HSA with better investing options.

How the Fed stiffed savers
"The past 10 years have been very good for investors, but not so much for savers," said Jeff Cox at CNBC. Since 2006, the S&P 500 has surged more than 60 percent — and more than 200 percent if you calculate from 2009. That growth has been partly fueled by the Federal Reserve's ultra-low interest rates, which encourage people to pull their money out of savings and invest it in stocks. How much have savers lost as a result? Nearly $8 billion over the past decade, according to personal finance site NerdWallet, which studied both the effect of lower interest rates on savings-account earnings and the resulting drop in what people socked away. With the Fed now expected to raise rates only twice this year, down from an initial estimate of four, "it probably will be years before savers see significant rewards."

Overpaying for wireless service
"You're probably paying too much for your mobile phone service," said Olga Kharif and Scott Moritz at Bloomberg. Between 50 and 70 percent of Americans overpay for their mobile plans, according to Consumer Reports. Analysts there say consumers "should be paying no more than $50 per phone line." However, wireless consumers "tend to be loyal to a fault." A survey of 90,000 mobile phone subscribers found that only 6 percent switched providers in the last year. Half of those who did saved $20 or more per month. Some carriers even offer special prices to subscribers threatening to leave. But it's up to consumers to stay on top of the offers.