The week's best financial advice

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

Wait until 10 a.m. to trade

Mornings might be the "most perilous time of the trading day," said Dan Strumpf and Corrie Driebusch in The Wall Street Journal. Buying and selling stocks is especially heavy just as the market opens at 9:30 a.m. EST, since many investors have submitted orders the night before. But that's also when the gap between the price sellers want for a stock — the "ask" price — and what buyers are offering — the "bid" — is biggest. In the first half of the year, the difference between the bid and ask prices of S&P 500 shares was 0.84 percentage point in the first minute of trading, with the gap shrinking to 0.08 percentage point after 9:45 a.m. and staying low throughout the day. The difference amounts to "pennies a share" in added costs for investors, but that can add up quickly in a volatile market. Your best bet? Wait until the day gets underway to trade.

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Is your 401(k) plan a dud?

Don't get stuck with a pricey 401(k) plan, said Consumer Reports. Even seemingly small differences in fees can add up, according to a study by the Center for American Progress. Investing in a retirement savings plan with annual costs of 1.3 percent means paying almost $125,000 more over your career than you would in a low-cost fund with fees of just 0.25 percent. Investigate your fund's expenses by logging into your online account or looking at the prospectus. The administrator of your 401(k) plan is also required to notify you annually about costs. Anything more than 0.76 percent can be considered a high-cost plan. Your plan should also offer the choice of investing in index funds, which often have expense ratios of less than 0.2 percent, much less than actively managed funds.

Don't count on an inheritance

"It turns out inheritances barely move the needle when it comes to retirement readiness," said Kelli B. Grant at CNBC.com. Current retirees are expected to transfer $12 trillion to their heirs in coming years, but even after factoring in those inheritances, 51.6 percent of U.S. households are still at risk of falling short on retirement savings, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "If those inheritances weren't in play, 52.4 percent of households would be at risk. In other words, receiving an inheritance has been a retirement-saver for less than 1 percent of households." The bottom line: "Don't count on inheriting your way out of this problem," said Alicia Munnell, the center's director.