The week's best financial advice

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

The psychology of debt

Even financially savvy people have a hard time juggling debt, said Emory Nelms and Dan Ariely at Scientific American. The most cost-effective way to pay off multiple debts is to focus on loans with the highest interest rates first. But evidence shows that consumers consistently pay off smaller debts first, in a bid to reduce their total number of outstanding balances, even if it means racking up greater long-term costs. In a recent experiment asking participants to juggle multiple debt payments, just 3 percent allocated money "in ways that were close to optimal." Experts suggest pursuing strategies that help counteract our natural tendency to approach debt irrationally. For example, you might set up automatic payments for the debt with the highest interest.

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Backgrounding your broker

"Few retirement savers take the time to look up records for their brokers and financial advisers," but it might be time to start, said Jonnelle Marte at The Washington Post. Some 7 percent of advisers have been disciplined for misconduct, such as selling unsuitable investments to clients or making trades without their input, according to new research by the University of Chicago. Even when such advisers left a firm or were fired, nearly half found work with a different firm within a year. Advisers disciplined once were also "very likely to act up again," with nearly 40 percent becoming repeat offenders. Investors can investigate their adviser's professional history through online services such as BrokerCheck, as well as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's search tool SmartCheck.

Don't make this 401(k) mistake

"You could be cheating yourself out of some retirement money without even knowing it," said Katie Lobosco at CNN. Target-date funds are an increasingly popular option for 401(k) savers, offering a mix of stocks and bonds that automatically adjusts as retirement approaches. However, two in three people invested in a TDF are not using it correctly, according to investment adviser Financial Engines. A TDF is designed to hold all of one's assets, but many investors add additional funds alongside the TDF, leaving their asset mix skewed. Some investors reason that it's better not to "have all their eggs in one basket" even though a TDF itself is already a diversified portfolio. Savers who didn't put everything in their TDF had annual returns that were 2 percent lower on average than those who did.