The week's best financial advice

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

Social Security's regressive creep

Rich people are living longer, and that's "tilting Social Security in their favor," said Neil Irwin at The New York Times. Social Security was designed to provide more generous retirement benefits to low-income workers, by giving them a higher rate of return on their tax dollars than high earners. "That's progressivity in action," or would be if high and low earners lived to the same age. But over the past 30 years, life expectancy has steadily crept up for the rich, while staying roughly the same for those lower down the income scale. An American man in the top 1 percent — making at least $2 million a year — can now expect to live to 87, nine years longer on average than a man who earns $30,000 a year. If that low earner died at 78, "he would lose about $115,000 in benefits, compared with what he would receive if he lived as long as the wealthy man."

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Stop money dripping away

Water bills are on the rise, said Geoff Williams at US News. The price of residential water service is going up faster than the cost of nearly every other household staple in 30 major U.S. cities, according to water conservation news site CircleOfBlue.org. To reduce your bill, get smart about how your family uses water. The biggest source of waste is the bathroom, where the average person uses up to 50 gallons per day. "Beyond the obvious ideas of taking shorter showers and not letting the water run when you brush your teeth," consider installing water-saving devices like faucet aerators and lower-flow showerheads. A 1.5 gallons-per-minute showerhead can save the average household $73 a year.

Goldman Sachs goes Main Street

You no longer need to be a high roller to bank with Goldman Sachs, said Jessica Dickler at CNBC. The Wall Street titan is launching an online-only bank for the masses, with no transaction fees and no minimum deposits. Goldman's new GS Bank also offers an attractive savings account rate: 1.05 percent annual yield, compared with the nationwide average of 0.08 percent. The new venture is the latest sign that "the online retail banking industry is booming." Online banks were the only category of banks to gain market share in the past decade among customers moving banks or establishing their first account. Online-only banks now attract approximately 12 percent of all new bank customers in the U.S. — many of whom are millennials — compared with only 4 percent a decade ago.