The week's best financial advice

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

Google spurns payday loans

Google is banning ads from payday lenders, saying it hopes "fewer people will be exposed to misleading or harmful" financial products, said Andrea Peterson and Jonnelle Marte at The Washington Post. Beginning July 13, paid ads from the payday loan industry will no longer appear on the top or right side of search results. This is the first time Google has banned a category of financial products, having until now mostly prohibited ads "for largely illicit activities such as selling guns, explosives, and drugs." The search giant has been under increasing pressure from consumer advocates, who accuse payday lenders of exploiting the poor and vulnerable. About 40 percent of the roughly $40 billion in loans issued by payday lenders in 2015 happened online, where borrowers pay an average fee of $95 for a typical $375 loan, compared with $55 at a storefront.

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Watch that credit utilization

Paying your bills on time isn't enough to guarantee a sterling credit score, said Suzanne Woolley at Bloomberg. "Even if you don't carry a balance, your score may be dinged if you use a lot of your available credit." That's because most card issuers report to credit bureaus around the close of the billing cycle, before bills are paid. If your usage is high one month, pay off the balance five days to 10 days before the close of your cycle. You can safely tap 20 to 25 percent of available credit before it starts to hurt your score. The upside is that lowering your ratio of used to unused credit is one of the few ways to quickly boost your credit score. So if you pay off the balance on a few cards, "don't close them down."

Insuring your summer vacation

"Before cracking open your guidebook, make one more purchase to ensure that your dream vacation goes smoothly: travel insurance," said Miriam Cross at Kiplinger. A comprehensive insurance policy will cover the gamut of trip wreckers, like illness, transportation delays, or severe weather. It's also "relatively inexpensive," typically 5 percent of the cost of your trip, and can be bought up to 24 hours before your departure. The further in advance you buy, the more options there are available, like coverage for preexisting medical conditions or the ability to cancel for any reason. Avoid insurance sold by airlines, cruise companies, and travel aggregators; they typically offer fewer benefits. "The best way to shop for a policy is to use a comparison site, such as Insure​MyTrip.com or SquareMouth.com."