At the time of this writing, confirmed global cases of coronavirus surpassed one million. The world is grappling with an unprecedented pandemic -- the likes of which most of us have never witnessed before in our lifetimes. COVID-19 has claimed close to 53,000 lives throughout the world, and that number is  expected to surge in the next week or two. Nearly 6,000 people have died in the United States alone -- well over 2,000 more casualties than China. Italy still leads with a staggering 14,000 deaths, followed by more than 10,000 reported in Spain. The coronavirus has sent markets reeling and caused businesses big and small -- from bars and restaurants to theaters and hotels -- to shut their doors and lay off or furlough workers. Indeed, the outbreak is taking a heavy mental and financial toll on everyone from medical staff on the front lines to entrepreneurs to stay-at-home moms. A whopping 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March. Some experts ...

Society peddles the tired notion that one isn't truly content unless they're married or in a relationship. Our culture, as you've probably noticed, is highly relationship-centric. Valentine's Day, dating apps, celebrity weddings, juicy hookups bantered about at work. Our Facebook News Feeds replete with articles and memes pertaining to love and relationships, not to mention posts of people professing their love for their partner. We might as well call it what it really is: a craze. An obsession, if you will. There's no question that relationships are a wonderful thing. Who doesn't love to hear stories of couples getting engaged on the Eiffel Tower or celebrating their 50th anniversary? A person can derive a wealth of benefits -- physical, emotional, and financial -- from being partnered up. Provided one is in a healthy relationship, a person's significant other can greatly enrich their life, being there to cheer their successes and help them throug...

Entering into a relationship with the intention of changing or fixing someone is a surefire recipe for disaster. For starters, while it's possible that your influence will help change someone for the better, there are never any guarantees. And even if they do make progress, who's to say they can't revert to their old ways? It isn't your responsibility to resolve all their problems for them. You can lend a helping hand, sure, but you should never carry their burdens on your shoulders. One thing is to feel compelled to help someone you're married to or have been with for many years, and another is to start a relationship with someone who has issues -- whether financial or emotional -- from the outset and expects you to rescue them. I've heard stories of women who have resolved to change a so-called bad boy into a nice guy and seen their efforts bear little fruit. Sooner or later, it becomes apparent that the guy is unable to turn the corner in his life...

I couldn't believe my eyes when I first read about this. After it was reported that rapper Nelly owed $2.4 million in taxes to the IRS, fans of the rapper took to Twitter to propose that everyone help Nelly out with his financial troubles by streaming his songs en masse! The hashtags "#HotInHerreStreamingParty" and "#SaveNelly" trended on Twitter, as Nelly fans exhorted people to stream his 2002 single "Hot in Herre" for repeated listening. Nelly fans would have to stream the song over 280 million times on Spotify for the rapper to make enough to cover his debt, which is nothing short of far-fetched. While I find it noble that Nelly's fans would go to such great lengths to help the rapper, this is a classic example of adulation for celebrities gone too far. It sets a bad example for current and aspiring stars, sending the wrong-headed message that if you become famous enough, your fans will bail you out when you hit dire financial strai...

It's interesting how much life really changes as we get older. When we're young -- say, in our late teens and early 20s -- we have ample time for ourselves, but not much money to make the most of that time. Once we hit our 30s -- the time when we typically settle down to start a family and are more established in our careers -- we find ourselves on more solid footing financially, but with much less time available than we had in our post-high school years. It isn't until the kids move out for college that we transition back to a life where we can focus more on ourselves and our interests, but by then, those interests tend to be radically different than the ones we enjoyed when we were younger. It's no surprise more and more couples are waiting longer to have kids -- or are opting not to have them at all.  Perfectly content with their sans-kids lifestyle, such couples are in no hurry to go from a life of unfettered freedom to baby bottles and Dora the Explorer. ...

Society makes singlehood out to be something weird or unfortunate -- something that needs to be remedied. When some people find out a person is in their 40s and 50s and still single, they tend to give the individual awkward looks and assume something must be wrong with them. Well, guess what? Studies show that many people are single and loving it. When asked why they're content being single, many say they relish being free and unshackled. They like not having to depend on or run decisions -- whether financial or otherwise -- by a partner. They love doing whatever they want, whenever they want, with no one to get in their way. Want to wake up at noon? No problem. Leave for Hawaii on a whim? No one's stopping you. And when they're asked whether they do get lonely sometimes, they say they're able to avoid such feelings by tapping into their wide network of friends and relatives. Many of these folks have been burned in the past by an ex and refuse to give thei...

A study finds that couples who spend big bucks on their wedding often end up having shorter-lived marriages than those who have cheaper weddings. For the study, two economics professors surveyed over 3,000 people and found that the more expensive the wedding is, the sooner the couple is likely to divorce. On the other hand, couples who spend less than $1,000 tend to have longer-lasting marriages. An expensive wedding can cause financial strain early in the marriage, leading to tension in the relationship. Not surprisingly, the top predictor of divorce is having arguments over money. Many people (especially women) dream of having a lavish, fairytale-like wedding, but this study shows that doing so could negatively impact the marriage. Though the study doesn't discuss buying expensive rings and paying for an expensive honeymoon, I'm sure those kinds of purchases also have the potential to get the marriage off to a rocky start. I'm happy to say that my wife and I pla...

While men become preoccupied with women's looks, many women make men's resources one of the top items on their wish list -- despite the fact that many of them may deny this. It's no secret that most men make considerably more money than their female counterparts in the workplace. What's more, women were hit especially hard by the recession, with some still struggling to land positions that pay as well as the jobs they lost during the downturn. Two of my closest friends are in relationships with women who aren't nearly as well off as them. But I see this quite frequently with women at work -- it's their husbands who seem to be retiring first, and, yes -- the men are older. There may be instances where the woman in the relationship just doesn't want to work hard and figures she can just lean on her guy, the more ambitious of the two, for financial support. Nevertheless, a woman who says she doesn't care at all about a man's resources is likely ...

Our high school/college days seem well behind us, don't they? There are certainly things most us might miss about that time of our lives, including: Having a busier social life than we do now: People go in different directions after high school, causing us to lose contact with many of our closest friends. And though we may be able to keep in touch with a few, things are never quite the same. Proximity plays a huge role when it comes to friendships. It was so much easier to maintain them when you knew you'd see your buddies every day in gym class or Home Ec. Once you graduate from college and have bills, work, and other priorities to worry about, an active social life no longer takes precedence. Once we hit our 30s and 40s, we can consider ourselves lucky if we have three people we can call true friends. Being closer to family members: For most of us, our high school years comprise the last stretch in which we'll ever live at home with our parents. While living at ho...