Commentary “Ghosting,” the practice of ending a relationship suddenly, and without any explanation, cutting off all forms of communication with another person, is very costly. Analysts at SOCi, Inc., a U.S. marketing platform, recently published a report outlining the many ways in which retailers are “ghosting” customers, and how this practice is costing the country…

Dear Dave, I’ve been struggling for about a year, ever since I made a stupid new-college-graduate decision to finance a car. It’s a 2018 Jeep Compass, and I owe $21,000 on it. The trade-in value is about $11,000, so I really got stung on the sticker price and everything else. I also have $85,000 in…

Money is the most difficult subject to discuss between two people in love. Why? Several reasons: It’s personal. We’re taught as children to never ask how much people earn, what things cost or how much money people have. It’s rude; it’s poor manners; and it is just not done. We spend the first two decades…

Every week at the mental health clinic I lead, I hear people say things like this: “I know lots of people, but I don’t feel truly connected to anyone.” “I wish I felt close to someone—just one person—but I don’t.” “To be honest, I feel lonely most of the time.” Among the many crises currently…

We live in a crazy world where we get into heated debates with strangers on the internet and show we like stuff by pressing tiny digital hearts. Who came up with this weirdness? And as we have more and more digital interactions, the data shows we’re losing actual human connection. A report by Harvard suggests…

This film is only available in North America, the UK, and Australia because of territorial licensing. Four couples from the United States, Japan, India, and Germany open up about their relationships, which have all lasted, remarkably, longer than 50 years. In frank and funny interviews, each pair reflects on life before and beyond the moments…

In an epigraph to his 1926 novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway quotes Gertrude Stein: “You are all a lost generation.” Stein was referring to those born between the 1880s and 1900, particularly the men who had served in World War I and the men and women of the “Roaring Twenties.” In some ways,…

Dear Dave, My mom took out a Parent PLUS loan in 2009 to help pay for my college education. I also took out $70,000 in student loans myself. My mom never made a payment on the loan she took out for me, and now the amount due on the Parent PLUS loan has ballooned to…

Dear Dave, I am on Baby Step 2 of your plan, and I am about four months away from being debt-free. My younger brother is a good person, but he is very careless with his finances. He is always asking to borrow money from me. I don’t want to be mean or damage our relationship,…

My wife and I have been married for 11 years. That’s not long enough to be too confident in our success—after all, it’s just a few years longer than the average U.S. marriage of eight years. But it’s long enough to have endured many different seasons of life, to have seen each other at our…