57% of Americans—approximately 138 million adults—are struggling financially, according to CFSI’s Consumer Financial Health Study.

It’s easy to quote a statistic, but the lives of these individuals that make up that staggering number can be difficult to imagine.

It’s the vulnerable neighbor who works the late night shifts, the friend from school who goes home hungry, the tempers that flare between married couples.

For those who live from paycheck to paycheck, this is often their reality.

The file-and-suspend strategy—or rather, a loophole—to claim additional Social Security benefits is closing up on Apr 29, 2016. This can be difficult to wrap your head around, so I’ll try to distill it in the simplest way possible.

Let’s face it. Life with lactose intolerance is more than a little annoying when it comes to mealtimes, ever since I developed it at the age of 17.

Since then, my lactose intolerance has taken a dive to a point that I’ve become extremely sensitive towards dairy—a single drop of milk or a single flake of pastry is enough to set off a chain reaction of side effects.

And when I accidentally drank an entire glass of fruit shake that contained milk unbeknownst to me? I had diarrhea and stomach cramps so bad I had to miss a flight to Boracay, the Philippines.