2025 Receipts
The year I didn’t give up
This newsletter is epic, and I think that speaks to what an incredible year it was. Thanks for indulging me in this roundup, and for being such an amazing community. The Purse readers really mean so much to me.
When I look back at 2025, it’s funny to me that I can break it down into four almost perfectly distinct quarters. I started off the year with a business partner and a full-time mat-leave job and the firm belief that we could hit 50,000 free subscribers by the end of the year. By the second quarter, the business partner and I had parted ways, and I was running The Purse solo and strongly considering giving it all up to go back to a corporate media job.
In Q3, thanks to an amazing brand sponsorship deal with Acorns Early, I went in the complete opposite direction, making the bold decision to stop taking any freelance work that wasn’t directly connected to The Purse. The fourth quarter was perhaps the best, as Alicia Adamczyk joined The Purse as senior editor. Together, we increased the amount we published The Purse to two newsletters a week.
I didn’t come anywhere near hitting 50,000 free subscribers this year. Today, the subscriber count sits around 17,500. I’m disappointed, but I’m not totally surprised. As I wrote in June’s anniversary post, you can’t see growth if you don’t put in the work. And yes, I know I work hard, but truly growing a newsletter’s readership takes a certain focus, strategy, and a heavy dose of luck. Here’s hoping I hit that 50k goal in 2026.
Many of the new subscribers came in two big bursts at the start and end of the year, thanks to two podcasts interviews I did. In January, Francis Zierer interviewed me for his podcast, The Creator Spotlight. I truly had no idea that Francis’s newsletter was so popular—he passed 400,000 subscribers earlier this year. I probably wouldn’t have been so frank in the interview if I knew! In the month after that interview aired, The Purse added 1,000 free subscribers.
The second notable podcast appearance came this December, when I joined Katie Gatti Tassin for the penultimate episode of her podcast, Money With Katie. I knew Katie had a big following, and The Purse audience has grown by another 500 free subs since that interview was released mid-month.
But obviously, growing The Purse isn’t just about subscriber count. One of my favorite things about running my own business is being able to experiment, and I experimented a lot this year, especially with new story ideas. Some of it worked out really well! (I love Alicia’s new series 30-Something!) And others sort of fizzled. (Extra Credit never really caught on.) Alicia and I have a whole Slack channel dedicated to new ideas, so you can rest assured that we’ll continue publishing interesting stories in the new year.
To date, we published 92 newsletters, 24 editions of Home Economics, heard from 11 couples on their division of labor, and wrote 15 weekly roundups. We added nearly 5,000 new free subscribers, and we're ending the year with roughly 700 paid subscribers. Phew! No wonder I’m tired!
As we close out 2025, I want to share the highlights from the past year. Let me know your favorites in the comments!
January 2025
My friend Ally Jane Ayers launched her newsletter, Money Changes Everything, in January, and she also helped me launch the short-lived contributor series Extra Credit with an excellent piece on mistakes people make when working with a financial advisor. Ally Jane’s newsletter is such a wonderful source of financial advice. If you’re not subscribed, you should be. (And she has a personal finance book coming out in 2026!)
On the very last day of January, Ally Jane and I did a Substack Live on the Great Wealth Transfer. I always love talking with Ally Jane—she’s super smart, and she knows her shit. But this was notable for another reason. At the beginning of the month, I started seeing Substack promoting its Market Forecast Summit, which featured a roster of (surprise, surprise) mostly male speakers. I was annoyed! And then I decided I should just reach out and ask if I could join. Substack was more than happy to add me and Ally Jane to the lineup, and we had more than 3,000 people tune in to our conversation. It was a good reminder to me that sometimes you just have to raise your hand.
I never did another Substack Live in 2025. Should Alicia and I do some in 2026?
February 2025
In February, I hosted the one and only Purse event of 2025. But it was a good one. For our second Money Talks event, we gathered at a cute restaurant in Williamsburg and spent the evening talking about one of my favorite topics: clothes and money! The highlight was getting the chance to cohost with Shelcy Joseph (Market Appointment), Erika Veurink (Long Live), and Sarah Shapiro (Line Sheet).
I wrote a companion piece for the Money Talks event all about my love of shopping and spending money on clothes and my struggle to square this with my deep desire to be a conscious consumer.
My friend Heather Boneparth wrote an informative and hilarious Extra Credit about how to
survivethrive at Disney World. (I still feel this was an underappreciated post! But on the bright side, it was the post that connected me and Rachel Lipson, who became a fast friend! I love her newsletter, The Point by Brooklyn Family Travelers.)
I was so excited to have illustrator Mary Catherine Starr and her husband, Ben, share their division of labor, complete with her delightful illustrations. Her book, Mama Needs a Minute, is so funny and relatable. (As is her newsletter and Instagram!) I have one of her cards hanging up on my bulletin board above my desk, and it makes me happy every time I see it!
March 2025
Longtime readers of The Purse know that I love a good collaboration. The March edition of Group Chat came out of a conversation I had with Aja Frost (who co-writes the fantastic Platonic Love newsletter) about prenups and her decision to get one with her then-fiancé (now husband). This edition of Group Chat included such a powerhouse lineup of expert voices, including Cindy DiTiberio (The Mother Lode), Aditi Shekar (founder of the couples financial platform Zeta), Sol Lee (founder of Neptune, a prenup startup), and Kelly Schwab (a partner at Chemtob, Moss, Forman and Beyda, LLP).
I’ve met so many interesting people via Substack, and it’s been a special treat getting to know Istiaq Mian, who writes the wonderful newsletter, Substaq of Istiaq. I was so happy when he and his wife, Jillian, both busy doctors, agreed to share their division of labor. I’m still blown away at how these two juggle demanding jobs while raising two small children. Right now, the family is living in Bangladesh for the year, and Istiaq has been chronicling it in his newsletter and on Instagram. I’ve loved following along, and not just because Istiaq is always posting photos of the delicious treats he’s been enjoying!
April 2025
Hands down, Home Economics is my favorite series on The Purse, but there are some challenges that come with running it. For one, we’re at the mercy of the self-selecting few who choose to share their stories, and naturally, people who look financially successful on paper are more likely to contribute. For two, I feel very protective of the women who do choose to share, and often I’ll put the more sensitive editions (ones dealing with debt, for example) behind the paywall.
April’s paid edition of Home Economics was such a good read. The family of four is struggling to pay off over $80,000 in consumer debt, and their experience with job loss and the high cost of child care is so relatable.
Home Economics No. 27: A Family of 4 Living In Chicago and Struggling with $82,000 in Consumer Debt
Also, we’re always looking for new Home Ecs. You can fill out the form here!
April 2025 was the month that nearly broke me. Juggling a full-time mat-leave job while running The Purse by myself and taking the investing class for my CFP program was *a lot.* I definitely did a lot of second guessing myself in the spring, wondering if it was time to call it quits on The Purse. But as I wrote in the April 2025 Receipts newsletter, even though I didn’t have an epiphany on spring break, I did realize I needed to stop looking for the universe to give me a sign and make the hard decisions on my own. Spoiler alert: I haven’t gone back to a corporate media job.
May 2025
In May, I leaned into my personal life in the best ways. I went to London with my mom for a long weekend over Mother’s Day, and my friend Pat visited from New Mexico. Freddy got busy with spring baseball, and I wrapped up my mat-leave gig.
On The Purse, I wrote about my reluctance to give personal finance advice.
And in the Group Chat, so many cool moms shared what they really wanted for Mother’s Day. This list is timeless and should be referred to every year.
June 2025
June 1 marked two years of The Purse, and I wrote an essay about hitting the milestone. In many ways, year 2 was harder than year 1, and as I wrote in the piece, I still feel stressed that it seems like everyone in media thinks the solution to our industry’s crisis is a million individual newsletters. I’m also still unsure what to call myself. Is it lame to say I’m CEO of The Purse? IDK! But this is still the best job I’ve ever had!
It was such a thrill to join Katie Gatti Tassin onstage at the 92nd Street Y to interview her about her first book, Rich Girl Nation. It was a full-circle moment for both of us, because eight years before, she had sat in the audience at my book event in Dallas. We’ve both come a long way since then!
In June, The Purse launched our first significant brand partnership, with Acorns Early. I learned a lot while putting together this guide to giving your kid an allowance. One big benefit of giving Freddy an allowance this year is that he used some of that money to buy Christmas gifts for me and Ken. It was pretty sweet to see how excited he was to share what he’d picked out for us.
July 2025
I kicked off July with a newsletter about my struggle to find (and stick with) a hobby. I loved all the advice that people shared in the comments about their hobbies. Many friends reminded me that reading is a hobby (and I do like to read). Going into 2026, I’m thinking about taking up golf so I have a shared hobby with my son. Any advice for a total newbie?
Speaking of hobbies, my obsession with the Red Sox grew exponentially this summer, and I may or may not have ducked out of a girls’ dinner a little early so I could get home to see the end of a Sox game. Eep!
August 2025
In August, we took a family vacation to Chicago, and I used it as an excuse to finally launch a new travel series I’ve been wanting to do since I started The Purse.
Of course, the path to hell is paved with good intentions, and I only managed to publish one travel guide this year. And I messed up the initial form and forgot to collect email addresses. But the form is fixed now, and we’re going to start publishing travel guides monthly come January. So if you’re interested, you can fill out the form here.
As with Home Economics, the couples who participate in Division of Labor tend to be a self-selecting few who generally have figured out how to share the load (even if it’s not perfect). That’s why I was so excited to publish an anonymous entry from Marie (a pseudonym) and her husband, Michael. “I volunteered because I felt it is important to share the perspective of someone who had an extremely UNEQUAL division of labor,” Marie told me in our email exchange. I think her DoL is such an interesting read, and the comment section on this one is also so good. I’d love to do more anonymous editions of DoL in 2026.
I packed August with so many good newsletters, and I don’t want to leave out the fun series I did with my friend Erin Donnelly, an editor at Yahoo Life. We collected back-to-school shopping receipts from families across the U.S., including a mom in Texas who spent $4,000 on a pen of heifers for her son’s Future Farmers of America senior project.
September 2025
Alicia officially joined The Purse in September, and we launched our weekly roundup with an essay about tariffs and rising prices. It’s been so fun to work with Alicia again, and I really enjoy getting a chance to write about economic news in the context of our daily lives.
We also launched our second brand sponsorship, this one with Steward, a modern estate-planning company. I had just wrapped up studying estate planning for my CFP program this summer, so the timing was perfect to do a deep dive on the topic. Speaking of which, if you’re looking to add a to-do for your 2026 financial goals list, I highly recommend putting “will and end-of-life planning” on the list. Depressing, yes, but also essential.
We published the most popular Home Economics of 2025 in September. It features a badass single woman living in Brooklyn on $179,500, and it’s such a fun and inspiring read!
Alicia also published the first edition of her series 30-Something, with a very sweet and very relatable story about friendship and money in your 30s.
The paid Home Economics we published at the end of September is one of my all-time favorites. The writer, a mom and former federal employee, is so thoughtful about how she manages her family’s money. There are many highlights from her entry, but I especially love that she makes sure to donate more than she spends on clothes every year (and she likes to buy nice clothes).
October 2025
Alicia and I continued our trend of launching new series with What It Cost Me, featuring Joy Archer, who shared her experience quitting her job to sail the world with her husband. This is a good piece to return to on cold winter days just so you can pretend you’re sailing the South Pacific and not chained to your desk sending emails.
My friends Heather and Douglas Boneparth shared their division of labor on the eve of publishing their book Money Together. If you’re looking for the book to read about couples and money, this is it! (Also they have a great newsletter, The Joint Account, which is always a good read!)
November 2025
As Alicia and I have been getting into the routine of writing weekly roundups, we knew we wanted to bring in some guest contributors. I was thrilled to have my old friend Rebecca Gale write about why we can’t deduct the cost of child care as a business expense. Rebecca writes regularly about the topic of child care in the U.S. in her wonderful newsletter, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Hard.
I finally tackled a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time: the controversy of parents supporting their adult children. I stand by what I wrote, but I also love the comment section on this story, as readers brought up so many good points about how complicated family and money can be.
We ran a big sale on annual subscriptions in November, and we promised donated $5 from every new subscription to a food bank. I was thrilled that 100 of you upgraded to paid during the sale, and we were able to donate $500 across six food banks in New York, Texas, D.C., L.A., and Michigan.
December 2025
We wrapped up the year with a really amazing Division of Labor featuring economist Corinne Low and her wife, Sondra Woodruff, who are very busy building powerhouse careers and raising two young kids in Philadelphia.
Alicia wrote a fascinating (and very depressing) essay about the casino economy and the rise of sports betting and prediction markets in the U.S. She interviewed financial journalist Hanna Horvath, and one of Hanna’s brilliant quotes has become our most popular Instagram post this year. (I also highly recommend Hanna’s newsletter, Your Brain on Money.)
It was so hard to choose highlights this year, and this truly just scratches the surface. I’m so lucky that this job allows me to work with so many interesting people. It’s truly a dream job!
Behind the scenes there were a lot of early mornings, late nights, fun events, not-so-fun events, parenting wins and fails, long walks, slow runs, weekends spent studying, and what felt like too much time staring at my phone.
Most of the time, it’s just me, frantically typing away on my laptop. But I’m very fortunate to have so many people who support me and The Purse that I rarely feel lonely these days.
Thank you to our paid subscribers and brand sponsors: Acorns Early, Steward, Faye, and Copilot Money. You make our work possible!
A big shout-out to Alicia, who brings so much to The Purse with her brilliant ideas and wonderful writing. A massive thank-you to my parents—huge fans of The Purse—who provide a ton of emotional support and (free) child care. I also want to thank my husband, Ken, who copy edits every single issue and puts up with all my entrepreneurial angst. (And it’s a lot!)
I’m so grateful to everyone who contributed their stories this year. It’s you who make The Purse such a vital read. Thank you.
Now on to 2026! Let’s do this!
Giving up just isn’t our thing! Excited for 2026
You publish one of my favorite substacks. I’ve learned so much over the year from reading. Thank you!!