In Her Purse: The Cool Girl Edition
Author Tracy O’Neill and fashion writer Erika Veurink
Welcome to The Purse, a newsletter about money and women and motherhood and careers and all that good stuff!
Tracy and Erika are probably both cringing at the subject line of today’s newsletter, but too bad. I think they are very cool, so they will have to deal with me anointing them as such.
I’ve known Tracy since we were both in our 20s, but I won’t do the math on exactly how long ago that was. She worked with Ken at a very strange reference book publisher, in offices I’ve been told resembled the set from Being John Malkovich, though I never set foot inside, so I cannot confirm. Besides being one of the coolest people I know, Tracy is also one of the nicest and most talented, and I feel super proud that she’s been my friend all these years. She’s the author of two novels (The Hopeful and Quotients), and this summer she released her memoir, Woman of Interest, about her experience looking for her birth mom in South Korea. The New Yorker described it as a “dark, deeply funny memoir...Dashiell Hammett meets Fleabag.” It’s been such a joy seeing the glowing press about her memoir because I adore Tracy so much.
I haven’t known Erika for nearly as long, but I think there’s some magic to our meeting. We connected rather randomly, and all of sudden, I was seeing her work everywhere. She writes the wonderful Long Live substack, all about vintage shopping. (Her recent newsletter with finds from Eddie Bauer, Land’s End, and Ann Taylor was just the best, and it took all of my willpower not to scoop up the vintage sweater she had in the mix because, god knows, I love a good Fair Isle pattern.) Erika’s the founder of EV Salon, a very cool invite-only event series that encourages connection. And she regularly writes for New York, among other publications. Erika’s also a wonderful supporter of other women’s work on Substack and beyond, and that’s a characteristic that I always look for in new friends.
In fact, I decided to start featuring more than one woman in each edition of the In Her Purse series because of a conversation I had with Erika. There’s just so many interesting women out there, and I really do want to see the contents of more purses, so I’m excited to be able to feature more. As always, please let me know if there are people you would like me to feature! Just leave a note in the comments!
Before I hand it over to Erika and Tracy to spill the contents of their purses, just a reminder of this month’s giveaway for paid subscribers. I’m teaming up with my friend Alison Morris Roslyn, founder of Francey Not Fancy. We’re giving away a Summer in a Bottle prize pack, which includes all four wines in Wölffer Estate’s Summer in a Bottle lineup: Summer in a Bottle White, Summer in a Bottle Long Island Sauvignon Blanc 2023, Summer in a Bottle Long Island Rosé, and Summer in a Bottle Côtes de Provence Rosé. Upgrade to paid and sign up for Francey Not Fancy's free newsletter, One Thing About Wine, to win.1
Okay, I’ll let Tracy and Erika take it from here!
Tracy O’Neill: The Questions
What is your idea of perfect happiness? Bringing home a new puppy.
What is your greatest money fear? Being old, broke, sick, and unable to work.
What is the financial trait you most deplore in yourself? I am constantly buying and returning clothes.
What is the financial trait you most deplore in others? Not tipping.
If you could change one thing about your financial situation, what would it be? I would own a home.
What do you consider your greatest financial achievement? It’s probably best to hope it hasn’t happened yet.
Where would you most like to live? Somewhere with lots of light, storage, and space for an indoor trampoline.
What is your most treasured possession? This is a cheat, but my library of books. It’s a mover’s nightmare!
What is your greatest money regret? In my 20s, I was a bartender and an adjunct professor. I’d do it all again, but I’d bartend more and teach less.
What is your money motto? I suppose I ought to get one!
What is a nonprofit that’s near and dear to your heart that you’d like Purse readers to know about? Recently, I designed a scarf for Echo New York to benefit Allies in Change, a Portland-based organization doing really important and innovative work with domestic violence survivors and offenders.
Tracy: The Purse
The non-negotiable items in my purse: wallet, black eyeliner, headphones. I’m a big fan of the Ordinary Unhappiness podcast, and I pretty much popped out of the womb in eyeliner. There is a small but distinct pleasure to the metallic click of the wallet clasp closing.
Bookforum really did it right printing in this format. Often I’ve got a woefully scrunched-up issue in my purse—or my cargo pants pocket.
A few years back, I decided to get serious with the four-color pen. It’s all I use now. The perfect combination of freedom and commitment in my book!
As a hydration hypochondriac, I favor a Pedialyte packet. I will drink one if it has been hot outside, if I walked briskly, if I had a drink, if I have a headache, if I think I might soon have any kind of ache, if it’s a Friday because you never know.
I’ve largely gotten my vices down to vaping and worrying about what to eat for dinner for hours at a time. One of these days, I’ll get the vices down to just neurotic dinner planning.
I never don't have my purse on me. I am one of those people with a purse at the beach. As such, I keep it black and simple.
Erika Veurink: The Questions
What is your idea of perfect happiness? To-do list finished, phone somewhere in another room, making dinner at the beach with my siblings, husband, and best friend.
What is your greatest money fear? As a creative person, I can get consumed by the thought of “running out of ideas,” aka ways to make money.
What is the financial trait you most deplore in yourself? My obsessiveness. I think about money about 3x as much as I’d like to.
What is the financial trait you most deplore in others? I hate when people feel pressure to buy into a certain lifestyle that’s all smoke and mirrors. I get it, as a New Yorker, but it’s depressing to realize how much credit card debt a lot of my friends who make good money are in.
If you could change one thing about your financial situation, what would it be? I would have started investing even earlier, which is likely a universal plight. Not sure how interested 21-year-old me would have been in the idea of compound interest but would have been worth a shot.
What do you consider your greatest financial achievement? Building an emergency fund and small nest egg for a future mortgage is something I’m really proud of. I built both of those while I was working full-time and consulting, so they were hard-earned, but they give me an immense peace of mind.
Where would you most like to live? I dream of a cabin on a large lake, not as a primary residence, but as somewhere we can get away to most weekends and just be together.
What is your most treasured possession? A Ralph Lauren button-up of my dad’s might be my most sentimental. I wear it when I’m feeling a little blue or just miss him. And it was the start of my obsession with the shirt style.
What is your greatest money regret? I rented a studio apartment in L.A. for a summer when I was in college for an internship I never made happen. The $2,000 check my mom made me write really sucked at the time, but it was a good lesson.
What is your money motto? There’s more where that came from.
What is a nonprofit that’s near and dear to your heart that you’d like Purse readers to know about? Giving to the Iowa Abortion Access Fund on a monthly basis is really important to me. They’re doing amazing work on a hyper-local scale.
Erika: The Purse
Kindle! Makes reading on the subway so much easier when I'm out and about all day.
Tower 28 SOS Spray for when it's hot hot.
Chanel ROUGE COCO BAUME in My Rose. The only lip product I actually use.
Evolvetogether hand sanitizer—chic and refillable
Warby Parker Carmel sunglasses and a case I try to use
Beat-up Odeon hat because I hate the sun.
Necklace from Brinker and Eliza I keep meaning to give my little sister.
Crown Affair hair tie
Some sort of pen, but this one in particular is very thin, which I like.
Keys
Corded headphones always
Vintage Chanel wallet
This vintage DKNY bag was $4 at a thrift store in Delaware. I think it's perfect.
Thank you so much, Erika and Tracy! It was so fun to see inside your purses!
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THRILLED to be here
I love the cabin on a lake dream!! Mine is similar—a cabin on the ocean in Maine