2025 Receipts

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 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.

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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 kick off 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).

Surrounded by some of my favorite fashion people, Erika Veurink on my left and Alexandra Privitera on my right.

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 ~~survive~~ thrive 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 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!