Everything We Published on The Purse in January 2026

As we were making the move from Substack to Ghost, I had to reread all of the Receipts newsletters I wrote over the last two-ish years. Because of an annoying coding issue, anytime I had tagged someone in a post, their name was removed, and all that was left was an awkward double space and sometimes a random comma.

It was interesting to go back and see what was on my mind, and I had two big takeaways. One, we’ve been dealing with a lot of bad news the last few years, and it’s been really hard to process. And two, I talk way too much about how busy I am, and frankly that’s tiresome. Going forward, I’m resolved to not complain to you dear readers about my schedule. Also, Alicia says I say I’m grumpy too much. Given my consistently busy schedule and all the terrible headlines, I think my bad mood is understandable, but still, I need to get a little more creative in these intros!

And yet (haha!), this was another crazy month. I don’t understand how January has the same number of days as other months and yet always feels like it lasts forever. I guess in some ways it was good that it felt epically long because we packed a lot into this month.

The big headline for January is our new website, and an incredible new design by the very talented Elsa Ienna of Palette Studio. I am absolutely thrilled with how the relaunch went last week—I told Alicia that it felt a bit like my birthday because I heard from so many friends. I’m also excited and relieved that it’s out in the world, and Alicia and I can now turn our attention to other projects. We’ll be posting on the site nearly every weekday, and we hope The Purse becomes a regular part of your media diet.

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In the midst of preparing for the site relaunch, I traveled out to California for a few days for another big project that’s in the works. I can’t quite tell you about it yet, but I am very excited to share more information soon. With so much going on, I feel very lucky to be working with Alicia, who really went above and beyond to make sure our new site was ready for the world to see. She’s the absolute best!

I think we both felt a little weird having this big celebratory moment in the midst of seeing all the pain and struggle in Minneapolis. But as our friend Bobbi Rebbell said in the comments of Alicia’s LinkedIn post announcing the relaunch, one does not have to take away from the other. We can both celebrate The Purse, mourn for Alex Pretti and Renee Good, worry about the state of our country, and look forward to a better future. After all, that’s one of our (very big) goals: to change the culture around women and money, to give everyone the tools to take control of their financial futures.

With that lofty thought, here’s a recap of what we published on The Purse this month.

January 2026 on The Purse

Alicia kicked things off by looking back at 2025, which she declared was one of the most expensive years of her life so far. Since I just had one of the most expensive months ever, I could really relate!

This month’s Division of Labor featured our first divorced couple, Tamara Frankfort Odinec and her ex-husband, Ernest, who are sharing joint custody of their three teenaged kids. There are many interesting takeaways from this DoL, but I really appreciated what Tamara wrote when asked if it’s a fair division of labor: “[F]air doesn’t mean equal; it means sustainable. The work is divided in a way that reflects our lives now, not the roles we had before.”

Our first Home Economics of 2026 featured a single 34-year-old woman living in Boston on a $150,000 salary. She also has $30,000 in credit card debt. I loved this Home Ec because I thought the writer had a very different money mindset than some of the women we featured in the past. For better or worse, she is very focused on living in the present. I really appreciated her being so open about her debt—it’s still a topic that people don’t like to talk about, but by sharing her story, she’s helping to normalize the experience.

Alicia wrote such a wonderful edition of 30-Something about her desire to have a baby. It sort of flew under the radar because we didn’t send it out in a dedicated newsletter. I cried a little while reading it!

We launched our new series Work History, and the woman we featured is such a total badass!
After a very long hiatus (sorry!), we published our second travel guide. Christine Amorose Merrill took her three-year-old daughter on vacation to Oahu for a week, and the itinerary is fantastic for anyone traveling with a toddler. Highly recommend!

Our new guide to surviving a layoff was published the day before Amazon and Pinterest announced they would be laying off thousands of employees. We hate that the timing was so perfect, but we hope anyone who needs it finds it helpful!

The paid Home Economics was written by a 29-year-old Big Law associate earning $235,000 a year. The comments on this post are so good! Thank you to everyone who shared their advice!

Alicia wrote about what to do if you inherit an IRA. We’ll be writing more straightforward money how-to stories like this on The Purse this year. Have a question you want us to answer? Send it to questions [at] thepurse [dot] co (not com).

In our weekly roundups, I wrote about the glut of terrible news and the economics of ICE (ugh!), Alicia wrote about how bad things are at the Fed (ugh!), and guest contributor Hanna Horvath wrote about the beauty premium (ugh!). Do we need to do one good-news-only weekly roundup a month? Maybe so!

We had our first event of the year with 50+ women (and a couple men) gathering to create vision boards for an abundant 2026. It was such an amazing time, and I’m so grateful for our sponsor Copilot Money for cohosting. I now have more magazines than I know what to do with in my basement storage locker, so we will definitely be making this an annual tradition!

So many friends came to this event, including the lovely Jennifer Cook. Photo by Marissa Alper.

Alicia and I spent the most fun day getting new headshots with photographer Nadya Wasylko. Neither of us really love to be in front of the camera, but Nadya and her crew, including makeup artist Misuzu Miyake, made us feel amazing. Afterward, we had a delicious lunch at Roberta’s to celebrate the new site!

I was pretty heads down working on the site relaunch this month, and I didn’t get out to see friends and colleagues very much. Honestly, a piece of me really loved how much work I was able to get done. But I know I need to socialize more, so I’m looking forward to getting some coffee dates on my calendar in February.

Just a reminder that for the next month, we’ll be donating 10% of all new annual subscriptions to the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. And going forward, we’ll be regularly donating 5% of new paid subscriptions to a different charitable organization each month.

Coming up in February

This will be our first full month with our new website and the goal of publishing daily. We’re kicking things off on Monday with our new series Question of the Week. We love hearing from Purse readers, and we’re excited to get everyone talking more in our comment section.

Alicia has a new edition of What It Cost Me coming next week!

I’m looking for the next edition of our travel guides! Want to share your itinerary? You can submit your pitch here!