July 2026 Receipts

Before I dive into the July receipts (which are admittedly landing in your inbox a little early this month!), I want to write about something I experienced this week that I think a lot of small business owners (and newsletter writers) deal with all the time: chargebacks.

Late Sunday, I got an email from Stripe saying that someone was disputing an $8 payment, claiming that I had continued to charge them after they canceled their subscription. When a customer disputes a charge, I have 14 days to respond. If I choose to dispute the chargeback, I have to pay a $15 fee on top of the $15 chargeback fee. If I lose, I’m out $30.

These seem like small amounts of money, yes, but when you’re a small business owner, all of these charges add up. I’m not getting rich running The Purse, and we give away so much of our content for free. We’re so appreciative of the readers who do upgrade to paid, and we recognize that paying for a subscription is a bit of a little luxury. Goodness knows that I also go through phases where I pare down my paid subscriptions to save money. I’m never offended when someone cancels!

Since founding The Purse, I think I’ve only had three instances where subscribers have initiated disputes with their credit card companies. With the first two, each subscriber had a legitimate issue, and we were able to work together to solve them. This week, things felt a little different. This felt like friendly fraud.

In case you’re unfamiliar, “friendly fraud” is when a cardholder disputes a transaction that they legitimately made. There are all kinds of reasons people do this. Maybe they have buyer's remorse, or their kid got a hold of their credit card and made a bunch of random purchases. In more nefarious situations, they might be abusing a merchant's return policy. (I love this TikTok to illustrate the return policy issue.)

It’s funny that the friendly fraud incident happened to The Purse the same month that Amanda Mull wrote about the problem in Bloomberg. I read the article with a lot of interest, and I particularly liked this paragraph that sums up just why friendly fraud is problematic for everyone, not just business owners.

“Some financially naive consumers appear not to realize that what they’re doing is technically a crime, or even that it’s meaningfully different from making a return and getting a refund the old-fashioned way. For merchants the outcomes are much different. Large retailers fold the cost of lost revenue, lost product and lost labor that fraudulent chargebacks create into the prices everyone pays, but for small merchants those losses quickly become an existential threat to their ability to continue operating.”

The Purse (probably) won’t go out of business over one dispute, but as chargebacks continue to rise (up 29% since 2021), it’s definitely something we have to be wary of. It’s made me think a bit more about the steps readers have to take to cancel their paid subscription. The subscriber who is disputing her subscription claims she couldn’t find an email address to reach out to us. (It’s on our About Us page, and readers can always reach us by simply replying to our newsletters.) She also mentioned she didn’t see us listed in her Substack subscriptions. (We haven’t published through Substack since January.)

I tried going through the cancellation process myself to see how many steps it takes. All you need to do is click the “manage subscription” link at the bottom of a newsletter. That should take you to your account on The Purse, where you can click to change your “supporter” status. Just two more quick clicks and you can cancel your subscription. It takes all of 30 seconds, tops. You do have to be signed into your account, and if you’re not, that could add another minute onto the whole process.

As readers and consumers, do you have any thoughts or opinions on this? I’m always open to feedback on how to make things better. I’m not writing this to scold anyone. It’s more that I don’t think people always think about the humans on the other side of these digital transactions who might be impacted by what seems like a harmless way to recoup your funds.

OK! Enough about friendly fraud! On to our July roundup! Lots of good stuff this month!

July 2026 on The Purse

Most underrated:

I was a little surprised more people didn’t jump to read this month’s paid Home Economics about a 40-year-old living in Europe and sorting out her finances after her mom died. Her entry raises lots of questions about how to determine your financial priorities. And while it might seem like a champagne problem, she talks about how hard it can be to know what direction to take your life if you suddenly have enough inheritance that you don’t necessarily need to work.

Most inspiring:

I always love Work History, and I appreciate how hard Alicia works to make sure we’re featuring a diverse range of experiences. This month, she featured a woman making a good salary even though she doesn’t have a college degree. There’s a lot of good advice that anyone can benefit from, wherever they are in their careers.

Most popular:

It’s always exciting when one of our stories takes off even though we didn’t send it via a newsletter. At the beginning of July, Alicia wrote a checklist of 10 financial tasks to tackle now that we’ve hit the midway point in 2026. While I offered absolutely zero tips for this list, we did get advice from friends of The Purse, including Erin Lowry, Matt Schulz, Rachel Lipson, and Heather Boneparth.

Our second most popular story was a follow-up Home Economics featuring a 34-year-old in the Greater Seattle area who is prioritizing paying off the credit card debt she acquired after she suffered a health crisis and had to shell out for emergency home repairs. Such a good read.

Most helpful:

Alicia and I are looking to dive more into the topic of retirement planning over the next few months. It’s an area of interest for both of us. Alicia unofficially kicked things off with a roundup of the four types of accounts you should set up now to be set at retirement.

Best comment section:

Would you believe the most active comment section this month was the question I posed about how much you’re paying for your cell phone? I’m as surprised as you are! And delighted. And now I need to actually make the switch!

Alicia’s question of the week about the salary of your ideal life partner is pretty fascinating, too!

Paid subscribers enjoyed:

The aforementioned Home Economics featuring an American living abroad on an $850,000 inheritance; a stellar meal plan from a mom of two young kids in San Diego with some really delicious recipe suggestions; and Alicia’s answer to a reader question about redoing your estate plan when you move to a new state. (I learned something new with this one!)

Remember, paid subscribers can send us questions about anything money-related, and we’ll try to find the answer! You can send Alicia an email at questions@thepurse.co.

If you look at my Google calendar for July, it’s all three-hour chunks that simply say “study” nearly every single day leading up to July 20. Honestly, I’m not sure that I knew I could be so disciplined!

I managed to squeeze in a few other things. We released another episode of the Family Money podcast all about Trump Accounts. I had wonderful interviews with economist Kathryn Anne Edwards; my old friend Barbara Ginty, who’s a new mom and a CFP; and Babylist CEO Natalie Gordon, who told me a story about her grandma that I can’t stop thinking about. I think it’s a really good and useful episode! I hope you’ll listen.

So many of my favorite people celebrated birthdays this month, including Alicia, my mom, my sister-in-law, my aunt, and my dear friends Sharon and Dana. It’s good to have so many strong Cancer women (and one Leo) in my life!

The big buzz at our house is that Ken’s band, Be Decent, released two singles off their forthcoming album, Now’s the Time! “Human Nature” and “You Better Work” are both bops! I know it might seem that I have to say nice things about these songs because Ken’s my husband and he edits every edition of The Purse, but he’ll tell you I’m a tough critic even if we are married! Really, give them a listen!

I’m wrapping up the month upstate at my friends’ weekend home. Our boys are going to a local day camp, and the parents are all working and sharing dinner duties. It’s so, so, so rainy, and I’m so, so, so tired that I haven’t been very productive beyond writing today’s newsletter and clearing out my very messy inbox.

There are 1,001 things I want to do now that I’m done studying, but I’m not even sure where to start! But if we were supposed to hang out in the last six months and I blew you off, I’m so sorry! I’m ready to grab that coffee now!