Let’s kickoff our financial clarity challenge!

Welcome to our new personal finance–focused newsletter! We’ll be sending it out most Tuesdays. You can manage which Purse newsletters you receive here!

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I’ve been thinking about this project for a long time, and I’m really excited to launch it today.

Throughout the process of studying to become a certified financial planner, I was always making mental notes of the things I learned that I wanted to apply to my own finances. The list is long: dig into my homeowner’s insurance coverage, review my estate plan, and take a closer look at my investment allocations, just to name a few. And there’s never been quite the right time to tackle it.

I also didn’t really want to do this work alone. Longtime readers of The Purse know that I consider you all to be my ultimate accountability buddies. Plus, we’ve been hearing from readers for a while now that they want more practical personal finance advice. Since I’m trying to put three years’ worth of studying into practice, I thought I could accomplish three goals at once:

Get my own finances in order while…
…sharing with Purse readers what I learned in my CFP program…
so in turn you’ll get your finances together

And then we can be a bunch of smarty pants who have estate plans, appropriate insurance coverage, and well-balanced investment accounts!

After this initial newsletter, the series is going to be behind a paywall. My CFP education was expensive! And paying for an annual subscription to The Purse is still cheaper than hiring an actual CFP. (Though you may want to hire an expert at some point for extra support, and we’ll discuss that in this series.)

Upgrade to paid so you don’t miss a thing!

And for the sake of all the necessary legal and compliance disclosures, I need to make clear that I’m not providing financial advice or planning in this newsletter. Anything I share in this series is purely for educational purposes.

Every two weeks, I’m going to dive into a different financial task. I’ll explain why the task is important and how it fits into your bigger financial plan, and I’ll offer clear explanations that aren’t jargon-filled or overly confusing. I’ll also share my own experience as I try to take care of these tasks on my own. Sometimes, I’ll bring in experts to help explain more complicated topics.

One Friday a month, paid subscribers can gather on Zoom to work independently to get some of these tasks done. You can use the 60 minutes to do research, make an annoying call, or open or close an account. We’ll briefly share what we’re working on and offer each other support and camaraderie. The goal is to use that time to get shit done. Our first meetup will be Friday, October 23, at 1:30 p.m. ET. I’ll remind you all closer to the day!

So let’s get started! First up, here’s a schedule of the newsletters through the end of 2026, so you know what’s coming.

Financial clarity challenge 2026 schedule:

October 20: Understand your numbers and set some goals
November 3: Let’s take a closer look at our employee benefits (health insurance, FSA, HSA)—just in time for open enrollment season!
November 17: End-of-year financial to-do list
December 1: How to include charitable giving into your financial plans
December 17: 5 quick money to-dos to tackle before the end of 2026
December 29: How to do a year-end financial review

Now that we have that admin out of the way, let’s dive into the first task.

No. 1: Make a list of all your accounts

This might seem simple, but it’s important to be thorough in collecting all your account info in one place. You’ll want a list of all your financial accounts (checking, savings, 401(k), old 401(k), IRA, credit cards, etc.), plus any accounts you think family or friends might need access to if the worst should happen (gas, electric, insurance, etc.). I even included my various email addresses and social media accounts on my list.

This project has three purposes:

Eventually, we’re going to be tackling big and small projects related to nearly every account on this list. Having one complete list will make it easier when the time comes to take care of those tasks.
Seeing all your accounts in one place will give you some clarity about where your money lives and where it goes each month.
This is the foundation of putting together a death note, which we will tackle in a future edition of this newsletter. (Shoutout to Heather and Douglas Boneparth, who have written about this before!)

I created a Google Sheet template that you can feel free to copy. I’ll be updating this as we go along in the process. (And I’ll let you know when and how I update, so you can follow along.)

It took me about an hour to collect this list, which included a detour into research about password managers. (Do you have one you like? I ended up going with Bitwarden, in part because it was free.) I included my business accounts on my list, and I still need to do a little digging to find a couple of old 401(K)s that need to be rolled over. (More on how to do that in a future edition!)

Note: Don’t save passwords in a Google Sheet. Yes, they are handy, but they are not secure. That’s why I went down the password manager rabbit hole. You’ll want a more secure place to save passwords for your financial accounts. I tried to take care of that for myself while working on this task, but if you’re short on time, just focus on making the list. Password management can (and should!) be handled at a later date.

All in, I have more than 25 financial accounts, which sort of feels like a lot. But also, it’s exciting to finally have everything in one place! I shared the document with Ken in hopes that we can review this info as we make some changes to our shared accounts in the future. (We’re in the process of finally choosing a new phone plan!)

As you complete a task, leave me a note in the comments, or feel free to reply to this email and let me know how the process went. Please also share any hiccups that might have come up along the way.

And remember, on October 20, we’re going to be digging into our numbers—which will be much easier if you’ve already got this list together!

Share this with a friend who’s trying to get her finances together!