November 2025 Receipts

I always have designs to write my recap newsletters throughout the month. And some months I do plan ahead about what I want to say in this essay. But most of the time, I don’t get around to writing it until the day before (or the day of, eep). This month, I’m writing it early on a Saturday morning, a day before it’s scheduled to send. Ken just got back from a run. Freddy is playing video games online with friends. And I’ve been awake for a while just sort of worrying about everything I need to get done before the end of the year.

November was a total blur and not in a good way. On Friday, as we were driving home from visiting my in-laws for Thanksgiving, I said to Ken, “The fall went so quickly it makes my heart hurt a little.” I wish there was something I could do to make time slow down just a little bit. It all goes so fast, and it never seems like I have enough time. Sometimes, when my kid is being particularly adorable, I try to stop and pay close attention to every detail, every single freckle on his sweet nose, because I know these moments are fleeting.

I guess that’s one reason why I find this swift passage of time to be so frustrating. I’m not trying to race to the next thing—I’m trying to get the very most out of this moment. But as they say in the soap opera theme: “Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”

December is shaping up to be as chaotic. Just for starters: a weekend away for a friend’s birthday, a colonoscopy, and a big show for Ken’s band. Plus, all the holiday prep and the usual life and work stuff. I’m trying to remember that I want to do these things and let go of some of the less important to-dos.

That said, there is one big thing I would like to accomplish before the end of the year—and I need your help. Our free subscriber count has been hovering around 17,000 for a while now, and I would love to cross that milestone before we ring in 2026. We only need around 250 new subscribers, which doesn’t seem like a lot, and yet it’s been tricky to hit this number. People are always asking how they can help, and honestly, the answer will forever be: “Tell your friends to subscribe!” If just 500 of you (around 3% of our regular readership) get a friend to sign up as a new free subscriber, we’ll more than meet our goal.

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Speaking of subscribers, this is your final chance to take advantage of my birthday sale. Get an annual subscription to The Purse for just $45.60. (It’s usually $80.) Plus, we’re donating $5 from every new annual sub to a food bank. So far, we’ve raised $445! I’d love to see that reach an even $500, which means 11 more of you need to sign up before midnight!

If you need some convincing of the quality of this newsletter, just check out the November recap. So many good stories!

November 2025 on The Purse

We kicked off the month with Alicia’s look at 30-somethings and student loans. A big thank-you to all the women who shared their stories. I can’t stop thinking about this quote from a 38-year-old with $42,000 in student loan debt: “We don’t have a savings account. We can’t have another kid. We don’t travel. And we live very frugally. It’s not like we live outside of our means.”

In Home Economics, we featured a furloughed federal employee based in Tucson, Arizona, who is the primary breadwinner in her family. When the shutdown ended after 40+ days, she was frustrated that the Democrats capitulated and worried that another shutdown could happen later this winter when the continuing resolution expires at the end of January. TBH, I loved this Home Ec, but it didn’t get as many readers as some editions. Don’t sleep on it! It’s a good read!

I’ve been wanting to write on the topic of parents supporting adult children for a long time, and I finally tackled it this month. It’s always a little scary writing about these thornier issues, but I’ve been so blown away by the response to this essay. Not everyone agreed with my take, but the conversation in the comment section has been so thought-provoking (and civil!).

To wrap up the month, we published a paid Home Ec featuring a newly divorced doctor living in the Pacific Northwest. The comment section on this one is super interesting, as we chatted about the gender dynamics of spousal support. It’s a topic I want to explore more.

In the weekly roundups, Alicia wrote about women embracing frugality and trying to fight back against consumerism during the holiday season without becoming a grinch. (At my birthday party, my friends all informed me they were not boycotting Black Friday.) And we were so delighted to have a guest essay from Rebecca Gale on the question plaguing many of us: Why can’t we deduct child care as a business expense?

I did a lot of yapping (as Freddy would say) around the internet about my career and my personal finance ethos including chatting with Amy Cuevas Schroeder at The Midst, Sarah Todd at The Writethrough, and Priya Malani on her podcast, The F. Word. I also shared a mansplaining story with Pauline at Money Feelings, which includes a classic photo of me looking super annoyed mid-mansplain.
I went down to D.C. for The Gathering, an incredible conference put together by Amy Nelson of The Riveter, sponsored and hosted by AARP. (I was blown away by the gorgeous AARP offices!) I met a lot of really interesting women (including Leah Wiseman Fink, whom I share a million and one mutual friends with, though we’ve somehow never met in person), caught up with old and new friends (including Ruthie Ackerman and Rachel Lipson), and spent 48 hours thinking a lot about The Purse and how to grow the brand from here. I’m excited to put what I learned into practice over the next few months!
Whenever I’m in the D.C. area, I make a point of seeing my best friend, Margaret. As I pulled into her driveway Friday morning after the conference, “Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten came up on my playlist, and it made me feel so nostalgic for our high school days. This was a detour I arguably didn’t have time for—it took me seven hours to get home on Friday—but I don’t regret it for a minute. There’s nothing better than spending a morning with your forever bestie, holding her beautiful baby and just talking about life.
CashApp hosted an event to announce the rollout of a whole host of new products launching this fall. If Freddy was 13, I’d definitely be signing him up for a teen account. (I like that they’re free!) I also loved to get the chance to hang out with some of my favorite money experts, including financial therapist Lindsay Bryan Podvin and Ashley Feinstein Gerstley, aka the Fiscal Femme.
Ashley and I walked together from the CashApp event to Neha Ruch’s Power (Pause) Lunch. It was such a fun event in part because I ran into so many friends, including Fran Hauser, Hitha Palepu, and Lauren Smith Brody. Afterward, Heather Boneparth and I decided to pretend it was 2009 and grab a second lunch at Rosa Mexicano. (BTW, Neha just launched a new membership program for her Power Pause community. I highly recommend checking it out!)
The day after my birthday, Alicia came all the way out to Brooklyn, and we spent a wonderful day brainstorming some big projects we’ll be launching in January. We had a really delicious lunch at Rucola in Boerum Hill. Denise, who oversees brand partnerships at The Purse, joined us, and we shared a bunch of different small plates, which is my favorite way to eat a meal with friends. I adore this small but mighty Purse team!
Ken’s birthday is a week after mine, so I hosted a little party in our apartment with a handful of our neighborhood friends. It wasn’t fancy, but it was so fun. Also, I’m a total Costco cake convert. It was delicious and so cheap!
There was also a marathon Sunday party, a heartbreaking end to the fall little league season, a sick kiddo who missed three (!) days of school, Whiskey Fest with my dad, too much time at the pediatrician, and not enough time hanging out with my friends and husband. Also, I continue to fail to find time to exercise! It’s driving me crazy!

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Coming up in December

I’m working on a new piece for Yahoo about how much people are spending on holiday gifts this year. If you’re interested in sharing, fill out the form here.
We have a really interesting Division of Labor coming up this week and a new edition of This is What it Cost Me publishing later in the month.
I realized last week that when I put out a call for other travelogues in, um, August (yikes), I failed to collect email addresses, so I can’t reach out to anyone who expressed interest (ugh). The form has been updated, so if you’re still interested, you can fill it out here. We plan to restart this series in January!
We’re always looking for new people to share their Home Economics. You can fill out the form here.