On Wednesday, walking home from my son’s school after curriculum night, I was struck by the lengths I’m willing to go in the name of community-building. Earlier in the day, I mentioned to my business coach, Steph, that I always seem to take an easy thing and make it difficult.
In this case, I was talking about school uniforms. Over the rainy weekend, I cleaned out my son’s drawers of all the too-small polos and logo tees, plus I had a bag of old uniforms from a friend that was sitting in my storage locker. The easy thing would have been to simply toss them. But I hate being wasteful like that—these were perfectly nice shirts that some other kid could wear. So I reached out to the PTA president and suggested we do a used uniform sale during curriculum night. She agreed—so long as I was there to man the booth.
On Wednesday, I logged off of work early and spent the afternoon splitting my time between meeting with teachers and selling used uniforms. I wish I could claim it was a huge success, but the truth is, we only sold a few. And now there’s a pile of used uniforms stashed in a school utility closet, and I’m looking for an additional opportunity to set up a little table in hopes of getting the shirts to families who need them.
The thing is: I don’t feel like it was a waste of my time. I really enjoy the time I spend at my son’s school, meeting with teachers, administrators, and fellow parents. It feels worth the extra effort.
I can say the same thing for so many of my community-building efforts. At the start of the month, we hosted my son’s 10th birthday, which we plan to coincide with our street’s block party. In the past few years, I’ve taken on the job of organizing the block party, which involves getting signatures from my neighbors, filing the application, hanging no-parking signs, and coordinating the street closure on the day of the event.
It’s a lot of work! But the added benefit is that I’ve become friendly with so many of my neighbors. And this year, when I was busy trying to tidy the street in front of my building where we were holding the birthday party, my neighbor came by with his leaf blower to help me clear the dirt and leaves. It meant so much to me to have his help!
I feel the same about the community we’re building at The Purse. You all showed up in so many wonderful ways in September (and year-round, TBH). I was especially touched by the conversation happening in the comments of Home Economics No. 60. People seemed to have all the feelings about how this family earns more than $350,000 a year but only had a few thousand in savings that’s earmarked for emergency.
Perhaps in a different publication (ahem, Refinery29 Money Diaries), the comment section would have devolved into something of an “eat the rich” shit show. But on The Purse, regular readers offered advice on how this couple could make tweaks to their lifestyle in order to fortify their emergency fund. And Alicia followed it up with an article about just how much families should be stashing away for worst-case scenarios.
Alicia Adamczyk
It’s not easy building The Purse. And when I’m wide awake worrying about everything at 4:00 a.m., I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t an easier career path for me. But I’ve had cushy jobs before, and I know, in my heart, they aren’t for me. There’s satisfaction in doing the hard things and joy in community-building. It’s 100% worth the effort.
A big thank-you to our readers for helping our dreams become a reality!
Here’s a roundup of September at The Purse!
September 2026 on The Purse
Most helpful:
One of my favorite parts about running The Purse is when readers send us interesting financial questions that really push us to consider how we manage our own money. A few months ago, a reader wrote in asking about how others manage their budgets. She tracks her spending down to the penny. Alicia reached out to Rachel Lawrence, a certified financial planner and Monarch Money’s head of advice and planning, who shared an alternative way to think about budgeting.
Alicia Adamczyk
Related: We asked readers to share how they budget in our weekly question, and you delivered!
Alicia Adamczyk
Most underrated:
I’ll admit this story flew under my radar, toom as Alicia published it one Tuesday when I was off celebrating Freddy’s birthday! Her love letter to index funds, which turned 50 this year, is a delightful read (really!) chock-full of good info!
Alicia Adamczyk
I’ll also add I was a little disappointed that more of you didn’t share the best career advice you’ve ever received when I posed it as a question of the week at the beginning of the month. Is there a career advice drought out there right now?
Lindsey Stanberry
Most inspiring:
Is it lame for me to put a story I wrote in this category? I’m really proud that Alicia and I finally published our money principles after discussing the idea of this story for nearly a year. When we were writing it, I kept coming up with additional principles that I wanted to add. As I said in the piece, I see this as a living, breathing document, and we will no doubt update it in the future.
Lindsey Stanberry
My second favorite “inspirational” story was Sesali Bowen’s travel guide to Berlin. It really makes me want to go on a solo writing retreat someday! (Travel Guides are for our paid subscribers!)
Sesali Bowen
Most popular:
Unsurprisingly, our most popular story this month was Home Economics No. 60. We got a huge influx of new readers from Reddit and Instagram.
Lindsey Stanberry
Our second most popular story was Alicia’s roundup of money-saving tips she’s gathered from past editions of Meal Plan. Our new friend Phoebe Bain, the business and finance editor at 1440, shared it with her wide audience, and it brought in so many new readers! (I highly recommend 1440’s business and finance newsletter, if you’re not familiar!)
Alicia Adamczyk
Best comment section:
As I mentioned at the start of this newsletter, the comment section on Home Ec No. 60 was really entertaining and helpful. Alicia and I have been discussing making merch that says “anxious personal finance nerd.” (Madeline, we’ll send you one for free!)
Lindsey Stanberry
You all also had a lot of feelings about whether you should take an iced coffee to a job interview!
Lindsey Stanberry
Beyond the newsletter:
September was a wild one! With Labor Day so late this year, the first half of the month was busy with the tail end of summer vacation (and a trip to Dallas to see family), back-to-school insanity, and my son’s aforementioned block party birthday party. Mid-month, Alicia and I headed to Cape Cod for a three-day planning retreat, where I kept her busy from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. most days. (There was a lot to talk about!)
Back in New York City, I got to see a live taping of the podcast Fashion People with Lauren Sherman and Poshmark CRO Elizabeth von der Goltz, and I ran into Jennifer Cook of Mom Friend and Sali Christeson and Alex DiCapo Patel from Argent. (I think Argent’s 10th anniversary social campaign is so good, and I’m so proud of my friend Gina Marinelli for all her hard work on it!)
Babylist opened their brand-new store in Soho, and I attended the opening night party and had a chance to see the team in-person, which is always a treat. I ran into my old friend Sharon Yi, who’s the new CEO of Motherly, and we capped off the evening with a lovely dinner at Lure. Sarah Shapiro, who writes the fantastic newsletter Private Label, was in town from San Francisco, and we had breakfast one morning. And I grabbed lunch with Rachel Lipson of The Point, and I convinced her to help me plan my upcoming Mexico City trip with points. (More on that soon!)
It’s so nice to be done studying for the CFP and have time to go out and see people again!
Coming up in October
Sitting on the deck of my parent’s house in the Cape with Alicia and making plans for The Purse was really a highlight of the year for me. And now we are busy trying to execute them!
To start, we’re launching a dedicated personal finance newsletter. Throughout my CFP program, I’ve been taking notes of how I want to apply what I learned to my own finances, and I’m going to share that experience with The Purse, in hopes of inspiring others. We’ll tackle all kinds of fun money tasks together!
Alicia has been writing super helpful money-related articles since she joined (see the budgeting and index fund stories above), and this new newsletter will allow us to share those more widely.
If you’re interested in subscribing, you can sign up here, where you manage all your subscriptions.
This is a good chance to remind you that you can control which newsletters you receive from us at The Purse. We send out the following:
Wednesdays: Flagship newsletter that includes monthly(ish) sends of Home Economics, Work History, 30-Something, and more!
Fridays: Weekly roundup
Saturdays: Paid subscribers get full access to our Travel Guides, Meal Plans, and an extra edition of Home Economics.
And starting in October, we’ll be sending out the personal finance newsletter most Tuesdays.
I’m really excited for this! I hope you all find it useful and fun!
Behind the scenes:
When I was at Refinery29, part of my job was to weigh in on silly internet controversies. I wasn’t alone—that was the peak era of the hot take. It was sometimes fun and sometimes stressful. We all had a lot of feelings!
In late September, I dipped my toes into the hot takes once again, sharing my feelings on the iced-coffee-at-the-job-interview debate. And I was struck by something
