Refinery29’s Money Diaries Anchors 3-Day Series on Good Morning America

This August, Refinery29’s long-standing series Money Diaries, anchored a three-day segment on Good Morning America. R29 senior editorial director, Carli Whitwell, alongside a powerhouse panel of GMA’s Robin Roberts, The Budgetnista’s Tiffany Aliche, and ABC News' Rebecca Jarvis, walked viewers through the budgets and spending of three different diarists at different income levels and from different parts of the country.

Refinery29 launched Money Diaries in 2016 as a way to have tough, taboo conversations about our spending habits. In this series, an anonymous diarist shares seven days of spending down to the last penny.

Over the years R29 has built a robust, powerful community of support around these articles, generating millions of page views a year, numerous active Reddit threads dissecting the diaries, and daily conversation across the web around how and why women and non-binary people need to more open, transparent, and confident in their spending habits.

In a recent study, Money Moves, conducted by R29 Intelligence to explore how we think about money as we navigate the current cost-of-living crisis, it found that 62% of women feel overwhelmingly negative about finances, using “stressed,” “worried,” and “frustrated” as the top three words to describe their financial situation.

Money Diaries is aimed at turning this alarming trend around. “We know talking about money makes us smarter, stronger and more powerful, by sharing we normalize talking about it, both the good and the bad,” shares Whitwell of the series. “Talking about it can make you feel empowered and less alone. Whatever that community looks like for you, you can find that community here.”

Aliche adds, “It’s about releasing the shame, because shame shields solutions. Talking about it allows you to realize that you're not alone and you should not be alone with the knowledge you have and now with new knowledge, you can do even better.”

As Roberts summed it up perfectly, “this Money Diary series is all about community.” We look forward to continuing to build out this powerful conversation through the series and beyond.

See below for the Money Diaries segments on Good Morning America:

'The Money Diaries' shares tips to build back savings: This diary highlights a week in Cincinnati, OH as an IT analyst, on an $60,000 salary. 

'The Money Diaries' shares tips to understand and tackle debt: This diary highlights a week in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia as a non-profit attorney, on an $82,000 salary.

'The Money Diaries' shares ways to tackle unexpected expenses: This diary highlights a week in the Kansas City suburbs on a $131,858 salary.