Broke Aubrey Plaza Lived on Peanut Butter. Now? Almond Butter, People!

Wealthsimple is a whole new kind of investing service. This is the latest installment of our recurring series “Money Diaries” where we ask interesting people to open up about the role money has played in their lives.

Everybody has a making it story. (Everyone who “makes it,” that is.) But Aubrey Plaza's is pretty compelling. She was born into a family of limited means — as a baby she slept in a crib and her parents slept on the floor. She was a twenty-something living in Queens, eating plain peanut butter for lunch and getting fired from waitressing jobs. And then, in a period of several days, she was cast in “Parks and Recreation,” a Judd Apatow movie, and a movie called “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”

The strange thing is — and it's probably predictable — her change of fortune hasn't changed the way she thinks about money that much. She still loves some nut butter on a spoon. She even fantasizes about all that money going away — and it isn't always all bad.

Errol Morris also shot a series of short documentary Money Diary films with Alex Karpovsky, Brian Tyree Henry and the actor and filmmaker Mark Duplass. Each is a look at the story of a fascinating creative life, as told through the prism of that most delicate subject: money. We think they’re pretty honest and empowering — we hope you will, too. See them all here.

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The Editors

Wealthsimple's education team is made up of writers and financial experts dedicated to making the world of finance easy to understand and not-at-all boring to read.