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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to the Navigating Adult ADHD Podcast with your ADHD coach and expert, Xena. Hello, my beautiful friend. Welcome back to Navigating Adult adhd. I'm so happy to be here with you today as we talk about ADHD and money. Omg, this has been an episode in the making for a wee while. Let's just say that now. I also wanted to let you know we've got some really exciting guest experts coming on the podcast soon. So I have just confirmed somebody who is a expert in accommodations at work, like what we can ask for in terms of accommodations and support at work, as well as knowing our legal rights as a adult with ADHD in the workplace. So that is going to be so good. I've also got a couple of men lined up so late, diagnosed men, to come on and share their stories as well. So. So again, lots of exciting episodes coming. So if you haven't yet hit subscribe, I want to invite you to do so. I don't want you to miss all of the goodness that we got coming, my friend. All right, so money. If you have ever felt guilty, ashamed or overwhelmed about money, you are not alone, my friend. In fact, you're in very good company today. So research into ADHD and finances and money shows us that as ADHDers, we are more likely to experience impulse buying. We're more likely to exceed credit card limits and also have a lower savings to income ratio. We are more likely to experience difficulty and struggles with saving money and depend financially on other people in our lives. Okay, 76% of adults with ADHD report money related anxiety versus just 38% of the general population. Right. 76% of us feel anxious and experience like money related anxiety. Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Now I just want to remind you before we dive too far in that if this episode resonates with you or if there have been any episodes that you have wanted to take notes for, I now provide you with notes every single week. You can get a one page PDF recapping all of the key points, any links, resources, anything like that, that. I mean, all we need to do is head to navigatingadultadhd.com cheatsheet all right, the link for that is where you are listening to this episode so it's super easy for you to find. Okay. And again, you can get like episodes for every single week. Now let's have a little look at what our ADHD money struggles often look like. Number one, avoiding opening bills. We just don't open them right we leave them unread, unopened, on the counter. Impulse buying, right? Oh my gosh, this is so me impulse buying. And then, you know, like you get these random packages from TEMU or Amazon that show up on your doorstep and you're like, oops, what did I order this time, right? Like sometimes we forget we even ordered stuff. It can look like putting off doing your taxes because doing our taxes is so hard and painful. And there are also so many steps involved in doing taxes, right? It can also look like just keep tapping the credit card, keep racking things up, putting things, you know, on the card or those new. I say new, but they've been around for years. But like the, what is it called? The buy now, pay later sort of things, right? And we just keep, you know, accruing those and in the long run we end up like racking up a ton of debt, right? So often having a lot of debt is very common for us. Lots of debt, no savings. Now I come to you today as a co learner here in the space on ADHD and money, right? I'm on this journey with you. I have not arrived, right? I am learning a lot along the way and I have to say I've made a shit ton of progress in the last few years in this area. But I have a very colorful history with money, right? And I myself have experienced feeling a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and in this area. So I'm going to share with you some of my own money history because I know that you will no doubt relate to some of this, okay? So I used to avoid looking at my bank accounts. Like just never look, just keep, you know, basically like tapping the credit card, right? If I wanted something, I would just buy it or put it on a credit card. I never saved for things. I would spend most of my money before payday even arrived. Like I would have pre spent it all, right? I often spent hours scrolling and adding things to my cart in like impulse buying, right? On buying purchases online all the time. I always came from like feeling like a feeling of lack. Like I never had enough money, right? Always afraid to look at my bank balance, right? And anytime I bought something, it didn't matter what it was. Like even things I needed, right? Like groceries. I felt guilty every time I spent money. It didn't matter what it was, I felt guilty spending the money, right? I remember so many times where I would pop to the supermarket after work to grab something to make for dinner and I would still feel guilty for that thinking, like I Should just do, you know, one weekly shop and I shouldn't need to go out every day and like buy other things. Like, you know, I should be able to stick to a budget. Like it didn't matter what I was buying. I always just felt guilty. I had thousands of dollars of credit card debt spread across multiple credit cards. I had no idea how much it used to cost me to live and I had no idea how much I spent, where I spent it, where it went, right? Or whether or not I actually earned enough to cover the cost of my, you know, my living and my expenses. I spent most of my life living payday to payday, so ashamed of my financial situation. Okay, so if you can relate to any of that. Again, like I said, you are in good company here today. So I want us to talk about why ADHD and money don't mix so easily, right? Why this can be difficult for us from a brain based perspective.
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Okay?
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A
So first of all, it's impulsivity, right? Impulsivity. When you're scrolling on Instagram, you're scrolling through Instagram, you see a friend who's wearing those new Adidas shoes that you have been thinking about buying. Next minute you're on the Adidas website, they've got 20% off. So of course you hit buy now, right? And you don't stop to think about whether or not you can afford these, what other bills you've got coming in, what this might mean in the long term, right? Impulsivity is huge when it comes to ADHD and money because this impacts our ability to stop and think about the consequences of our actions, right? This leads us to make impulsive purchases, to overspend, right? There is an area of the brain that controls response inhibition and it's called the thalamus, right? Don't worry about that, right? It's called the thalamus, this fancy word, but basically it works a lot like a bouncer in a nightclub.
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Okay?
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Now this area of our brain, right? Like in a neurotypical person, the bouncer would stop everybody who comes in and decide whether or not to let them in the building, okay? Now our bouncer, right, in our ADHD brain has fallen asleep. So everybody just comes and goes as they pleases, right? Like there is no kind of checking before letting somebody in, right? Hence, like, we just, you know, spend, you know, come and go, willy nilly, right? Now impulsivity, as we know, is a large part of having adhd, right? And you know, when you, like somebody says to a hyperactive child, you know, you just need to sit still, right? That does not mean that that child is going to sit still because their bouncer inside their head, right? The thalamus bouncer in their head has fallen asleep. So they're going to continue to move around.
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Okay?
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This, like, impulsive urge that we have that we feel is so intense, it's like an itch, right? And when someone says to you, don't scratch that, oh my God, I don't know about you, but it feels all consuming and all you want to do is scratch the itch, right? Like it can be physically and mentally painful not to scratch the itch, right? That's what impulsivity often feels like in an ADHD brain. So again, this is a large part of, you know, or a large thing that impacts our money challenges that we may experience. Next up is time blindness.
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Okay?
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This is big when you think that your taxes are only going to take sort of one to two hours and you'll get to it, right? And then the deadline passes and you're like, yeah, I'll do it at the weekend, right? And then you actually finally sit down to do your taxes. And it doesn't just take a couple of hours, it takes like days, maybe spread across weeks, you get penalized with fees, right? Time blindness is a really common challenge for people with ADHD. So Dr. Russell Barkley, one of my mentors in ADHD, author of the book Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, right? He talks about time blindness as like a near sightedness to time, right? That's when we have like, we experience a struggle to plan for or even perceive, right? How long things will take, right? Or what's coming up. Okay, so what this means time blindness makes future consequences, right? The consequences of our spending or our decisions. It makes those future consequences feel like distant or unreal, right? Like they don't even necessarily cross our brain come into play, right? So this might show up as, like, we end up with late fees, right? We miss paying bills entirely. We're constantly putting things on the credit card thinking, oh, we'll just figure it out later, right? We're racking things up on after pay and pay later purchases, right? Spending money before you even have it, right? All of this comes under that kind of time blindness umbrella, right? And it's really hard for us to consider how today's spending choices will impact us later, whether that be between now and payday or, you know, like future bills coming in, et cetera. You know, it's really hard to consider that, right? How today's spending choices will impact Us later when we can't feel or see that impact now, right? Because again, like, we're just in the today in the right now, not necessarily thinking about next week, next month, next year, et cetera, right? So another thing that impacts our challenges around money is memory issues. Forgetfulness, AKA poor working memory. So maybe you forget that you spent $200 yesterday and then you go and spend another $150 today, or you forget to pay a bill entirely and then you're stung with late fees, right? Maybe your power gets switched off because you totally forgot the bill, right? Often thinking that you've still got extra time before you have to deal with it. Or, you know, forgetting about any upcoming expenses entirely, right? Like, I always forget about the car ones, right? Like the registration, warranty, fitness, all those sorts of things. Like, I always forget about those. And I think every time, like, you know, you get like, your new registration, I'm like, I really should put that in my calendar so that I know it's coming. I still seem to forget, right? Literally. We looked at my partner's car the other day and I said to him, oh my gosh, honey, your Regio expired two months ago. And he's like, oh, shit. Like, neither of us had looked at the, like, little registration sticker. We totally, like, blanked it, right? So again, memory issues. Like, if you've ever heard the term ADHD tax, right? The tax is real, my friend, right? Like, I have. Like, you no doubt have experienced a lot of ADHD tax in your life, right? Like, me too. Things like failing to cancel subscriptions and then getting charged, right? I've had a lot of, like, different business tools and things that I've tried out over the years. And often there'll be like an annual subscription and, like, I might buy something when it's like, you know, they do like a Black Friday sale or something in America, right? And so, like, you buy something, it's like 50% off, and then when it auto renews and you might not have used this thing for like, you know, nine months, and then it auto renews at full price and you're like, what the hell, right? Like, that has happened to me so many times, right? That failure to cancel subscriptions and then getting like, hit with this massive bill, right? And sometimes, like, ADHD tax happens because there's too many steps involved in canceling. I remember being with an accounting platform that required me to phone them during business hours to cancel my subscription. I was like, I just want to go online and fucking click a box like Come on now, like. And so I kept paying it for months because that was just such a hassle for me to have to do, like, just too many steps involved. Like, I had to go and find the phone number and all these things. I was like, oh, my God. Right? So again, like, we get stung with this ADHD text. Another thing that impacts our challenges around money is being out of sight, out of mind, right? Like, we forget those upcoming expenses. Like I just talked about, like, car expenses that are coming up that possibly come up every six months, every year, right? When something isn't right in front of us, right? We can't see it. Like, I feel the same way about money, like, in my bank, I can't see it, right? If I had to take cash everywhere and if I had, like, a huge stack of cash in my house and, like, had to, like, send it off everywhere to pay for everything, that would probably be very different because it was very visual for me, right? But when it is all online and you're not, like, always looking at it and you can't see it, it's kind of like Monopoly money, right? I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Like, it just doesn't necessarily feel real, right? Like, yes, like, you've got this credit card debt, but, like, it doesn't necessarily feel so real. Does that make sense? I know it does. I know. You get me, right? But again, being out of sight, out of mind is like we're unaware of what's in our account, so we just keep spending, right? It's, it's, you know, when we're not actively tracking our money and we haven't got some visual system and awareness of it, it's so easy for us to lose track and lose sight of how much we have spent, right? Of what we need to put aside for upcoming expenses, right? Let alone, like, financial goals that we have, right? Like, especially if we say saving for something big, whether it be like a car or a house or something like this, right? Like, when we're having to, like, build things up and it's going to take years and it can be very difficult for us to feel, you know, excited about seeing that account grow when we can't sort of see ourselves in that house now or with that car now. So often, like, we kind of spend that money because it's like, oh, well, I've got that there. I'll just, you know, I'll deal with it later. I'll put some extra in that savings account later.
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Right?
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So again, like, Being out of sight, out of mind, like, can lead us to sort of leave our financial goals or our financial situation as something that we'll just deal with later because we can't like immediately see it all or nothing. Thinking is another one that shows up here.
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Okay?
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So spending can often feel like this kind of all or nothing activity, right? Either you're sticking to this like, rigid, tight budget, that's what you have to do, that's what you're supposed to do, right? Or you've already overspent. So like, why not just add one more thing to your cart and, you know, go back on the budget tomorrow or deal with it tomorrow, or sell something tomorrow, right? Then of course, there's the difficulty with planning and prioritizing, right? Like again, many of our executive functions that don't always function so well, right? So it could be, you know, no savings put aside, you don't have a system for saving, right? No system for managing or tracking or budgeting your money, right? So again, that's that kind of planning, prioritizing systems. And my friend, guess what? Dopamine seeking. Dopamine seeking plays a massive role in our money, in our money related challenges, right? Like, we spend money to feel good, to get that dopamine hit, right? When you buy that new pair of Adidas shoes, you get that dopamine rush. And then when the, you know, say you've done that online purchase and that arrives at your door and you open the package and you put them on your feet again, you're getting that hit of dopamine and it feels good, right? Dopamine, it feels so freaking good. But when we're, you know, doing that, we're not thinking about the consequences or what this might mean in the longer term, right? Like we might be dopamine seeking. Whether it be like, you know, scrolling online and buying things through Instagram adverts or temu or what have you. Or it could also be that we, you know, do online gambling, right? That we, you know, buy alcohol every night after work and chocolate and what have you and, you know, again, like seeking dopamine, but it's costing us. We're spending our money to get this dopamine, this pleasure, this hit, right? And not thinking through whether or not, you know, this is something we can afford or something that we really do want to spend this money on in the long run, right? Dopamine seeking, again, huge when it comes to money for people with adhd. So I am calling our ADHD difficulties with money money blindness, okay? Money blindness. And it is real, my friend. It is so real. This is such a common struggle in our community, and I think it's one that's not necessarily talked about enough because there's so much judgment around money, right? It seems to be such a taboo subject. So there is research again. I love me some research, but research highlights that as ADHDers, we earn on average 25% less per month. 25%, right. That's a quarter. That's a lot. And we also have between 50 to 80% less in savings.
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Right.
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And then the emotional layer, right? And, oh, my gosh, emotions are huge when it comes to spending. But our rates of compulsive buying are double.
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Right?
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So for people with adhd, compulsive buying rates are double what they are for somebody without adhd.
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Okay.
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Now, I don't know about you, but, like, I can think about some impulsive purchases I've made that were either never used or were some, like, aspirational version of me that only fueled feelings of guilt and shame.
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C
Right?
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There was this one, like, jacket kind of coat type thing that I bought years ago now, and it was ridiculously expensive. It was like $500. And I don't think I'd ever spent that amount of money on, like, a jacket before, and I never wore it.
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Right.
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Again, we can all probably think about some impulsive purchases that, again, like, often we feel a lot of guilt and shame around these. So emotions. Mindset, right? Emotions and mindset that get wrapped up in the money is, first of all, like I just mentioned, drama. There is. Sorry, drama. Drama's a word that was in my head, right? Judgment. There is so much judgment around money. Judgment from other people. All right, so other people always have an opinion about money. Wow, that's expensive. You shouldn't have spent so much. Did you really need that?
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Right.
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You probably shouldn't have so much debt. That's not good. You should probably make more money. You should earn more. Right? Like, everybody has an opinion and there's so much judgment. And it's also a very taboo subject.
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Right?
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Which only makes it harder for us to navigate if people aren't going to talk about it, Right. Or if they're only going to talk about it with judgment. And then there's the guilt and the shame that we feel. Oh, right. Like thinking that we're bad with money.
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C
Right?
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I'm bad with money. I always spend too much. I can't save.
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Right.
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I should be able to manage my money.
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Right.
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A
I hate having so much debt. I shouldn't have so much debt, right? And feelings of shame only lead to hiding, right? Like shame thrives in the dark. When we feel ashamed of something, we hide, right? I remember when I used to binge eat and I would have bought like, you know, packets of chocolate and, and packets of lollies and what have you, right? I would always hide that stuff. I would hide. I would take the, the packets to work and dispose of them in a bin in the mall back then, right? Again, like we hide when we feel ashamed about money. We hide the debt that we have, we hide the purchases that we have, we hide the clothes with the tags on, right? Then there's the numbing our emotions. Like when we feel guilt and shame or, you know, whatever else we're feeling. If we're feeling anxious about something, we try to numb our emotions with spending, right? I'll buy this thing to make me feel better, right? We also spend to celebrate, right? Like, I'll buy a bottle of bubbles or I'll buy this new pair of shoes to celebrate this thing that happened. So I have talked briefly before on the podcast about how emotions drive actions. Probably not briefly. I've probably talked about it a lot, right? How you feel determines what you do, right? When you feel motivated, you get a lot of shit done. When you feel afraid, you hide, you avoid, right? So learning emotional regulation around, just learning emotional regulation in general has saved me so much fucking money, I have to say, right? Like, it's been game changing when it comes to my relationship with money, which I'm going to talk about in next week's episode. Okay. But in terms of, like, how our emotions impact our spending decisions, I'm going to break it down like this, right? When you think I need it, you feel urgency. When you feel urgency, you buy it, right? When you think I'm missing out, you feel scarcity. When you feel scarcity, you buy it, right? When you think I deserve it, you feel entitlement. When you feel entitlement, you feel you buy it, right? And when you think I don't have time to make more, you feel like a victim. And when you feel like a victim, you stay stuck earning less, right? So again, like, our emotions around money, our thoughts and our feelings here is huge when it comes to our relationship with money. And one last thing I want to touch on under the kind of mindset and emotion umbrella for those of us with ADHD is this fear of having money. This is something that one of my coaches introduced me to a number of years ago now. Like she said to me, are you Afraid of having money in your account, like, actually having it because you keep spending it. And I was like, oh, yeah. Like, I wasn't comfortable having money sitting there with. Without it having to go somewhere, right? So I was always spending it, you know, either as soon as it arrived or, like, having to move it somewhere, like, having to do something with it. Like, I was just scared of it just sitting in my bank account. Like, just having money, right? That is a whole thing, my friends, right? There is a whole mindset around that. Most of us are not used to just having money in our account. Like, we're always like, I have to do something with it, right? So, my friend, if you have carried shame around money, you are not a bad person and you are certainly not alone, okay? Money itself isn't good or bad, right? Debt isn't good or bad, right? They're both just tools. Money is a tool. Debt is a tool, right? And if your relationship with money has felt difficult up until now, that doesn't mean it has to stay that way, okay? Having ADHD means that there are some very real reasons why managing money is harder for us, right? We talked about the impulsivity, the time blindness, the forgetfulness, the dopamine chasing. None of that makes you careless. None of that makes you a bad person, okay? And here's the good news. Your past does not decide or determine your future.
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Okay?
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That would be like if you're driving a car and you're driving your car only looking in the rear vision mirror, right? Just because you've come for that way, right? No.
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Okay?
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Again, your past does not determine your future. You can learn new ways to work with your ADHD brain and start shifting and changing that relationship with money.
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Okay?
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So in part two, in next week's episode, we are gonna get into the practical side, right? I'm gonna talk about ADHD friendly tools, little hacks that are gonna help you to take the shame out of money, right? Give you more empowerment and confidence with it.
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Okay?
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So stay tuned for next week's episode, my friend.
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All right?
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Huge, huge love to you. Take care. I'll speak to you soon. Hey, friend, if you want some more help navigating and thriving with adhd and some help applying everything that you're learning here on the podcast, then head over to our website, navigating adultadhd.com.