Budgeting with ADHD

The core principle of money management is to spend less than you earn.

But there’s a practical issue with this piece of advice:

1. It requires that you know how much you earn

2. It requires that you know how much you spend and

3. It requires that you have some method of keeping track of this information. 

The accepted way to stay on top of all of this is to make and stick to a budget, but budgets come with their own set of problems. They’re time consuming, often restrictive, and a total drag to put together. 

I’ve never cared for the drudgery of budgeting. I find the act to be an absolute chore. Like most other chores in my life, I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort trying to persuade and downright berate myself into getting it done. Over time, I’ve created a system of gimmicks and rewards to stay engaged in the budgeting process. Posters heralding “no spend” and “30-day saving” challenges have littered my walls. My inner child has beamed as metallic gold stars filled my budgeting bullet journal; evidence of a job well done. 

Finding new ways to make myself do what I knew I should do money-wise became something of a sport, and I managed well enough. Still, I never understood why money management was so hard for me. I had a formal education in economics, a decade long career in banking, and spent my spare time showing other people how to manage their money. If anyone should be able to “just do it” from a money management perspective, it should have been me. 

Managing Money with ADHD

I didn’t limit my gamification of routine tasks to my money management approach. Frustrated and struggling to sustain my effort at a well-paid but intellectually underwhelming job, I started seeing a therapist to help coach me through what I decided must be a fundamental issue with my work ethic. After a few sessions of me venting and explaining my process for getting tasks completed, my therapist paused and offered her assessment.

“It sounds like you may have ADHD.” 

I pushed back forcefully at her suggestion. “No, no, I’m high performing. I do great work. I just have to have a deadline and some kind of external pressure to get things complete.”

She nodded knowingly. “That’s actually a hallmark symptom of ADHD. I think you should see someone who can test you for the disorder.”

Two months later, with my therapist’s initial hunch confirmed, my whole financial life came into focus. My struggles with traditional money management methods suddenly made perfect sense.   

ADHD is a complex and misunderstood disorder. There’s a long list of potential symptoms and there is no one universal experience with ADHD. In my life, the disorder presented through issues with working memory, impulsivity, procrastination, and object permanence. I coped with these difficulties by creating games and guardrails to keep me on track. 

Prior to my diagnosis, I felt weird about my need to trick myself into sticking to a budget. Understanding that my brain works a little differently than neurotypical people has helped me shed the shame around my methods and embrace my bespoke money management process. The games and guardrails are features of my process, not flaws. 

My ADHD Budgeting System

These days, my budgeting system relies on three pillars:

Simplification: The key to get me to stick with something I don’t particularly care to do is to make it simple. Simple for me means limited steps and minimal friction. It just doesn’t work for me to track 50 budgeting line items every single week. That’s why I prefer to use the one number budget method. With the one number budget, I only need to keep track of one expense category each week: my weekly flexible spending. The rest of my budget manages itself. 

Gamification: There’s something about the opportunity to earn a reward that really excites me. Where I can, I turn my saving and spending goals into a time-constrained challenge, complete with a home-made gameboard. Let’s say I have a goal to save $1,000 in 90 days. I’ll divide $1,000 by 90 and challenge myself to make the required bank transfer of $11.11 every single day until I reach my goal. Each day that I make the transfer, I put a sticker on the gameboard. Watching my board fill up with stickers while my account fills with savings keeps me engaged.  

Automation: I automate bill payments, saving transfers, and investment transfers. I also have automated balance updates sent to my phone. Automating payments and transfers helps with my pesky memory problem. Automating balance updates helps me keep my money at the forefront of my mind and combat my issues with object permanence. I will quickly forget about anything that isn’t right in front of me. Having my account balance automatically sent to me via text helps me stay connected to what’s going on with my bank accounts. 

This is the money management system that’s working for me today, but I reserve the right to make any change I’d like to in the future. I’m glad to know that if I make a change, I’ll be making it shame-free.