3 Ways to Help you Budget when you Have ADHD.

Katie McCarville
3 min readApr 23, 2023

The world just functions at a different frequency for us ADHD-havers. Our condition, quite literally makes doing the basic tasks needed for “adulting” extra hard. We just don’t have those functions (like budgeting and foresight) built into our systems. But there is hope. Throughout the last 2 years or so, I’ve completely re-hauled the way I budget and handle my money to make it more ADHD friendly and have compiled a cute little list to help out other ADHD folks who may struggle with budgeting.

Photo by GoodNotes on Unsplash
  1. Use a Cash Binder. — ADHD comes with this great feature called object permanence. Not quite like a baby would have object permanence but you can kind of think of it the same way. If you can’t see it, touch it, feel it, “it” doesn’t exist to you. This was the same way for me with money. Sure I could get on my app and see how much is in my accounts, but just looking at numbers doesn’t really make feel anything and I plus with executive dysfunction (also a feature of ADHD) I would immediately forget whatever the number was I just saw and would habitually overdraft my account. (And paying the overdraft fees). Having a cash binder has really helped me to connect with money, see it, and make me feel like it’s actually there and important.

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Katie McCarville

Feminist, Artist, Writer, ADHD haver, Playboy, Philanthropist🤷 I’m really just at the mercy of my own perspective. https://linktr.ee/katie_mccarv