Why Vague Budget Categories are Kryptonite for ADHD Brains
Last month, I sat down to review my budget for the millionth time, armed with good intentions and a fresh cup of coffee. Everything started fine – my mortgage payment was right where it should have been. Groceries? Check. But then I scrolled down to that innocent-looking category labeled "Other" and felt my stomach drop. Somehow, this catchall category had become a black hole that swallowed nearly 40% of my monthly spending. As someone with ADHD, I'd fallen into the trap that so many of us do: the path of least resistance had become a financial invisibility cloak.
Here's the thing about having an ADHD brain: we're already playing life on hard mode when it comes to categorization and decision-making. That innocent-looking "Other" category isn't just a line item in our budget – it's a siren song promising to free us from the mental load of deciding where things belong. But like most shortcuts that feel good at the moment, it's making our financial lives harder, not easier.
Financial management takes a lot of executive functioning, something that those with ADHD struggle with. Working memory, organization, planning, task initiation, time management, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and self-monitoring are all executive functioning skills we need to tackle our budgets. You may struggle in one area more than the other, but when they all work together, they make budgeting a breeze. Sadly, those with ADHD don’t have that luxury, and when using those skills, our brains can become fatigued. When fatigued, we take the path of least resistance. Hence, the ‘Other’ category in our budgets.
This dumping ground of Other, Miscellaneous, or Shopping makes things more problematic in the long run for us. It doesn't allow us to properly analyze our spending, which makes it harder to change habits. When every random purchase gets tossed into the same category, we lose the vital context that could help us understand our spending triggers. That $50 spent at Target could have been essential cleaning supplies, or it could have been another set of colorful markers we bought because we were feeling anxious. The $30 at Amazon might be a thoughtful gift for a friend or another impulse purchase triggered by a late-night doom-scrolling session. Without this granular visibility, we're essentially trying to solve a puzzle while wearing a blindfold – we can feel the pieces, but we can't see how they fit into the bigger picture of our financial health. This lack of clarity isn't just frustrating; it works against our attempts to build better spending habits because we can't identify the patterns we need to change.
Tracking your finances with ADHD isn't about perfection – it's about progress. A messy budget that you actually use is better than a perfect system that lives only in your head.
~Vanessa Dean
This vagueness hits especially hard for those of us with ADHD because we already struggle with pattern recognition and connecting our actions to their long-term consequences. When we look at a vague "Shopping" category that's mysteriously eaten up $300 of our budget, our ADHD brains have a tough time reconstructing the story behind those purchases. Did we actually need everything we bought? Were we shopping to regulate our emotions? Was it all essential household items, or did we get distracted by shiny new things?
Without clear categories, we miss the chance to spot our spending triggers. For example, we might tend to make impulse purchases at certain times of day, when we're feeling particular emotions, or after specific events. These patterns are like breadcrumbs that could lead us to better financial habits, but they get swept away in the vast "Other" dustbin.
Even worse, these catch-all categories enable our ADHD tendency to avoid difficult decisions. It's so much easier to click "Miscellaneous" than to pause and think "Wait, is this new plant for my home office a decoration expense or part of my self-care budget?" But each time we take that easy route, we're reinforcing a habit of financial autopilot – exactly when we need to be most mindful and present with our spending decisions.
This creates a frustrating cycle: the less we categorize properly, the harder it becomes to understand our spending. This makes us more likely to avoid budgeting altogether, which leads to more financial stress and can trigger more impulsive spending. It's like trying to navigate a maze while continuously erasing our own footprints.
You already know what your neurotypical colleagues will tell you. "Just do it!" they say, as if those three words hold magical powers to suddenly rewire our dopamine-starved brains. Thanks, Karen from accounting – if "just doing it" was an option, don't you think we would have figured that out by now?
Here's the thing: we're not dealing with a motivation problem; we're dealing with a brain chemistry challenge. Our ADHD brains literally don't produce enough dopamine to make mundane tasks like expense tracking feel rewarding. So when people tell us to "just do it," they're essentially telling people with poor eyesight to "just see better" instead of offering them glasses.
Then there's the perfectionism trap – that unique flavor of self-sabotage where we decide that if we can't track every single penny perfectly, why bother at all? We miss one receipt, forget to log a coffee purchase, or miscategorize something, and suddenly, our inner critic declares the whole budgeting experiment a failure. We throw in the towel, delete the budgeting app, and vow to try again "when we're more organized."
But here's the brutal truth: having no data is exponentially worse than having imperfect data. When we abandon our tracking because it isn't perfect, we're not just missing a few data points – we're flying completely blind. It's like refusing to use a GPS because it occasionally takes a minute to recalculate. Sure, it might not be perfect, but it's a whole lot better than having no directions at all.
In Part 2 of this series, we'll dive into practical solutions that actually work for ADHD brains. We'll explore how to create categories that make sense to you, harness technology to do the heavy lifting and build a system you'll actually stick with – no "just do it" required.