ADHDifference

S2E45: ADHD & Money - Impulsive Spending, Budgeting & Avoidance + guest Tina Mathams

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 45

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0:00 | 29:25

Julie Legg speaks with accountant, financial educator, podcast host, and author of ADHD Money, Tina Mathams. Together they unpack the emotional side of money for ADHDers — the impulsive spending, the avoidance, the shame, and the cycle of guilt that can quietly spiral into financial overwhelm.

Tina shares her personal story of hitting financial rock bottom while undiagnosed, and how understanding her ADHD completely changed the way she approached money. Rather than relying on willpower or rigid budgeting systems, she explains how tools like gamifying, body doubling, identity-based goals, and nervous system regulation can create sustainable financial change.

This is a great reminder that money struggles are not moral failings — and that small, imperfect action can change everything.

Key Points from the Episode:

  • Growing up with limiting money beliefs
  • Impulse spending as dopamine-seeking
  • Avoidance, shame, and money guilt cycles
  • Separating self-worth from financial mistakes
  • Understanding your “money story”
  • Why willpower-based budgeting fails ADHD brains
  • Gamifying savings and body doubling for money tasks
  • Breaking long-term goals into present-moment identity shifts
  • Persistency over consistency
  • The power of self-compassion in financial recovery
  • Tina’s rock-bottom moment and rebuilding journey
  • Why money doesn’t have to be perfect to improve

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ℹ️ DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or ADHDifference. Read More

TINA: It doesn't have to take as long as my journey did because when you get to understand your ADHD and how that impacts your finances, it can change so quickly if you want it to change. You know, if we're stuck in that guilt emotion, if we're stuck in that shame, that's what sort of hinders everything. You know, the mindset of I can't do this. It's going to take forever.

JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece (a woman's guide to understanding, diagnosing, and living with ADHD), and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests, bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I'm joined by Tina Mathams, an accountant, financial educator, podcast host, and the author of ADHD Money, a compassionate and practical guide to managing finances in a way that actually works for ADHD brains. For so many people with ADHD, money isn't just about numbers. It's about overwhelm, avoidance, impulse, and a whole lot of unnecessary shame. Tina's work helps people understand why money can feel so hard with ADHD and offering psychology- based interested strategies that work with an ADHD nervous system rather than against it. In this conversation, we're talking about impulse spending, budgeting that doesn't collapse after 2 weeks, money shame, and how tools like body doubling, gamifying, and habit stacking can help keep the spark alive without burnout. Thank you for joining me on the show today, Tina. Welcome. [Oh, thank you for having me.] Money can be such a loaded topic for people with ADHD. And before we talk about the book, I'd love to start with you and what has your own relationship with money been like? And when did ADHD come into the picture for you? 

TINA: Oh, my I'm I always try to be transparent when I talk about my relationship with money and my journey with money because I always want especially you know, ADHDers that I help and work with. I want them to understand that you know, I've dealt with these things myself and I still deal with some of these things myself from time to time. I am someone who didn't grow up with a whole lot of money. I wasn't taught about money. A lot of us weren't taught about money but you know, especially with my childhood you know, we only spoke about money as in good or bad. You know, if we had a little bit of money, that was good. When we didn't have money, that was bad. You know, money was only for rich people, like that type of thing. So, my mindset around money really wasn't great. And then when I finally got a job, when I was sort of, you know, in my early adulthood, I didn't know how to manage it, especially with undiagnosed ADHD, I would always spend. I didn't know how to save. If I did save a little bit of money, I would just spend it. I had no idea about investing. Again, I thought investing was only for, you know, rich and wealthy people and it wasn't for people like me and it put me in a really bad spot with money. Like, you know, credit card debt. I mean, I'm pretty lucky. I never had huge debts. You know, my biggest debt now is my mortgage. Always has been, but still like, you know, a small debt can, you know, really blow out into a bigger one with interest and things like that. So, yeah, my journey with money hasn't been great until I started to teach myself some things. And that was probably in my late 20s. I'd say I was still undiagnosed at that point as well. So, you know, I would try some things that I'd heard like, you know, typical advice that we hear, you know, save this amount of your pay and do things like that, but it still never worked for me. So, I really had to come up with my own things. And when I got diagnosed with ADHD probably 5 years ago now, I think I started to put two and two together and I'm like that's why the things that I taught myself worked for me because they were obviously working for my undiagnosed ADHD. And that's when I started to... well it wasn't at that point that I started to talk about ADHD and money. It was probably a couple of years later still. But that's you know ,a lot of the stuff that I teach on my socials in my book you know, they're things that I've had to come up with myself or they're things that, you know, I know can help people with ADHD, things that I've, you know, worked with people that have helped them. So, yeah, it's really interesting when I work with people and the things that I came up with to help myself helps them as well. And I'm like, well, there we go. Yeah. 

JULIE: How do you think ADHD traits tend to show up in everyday money behaviours for ADHDs, such as checking bank accounts or budgeting or impulse spending? 

TINA: Yes, impulsive spending is a massive one. It's probably the number one thing that people ask me about since I started talking about ADHD and money. Absolutely. That's a huge one. You know budgeting if you know, we tend to have a lot of perfection tendencies like if it's not perfect we don't want to do it. Sticking to a budget can be really hard you know, just yeah. Just general things like that avoidance because you know we tend to have a lot of emotions around money as a lot of people do but especially with ADHD where we do tend to feel those emotions a lot deeply and you know, have a lot of shame and guilt around money. So that can turn into avoidance at looking at our bank accounts. Yeah. Things like that. 

JULIE: With impulsive spending too, it's quite a dopamine seeking activity, isn't it? And we feel really good even if we don't necessarily really, really, really need the item to walk away go, "Yes, I went and bought that today." And with a lot of shame and guilt afterwards and a lot of items around the house that potentially we don't actually need but have ended up purchasing. And you were mentioning shame before and of course ADHDers do carry deep shame about money including missed bills and debt and unfinished budgets. You were talking about the follow through there. How do you help people begin to separate their self worth from their financial struggles? 

TINA: Yeah. So, there's a lot of you know, just recognizing those emotions, recognizing those patterns is a really good first step. Doing a lot of regulation as well. So, emotional regulation, nervous system regulation. Sometimes it can be really helpful as well to actually look back at what we call our money story. So, you know, kind of what I went to in the beginning, you know, how we grew up with money, what were we taught about money, what weren't we taught about money, all those sorts of things because that really gets ingrained into our adulthood and into our mindset and our subconscious mind which, you know, it doesn't help if we don't know it's there. It's something that is just you know, really automatic and getting to the bottom of that can sometimes really be really quite helpful because we can sort of separate it from "Well actually that... those aren't my beliefs you know. They're beliefs that maybe my parents instilled in me quite young." Once we can kind of separate you know, the beliefs and the stories and things like that from our adult journey that can be really helpful with separating you know, what we're doing with you know, shame and guilt and you know, I guess making it like a moral thing which it really isn't.

JULIE:  So would you suggest that that's the first thing to do is to sort of look at that self-narrative? 

TINA: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And you refer to that as your money mindset. Yeah. Money story, money mindset, you know, that type of thing. It's yeah, it's really helpful to be able to you know, pinpoint what we do believe about money because those beliefs as well as our ADHD will really play into those behaviours of impulsive spending and no follow through and not checking bank accounts and things like that. Yeah. 

JULIE: In your book ADHD Money, you share practical and psychology-based tools like body doubling, gamifying, and habit stacking. Why are these approaches so much more effective for ADHD brains more so than willpower-based systems? 

TINA: Yes. Willpower is just I see it all the time, just you know, just save, just don't spend money. But it just doesn't work for our brains. We have an interest based nervous system. So, that's where the gamifying can come in. We need what we do to be fun, interesting, you know, maybe a bit of challenge and novelty around it. That's where, you know, gamifying like savings challenges, like little savings challenges or, you know, just making it fun in some way can be really helpful. And the body doubling can be helpful as well because you know, we can apply that to lots of different areas of our life whether it's you know, housework or getting actual work done or anything like that. But it's just the you know, the having someone there to do it with you just really helps us sort of stay on task because we're there to do a certain thing and we've got someone else to do it with us. It can be really helpful for anything you know that we find boring like money.

JULIE: Talking about boring. Yes. Yes, looking at bank accounts can be quite scary at times and facing reality can be a bit scary as well. Long-term financial planning can be especially hard for ADHD brains as well. So, how do you help people stay engaged with saving or paying off that debt without losing momentum or just flipping out or burning out? 

TINA: Yeah. So, a few ways to do this. So, breaking it down can be really helpful because we really we struggle to see long term. So, it's either now or not now. So, when we're trying to plan, you know, for 5 years down the track, that's where we can lose momentum because it's like, well, that almost doesn't exist to us because it's so far away. So really break I try to you know, help people to really break down their goals whether that's around saving or paying off debt things like that. Making it visual as well which is where you know, those printables that you can have come into really helpful because you can print them off and you can actually go you know, this is my savings goal, this is my debt payoff. And you can sort of you know, colour in, or colour in a little thermometer thing as you, you know, get to the goal. Things like that. But a bit of identity based work can be helpful here as well. So instead of saying you know, I'm saving for a house deposit which you know could take quite a long time 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. Rather than saying you know, I'm someone that or rather than saying you know, this is my goal, you can just do a bit of identity work which is more around sort of I'm someone that puts money towards my house deposit. So it's more of a here and now situation rather than I'm saving for a house deposit which might be 5 or 10 years away. So that more sort of identity based work can bring you back into the present and play into that you know, now or not now. So today if you're someone that puts $50 to that house deposit suddenly it's not you know 5 years away where you're saving you know $20,000 or whatever. It's you're here in the now. You're putting this money to that and that's all you need to think about. Okay. How do we keep that spark alive when it comes to money tasks? Yep. Again, going back to that you know, the fun stuff that we spoke about just before, the gamifying and things like that. That can be really helpful. So, you know, even breaking down that massive house deposit goal into those little savings chunks. So, grabbing a printable and, you know, making it $500. It does... yes, it's still going to seem like a really massive task, you know, when you keep bringing your mind back to, you know, this is $500, but I've got to save $20,000. And I always say persistency over consistency. So, even if you've got 3 weeks where you didn't put any money to that house deposit, that gets to be okay. A lot of people will then go, "Well, I didn't put any money for 3 weeks, so I'm a bad person. I can't do this. Blah, blah, blah." But it's more about well changing your mindset of okay, well I didn't put any money towards my goal for 3 weeks that's okay I'm just going to start again next week. So there's a lot that goes into it. It's the mindset. You know, it's being comfortable with where our journey is not going to look like someone who's neurotypical who can do it constantly week after week after week. Just really showing ourselves some self-compassion as well. 

JULIE: Great advice. Thank you Tina. Since releasing your book, ADHD Money, what's been most exciting? What's happening in your world? Whether it's your reader feedback and seen you've been on the telly. What patterns are you noticing? What's happening? What's happening for you? 

TINA: It has been really exciting. I think the most exciting things are seeing my book out there. So, when I go to the shop, I always go check if my book and then I do a bit of like a celebratory dance if you know, it was there one week maybe there was five copies and then the next week there was none I'm like "Oh people are buying it." And definitely the feedback as well it's actually been a bit healing for myself because when the book came out you know as an ADHDer I'm not very good with feedback. So I thought you know this is actually going to be a really good exercise for me because I'm going to have to be comfortable with not so good feedback. You know not everyone's going to like the book and that has to be okay. You know there's books that I don't particularly like either. So yeah, that's been a fun journey seeing the you know, really positive feedback but also seeing yeah the not so good feedback. And that's been as I said really healing and a really interesting process. 

JULIE: But it's your journey and you put it together and it's out there which is marvellous. How long did it take you to put that together to write the book? 

TINA: Oh it took it was kind of done in a couple of parts. So when I started the book, I had a lot of the ideas and subjects kind of ready to go because I'd you know done a lot of whether through social media or through my own courses and things like that. So to actually put it into a structure and bulk it out, it probably took about I think it was like 8 to 10 months I think. Don't quote me, it was something like that. Yeah, so it was, it wasn't, it felt like a long process, but apparently that's not a very long time to put a book together. So yeah, it was that was quite a journey actually sitting down and you know writing it, bulking it out, putting it together, the worksheets, you know, even the process of making it different. You know, we see a lot of finance books that are just words on a page and I knew for my audience it needed to be set out properly. It needed to be, you know, a bit of white space, some worksheets, things that people can do because, you know, sometimes we'll read books and then we won't implement anything that we've read. So to have the worksheets there and actually get people to do the work that they've just read about can be really helpful in actually implementing it and remembering it. I'm happy to share a personal story of mine. And this is this is kind of my go-to as well because it's just I feel like it was just really like rock bottom for me. So, I feel like it's a really good hopefully visual for people to go, well, you know, being especially a, you know, money professional, you know, money coach, accountant. I was in this, you know, sort of rock bottom and then I've managed to sort of get myself out and get myself into a better position. So this happened quite a few years ago now. I think my children were quite little. So it must have been let's just say 10 years ago. It would have been about 10 years ago. I remember sitting at my computer. I was looking at my budget, our family budget, and I remember just seeing like just we would we were going to run out of money. Like we did not even have money to service everything that we needed to that month. And that was I just remember just bursting into tears and just telling my husband like you know there's we're not going to have enough money for all these things. Like what are we going to do? It was a period of time when I was not really earning a lot of money because, you know, the kids were quite small like they were toddlers babies. So you know, I wasn't really working and you know, living off one income was really quite hard and stressful, as it can be. So, yeah, I remember that day. It's just one of those memories that just, you know, really follows me and for a long time, I felt so much shame around it and so much guilt. Because, you know, I was tasked with, you know, doing the budgets for the family and things like that. And I just felt like I'd failed. I was like, "What have I done?" Again, I was undiagnosed ADHD. I was, you know, probably not in that postpartum stage, but, you know, you know, a fresh new mum. You know, mothers out there who have ADHD will understand, you know, how our brain is, in that period of time. And, yeah, I just couldn't believe I'd gotten, you know, I put that all on me. Even though it was, you know, joint finances, I still put that all on me. It was just, it was all my fault. And as I said, for a long time, I felt a lot of shame and guilt around that and I didn't tell anyone for years and years. Like probably the first time I spoke about that publicly was probably only a couple of years ago and it's, you know, I like to tell people that because a, you know, I'm a I'm a professional in the accounting space. You know, I teach people about money. I have a book. So, you know, to go from something like that to now, you know, being in a much better position, as I said, you know, teaching myself about my ADHD and how I can help myself with money. It's been a long journey, but it doesn't have to be a long journey for other people. You know, they can lean on, you know, how I've taught myself to deal better with money, and I do like, you know, I still impulsively spend these days, is I'm not going to hide that. You know, it's I think that would be a disservice to myself and everyone else if I hid things like that but I can catch it better. So I'm no longer in that position where, you know, I'm running out of money. I'm now in the position where I can be like, "Okay, I've, you know, I spent $50 last night at a whatever at the shops or something or even $100 that, you know, I probably didn't really have to spend on that." And yeah, it was an impulsive decision. Maybe I was feeling a bit dysregulated at the shops. There's a lot of ADHDers can and you know in the past that would have made me spiral. I'd be like, "Okay, well, you know, now I'm just going to make myself feel better by going and buying all these other things." But that's a cycle. It keeps us dysregulated. It keeps us impulsively spending. So now instead of doing that, I acknowledge it. I'm like, "Okay, that happened. Can't change it." So, you know, now I'm kinder to myself, the self-compassion that we spoke about briefly earlier, recognizing that pattern helps us move out of it and move on from it rather than keeping us in that pattern, keeping us in that cycle. And that's why it's really important to have that holistic view of money which you know a lot of people in the finance space don't really talk about. You know they more just talk about the numbers, the savings, the debt payoff. But even doing things like that, like regulating ourselves around money, I really hope that people understand how that can how amazingly that can impact your finances. It doesn't just have to be about the money, just the savings, just the investing, just the debt payoff. You can help yourself with money in other ways, like the regulating and the understanding your emotions around money and your money story. That goes a really long way. And I hope that, you know, people just listening to this story going, "Wow, okay, she was like rock bottom 10 years ago." You know, it doesn't get to that rock bottom anymore because, you know, I've done all these things that, you know, I put in the book that I put on my show socials that I talk about on the podcast, and all of that combined can really get you in a much better position. 

JULIE: Thank you so much for sharing that. I know it's a personal story and we appreciate that. Like many things in life I guess having those moments where dipping below and going "Is this it Is this where it all goes belly up?" Yeah. Very poignant moments in time. Author, accountant by day and also podcast host. Can you tell me a bit about your podcast? 

TINA: Yes. So the podcast is a lot of fun. It's something that I get to do in a bit of a long form because sometimes, you know, doing things on social media, it's fun, but it's like it's not a whole lot of information. So, the podcast just lets me I guess, you know, just bring out my thoughts a little bit more and help people. So, you know, if people can't afford to buy the book or they can't afford my resources or something like that, it's just a way to, you know, they can listen to the podcast. And I get to talk about so many things that I want to talk about. You know, not only the money and the numbers, but you know, we go into talking about mindset and beliefs and nervous system, which, you know, with the money, it really needs to be almost a holistic view of it. If we're just focusing on the numbers, that can get boring really quickly, and it really doesn't help us long term because we need those, you know, nervous system regulation mindset to really push us through. As we were talking about before when you know things tend to get boring and we tend to you know fall off a cliff on you know, things that we're saving for. So yeah it's been a lot of fun and I've had some feedback where you know, people have binged the podcast episode and they're like you know, "It's helped me so much already," and you know even that's just amazing feedback. 

JULIE: Wonderful. Yeah. With your book, is it the type of book that could be turned into an audio book? Would you consider that or... 

TINA: It is. It is an audio book. Yeah. So, it's not me narrating though because we had to sort of, you know, get it out quite quickly. So yeah, there is another narrator who yeah, it does a wonderful job. So, yes, if anyone doesn't like to read, they can still do the audio book and then part of the audio book you get the worksheet. So you can still do the exercises and things like that too. 

JULIE: That's marvellous, Tina. Absolutely. Because so many of us with ADHD, it's not that we don't want to learn. In fact, we've got this thirst for knowledge. But sometimes, sometimes words on a page can be tricksome for us to absorb. So audio book, fabulous. Now, links to your book and to the podcast and to the audio book will be in the show notes for our listeners to be able to tap in and track you down and find out what you're up to and get all this wonderful knowledge that you're sharing, which is wonderful. Thank you. Finally, for listeners who feel behind or ashamed or convinced they're just really bad with money, what would you most want them to hear today about ADHD and finances and what's actually possible?

TINA: That's such a good question. I think just knowing, you know, we don't have to be perfect. So again, you know, we tend to play into this perfection mindset and standard as ADHDers. And money doesn't have to be perfect. Sometimes it can be messy. I try to put on my social media when my money is a little bit messy, just to show that, you know, even those of us who talk about money every day, look at numbers every day, it gets to be okay to look at it differently. And if anyone sort of feels a lot of shame around money and behind with money, no one's behind with money. We all have our own journeys for starters. So, you know, if anyone is feeling, you know, maybe they're in their 30s or in their 50s and they're like, I'm not really, you know, where other people are, that's okay. I'm sure there's other, I think I'm 42 this year, there's other 42 year olds that are, you know, on a different journey than me and that's okay. And you know there's a lot of support out there especially these days as you know from the last few years there's a lot more talk about ADHD and money. You know my book, there's other books out. There's a lot of resources now where you know people can get the help and if they're feeling a lot of shame tapping into that support can be really helpful. And if people need help with that I always say you seek out a coach or you know seek out a therapist who might be able to work through that shame, especially if the shame is really sort of deep inside and people are struggling to really get through it. You know, sometimes we can do that ourselves, but sometimes we need a little bit of help and that's okay. So, you know, just knowing that there's support out there and you know, your money journey can look however you want it to look. Even doing little bits. Little bits help. Again, we always think that the little bits aren't going to help. You know, why should I put $50 into savings this week when, you know, it's really not going to be much money, but you know, you build on that and every little bit helps. It doesn't have to take as long as my journey did because when you when you get to understand your ADHD and how that impacts your finances, it can change so quickly if you want it to change. You know, if we're stuck in that guilt emotion, if we're stuck in that shame, that's what sort of hinders everything, you know, the mindset of I can't do this, it's going to take forever. My journey only took, you know, that long because I was undiagnosed. I didn't know I had ADHD. So, I had to go on a journey of, you know, after a few years, you know, after hitting my rock bottom, you know, then I had to go on a journey of even understanding what ADHD was. You know, it's not just the little boy at school bouncing off the walls. It presents in lots of different ways especially for women and then getting assessed and diagnosed and putting two and two together. So that's why my journey took so long. But you know it doesn't have to take you know 50 years for someone to get better with money when you understand those things and when you have the support. You know taking what suits you is really important as well. Taking what suits you and leaving the rest because again we can get into that like you know all or nothing or perfectionist mindset where we're like we have to implement everything but not everything is going to suit.

JULIE: Absolutely. Tina, thank you so so much for joining us today on the show and really appreciate your time and wish you all the very best with your book and your podcast and everything. It's wonderful, a great subject to cover and it's so wonderful to have a local down under resource that people can tap into. So, appreciate your time. Thank you. 

TINA: Oh, well, thank you for allowing me to come on and talk about it.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Tina Mathams

Guest