ADHD and Spending Money

Saving with Impulse Issues is Tough

My husband and I are opposites when it comes to money. Surprisingly enough, HE'S THE SPENDER!!! Expensive hobbies and nice cars are things that cost us thousands per year. I typically invade Pinterest and don't actually pull the trigger on buying things... unless it's home decor... Even then, the thrift stores and "great deals" can add up. Fast. $5 a day is $60 a month! Ouch!

The Breaking Point

Before we had kids, I was trying to make the whole "animals are babies" thing work. We had 2 cats and one german shepherd puppy in an 800sqft apartment... Yeah... Too much to handle. We reached our breaking point when we noticed the puppy was having medical issues and we had to give him up. (They were a lovely family with 2 acres of fenced land and two other shepherds that loved dogs. We were sent lots of pictures showing how happy he was.) We were a little broken. If we couldn't take care of an animal, and kids were important to us, how could we move forward?

That Book My Parents Gave Us...

Yeah. The finance book my parents gave us on our wedding day... The Dave Ramsay book... We pulled it out and started slow. We didn't read it cover to cover, but we did find the income ratios in the back of the book. When we compared our expenses to what we were making, we realized that "zero budget" does not mean assign every dollar you own on a different bill. We traded in the used Audi that was a "good deal" for a much cheaper car and started to work on our debts. At this point, I was fully on board, but hubby, master of the finances and the spender, was only partway there.

More Problems

We had freed up more money, but hubby didn't want to have tons of savings just sitting around, and although we were putting more money toward bills, we weren't sacrificing in lifestyle. At this stage, we were better. We bought a house. We had a son. And we were stable. Perfect! Right?

We had a HUGE bump in the road when we decided to move internationally. Hubby applied for the job and we moved... 2 months later. We sold the house, use the money to pay off the debts, and set aside cash for our renting deposit. Two years later we were living the high life and still not saving enough. We also paid for a trip to Disneyland on a credit card... With flights from Germany... I wasn't involved in finances still, so when I asked "are you sure we can afford this?" And hubby said yes, I believed him. It's not his fault, he just didn't want to save up and we WERE making a lot more money. His thought was we'd be able to pay off the trip quickly. But we didn't. We ate the debt. And then when we had to move out for hubby's mental health (He was a military contractor and they were having him work 12 hour nights, 7 days a week, for 2-3 months at a time AND we had a newborn.)

Actually Getting Better

We had to borrow $10k from my parents. I was so upset with myself that I was so blind to everything going on with our money and my ADHD was out of control. The stress of dealing with G's preschool that viewed ADHD as coming from abuse, living in a country where you don't speak the language, and having a newborn with zero support was debilitating. When we came back to the US we started living and breathing everything Dave Ramsay. My son knows his name, people. My 4-year-old was involved in getting out of debt.

What Did We Change?

With ADHD, staying "gazelle intense" was pretty much impossible for us until we found ways to get our mental health in check. It meant therapy, meds, and lots of free activities that could keep us busy and away from expensive hobbies. We lost weight by doing better eating and joining a gym.

Staying Busy

Since we had lived in Florida at the time we found out that Bush Gardens had a yearly pass that was the cost of one daily ticket. You just had to pay for parking. No blackout dates. We spent a lot of our holidays and "I'm bored" weekends doing that which saved a lot of money. We looked for free tours and anything else we could get our hands on. Did you know Disneyworld did free character sing-alongs (before COVID, unsure of current activities) on their campground resort every weekend? A gym has childcare and cost us less than $50 a month for both kids, AND they have a hot-tub. I made a rule that the hot-tub was a reward, so if I was on the treadmill for 10 minutes I could go sit in it.

Better Eating

Our local grocery store had meal kits with recipe cards on them. Everything was pre-measured and there was so much less to think about when cooking. It reduced the stress of eating at home and changed our eating-out habits dramatically. We lost a ton of weight and were able to keep up with the kids better.

Where Are We Now?

We still have debt, but we've paid off close to $100k so far and are on track to be debt-free by the end of this year. We have monthly "dream meetings" to remind us what we're doing and why buying 15 bird decor items or computer parts this month isn't a priority. Or tools. This month's expensive hubby hobby is tools... But what I will say, is having our money set up in a much better place has made my symptoms WAY better. It's made hubby and I much better parents to our kids. The stress of money is painful, but even as a stay-at-home mom, I've had a valuable role to play in our family getting on track.

Starting Therapy as an ADHD Adult

This post has moved!

Check out ADHD and the Stay at home Mom's Post on Starting Therapy as an Adult at

https://www.adhdandthestayathomemom.com/post/therapy-and-adult-adhd

Hostility and ADHD (A Story From My Life)

Why do people look down on others with ADHD?

It's hard to imagine that not everyone's brain functions the same way when our outsides all look the same. Even among others with ADHD it can be hard for people to accept that someone has different symptoms or diagnosis than you do. Especially when the behavior that ADHDers exhibit from a small clip makes perfect sense. When your problem is self-regulation, it means that almost anything you do can be normal, but it's how the events are strung together that make the difference.

Even in people with ADHD we don't always understand another person who has our same condition because the severity and presentations are differently affected. Some people need medication, others are able to use practical or holistic approaches, and others (like my son and I) need a combination of both. If you need more or less help, some people will berate you. This is because they either feel they are better than, or that it feels like someone is holding up a mirror to their own flaws.

Many people who meet others have founded their belief in the world that everyone else who fits into certain boxes. (Race, Gender, Sexuality, Diagnosis...) When they meet someone who doesn't fit into a single labeled box, they become angry or upset. They lash out, which hurts everyone.

A Story

Keeping all of this in mind, I had an experience this weekend that I feel needs to be shared. I went to my new psychiatrist this weekend for my second appointment. I had talked to some people about anxiety and realized that what I had been experiencing was not, in fact, normal anxiety. At least, it isn't just normal anxiety, but someone else brought up a rare symptom in ADHD, called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, that had the jumbled reactions to emotions that I was experiencing (physical pain, strong emotion, and then having a thought connected to the emotion). Because I haven't done any research on it, or had heard of it until the day of my appointment, I figured I would ask about it since I was told that treatment for this symptom was vastly different than anxiety.

During my first appointment, I had told her a few side effects that I was having with one of my medications. It was something that my old psychiatrist (who moved practices and no longer takes my insurance) had been toying around with, but it just wasn't working. It was actually killing the little motivation I had to do things, and was making me uninterested in anything. Not sad, just glued to the bed and being dragged by hyper-focus.

When I walked into this second appointment, it started normal enough. She asked how I was doing, and I told her that I still wasn't doing well with the anxiety meds, but I was developing new coping skills that were helping me in other areas. I told her that I had found out about my odd emotional reaction sequence and asked if it was a good idea for me to be re-evaluated given this new information. I was expecting a yes, no, or "You're a fairly new patient, and I'd like to work with you a bit longer before making a decision." None of things would have offended me, but what I got was none of those responses.

This is where everything went wrong. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. She told me that re-evaluations "simply aren't done" and that I was learning too much about ADHD. She asked why I was so invested in it and berated me for saying that up until a year ago I was practically non-functional. I explained that my knowledge was needed not only for myself, but for my son. This was something I needed to improve so that I could guide him in the right direction. "Why is is that bad? Why is researching coping mechanisms and figuring out how to help my child a bad thing?"

She dodged my questions and told me "I'm exactly the same as you. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 30's. I have inattentive-ADHD and I have six degrees and a son with ADHD. There is nothing wrong with you."

To this, I want to make a few points. My brain is beautiful, but I don't fully understand it, and for me to be able to cope with that, I need to learn about it. I learn and problem-solve. This is how I cope with everything in my life. Finances, children, illness, everything. Every week I'm researching a new thing and learning about it. The reason I do this is 1) I have a problem with hyper-focusing which often affects the people around me (Yep, laying that on the table) and 2) I love learning about things because it makes me feel more in control by helping me find or create solutions.

Back in the appointment, I started crying. I was crying because as a mom who's job it is to make sure that her child succeeds in the world, I was terrified of the mirror she was holding up to herself. I immediately knew that the problem wasn't about me. It was about her seeing her own shortcomings. She asked me about how I had coped before I was married as an adult, but I was married right after after high school. Yes, in my late 20's I've been married for 10 years, to the same person, and he is my rock, world and everything. I don't think she could understand that I wasn't the same as her, and I wasn't fitting in her ADHD box. I don't think that she could compute that I could be in a stable relationship and work toward family goals despite my family being my job, just like psychiatry is hers.

I walked out of that office in tears. I set up the appointment she asked me to for two weeks later, but it was just in case I hadn't found a new provider over the weekend. I now have a therapist, a new evaluation, and a new psychiatrist. I'm dealing with the feelings of rejection that are coming from my symptoms not being accepted by a mental health professional and am trying not to wonder how this will affect me moving forward. A new evaluation and a fresh start are exactly what I need so that, hopefully, my new psychiatrist isn't tainted by someone who looked at me, not with an analytical eye, but an emotional one.

So what did I learn?

Providers are humans. They're subject tot their own biases and personal flaws, just like the rest of us. We all judge each other, and in some cases it can be a good thing (the guy holding up the bank probably isn't in a good state of mind) and others it can be a bad thing. We often do judge others based on our own experiences, but there needs to be a true acknowledgement that they aren't everyone's experiences. Despite being told to from others around me, I did not report her. She may very well be fantastic with other patients who don't hit so close to home for her. We're a similar age with children and the same diagnosis. I truly believe that she sees too much in me to think objectively and as it stands I understand that she is human first and foremost.

My Journey

ADHD and the Stay at Home Mom has Moved! To see this post, CLICK HERE!