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<\/p>\nSeven years ago, I wrote an essay about what life would feel like if I didn\u2019t struggle with saving money. In it, I envisioned the power of having enough in emergency funds to tide me over in case I needed to leave an abusive job or relationship.<\/p>\n
But writing that essay and having it go viral failed to change the struggle I had with my own bank account. In building my financial house, I continued my fractured existence as its construction worker, arsonist and firefighter.<\/p>\n
Around the same time, I began to suspect I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., after I saw more and more people posting about it on Instagram. But because I thought having A.D.H.D. simply meant I was distractible, and because a 90-minute evaluation cost $260, I waited to get a diagnosis.<\/p>\n
In 2021, at 39, my frustration pushed me to cobble together the money for a test. My diagnosis handed me a map to the mental landscape I\u2019d wandered lost in for four decades.<\/p>\n
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with A.D.H.D. than girls during childhood, because boys more often display the well-known hyperactivity trait. But more women, who tend to display the lesser-known inattentive trait, are being diagnosed later in life, thanks in part to A.D.H.D. groups and content creators who have helped them recognize that they have symptoms of the neurodevelopmental disorder. From 2020 to 2022, the incidence of A.D.H.D. diagnosis in women between ages 23 and 49 almost doubled.<\/p>\n
For many of us, the dots connected straight from our diagnosis to our checking account. As one person in a Facebook group called Neurodivergent Finance\/A.D.H.D. Finance put it, \u201cYou folks get the panic.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The pandemic increased A.D.H.D. awareness, said Dr. Sasha Hamdani, a psychiatrist and A.D.H.D. clinical specialist, because \u201cpeople were removed from previous architecture that gave them structure and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n
During lockdown, one of Dr. Hamdani\u2019s patients showed her a TikTok video of a 12-year-old who delivered a medically unsound theory that people who sneeze multiple times in a row are more likely to have A.D.H.D.<\/p>\n
That showed Dr. Hamdani, who has the disorder, that these platforms could be flooded with misinformation. So she decided to make a series of bite-size educational videos that she assumed would be just for her own patients to reference.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m now part of her large social media following, consuming content that aligns with her book \u201cSelf-Care for People With ADHD.\u201d Her explanatory TikTok videos, among those of other creators, have served as a kind of currency between myself and those close to me with A.D.H.D. We message each other videos that give language to our experience. Sometimes we\u2019re shocked to realize that the cause of certain struggles \u2014 like my chicken-scratch handwriting \u2014 is part of our having A.D.H.D. I\u2019ve used the videos to explain my behavior and perspective to my friends and family.<\/p>\n
Dr. Hamdani said that money issues, more than other common aspects of A.D.H.D. \u2014 such as chronic lateness, interrupting or sensitivity to rejection \u2014 push people to seek care.<\/p>\n
\u201cA.D.H.D., intrinsically, is a failure of numerous regulation checkpoints,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can have money management issues from lots of different places.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lack of impulse control, she said, leads to impulse spending, and difficulty with executive functioning and planning make budgeting a struggle. Issues with emotional regulation, she added, can lead to spending as a coping mechanism.<\/p>\n
In testing an app she developed for managing A.D.H.D., Dr. Hamdani noticed an additional challenge for women.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have found such a clear correlation with my impulsivity and my cycles,\u201d she said. Estrogen dips on premenstrual days, she explained, and because estrogen and dopamine typically work together, low estrogen means low dopamine, causing her to be more impulsive. \u201cI cross-correlated it with my credit card statements, and there\u2019s a $600 bump in those days,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDopamine\u2019s the magic molecule,\u201d said Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a board-certified psychiatrist and founder of the Hallowell ADHD Centers, where I was diagnosed. <\/strong>Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays a role in attention and mood and is, as he calls it, the great mediator of pleasure. \u201cWhen you access it properly, it gives you pleasure, and when you access it improperly, you become an addict,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very powerful little molecule, and people do all kinds of things in search of their dopamine hit.\u201d<\/p>\n People with A.D.H.D need more stimulation to feel the ordinary pleasure that most people feel, he said, which often means they resort to more extraordinary means to get it.<\/p>\n \u201cOrdinary life just doesn\u2019t do it for us,\u201d said Dr. Hallowell, who also has A.D.H.D. \u201cWhereas someone else wouldn\u2019t need the extra boost of dopamine to feel good about being alive, we do. And I call that the itch at the core of A.D.H.D. That\u2019s absolutely crucial \u2014 because how you scratch it makes all the difference in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n This itch is sometimes referred to as reward deficiency syndrome. Spending is one way to scratch the itch, and the more expensive something is, he said, the more exciting it is.<\/p>\n Dr. Hallowell described A.D.H.D. as a medical problem that could be treated with medication and certain strategies. He recommends focusing on the positives of A.D.H.D., such as curiosity, creativity, and energy, and getting a coach to help with the challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cI can no more manage finance than I can build an automobile,\u201d he said, admitting even he still feels a degree of shame that he hasn\u2019t controlled his money habits as much as he would have liked. His wife manages his finances. \u201cWe are notoriously bad in handling money.\u201d<\/p>\n After racking up $15,000 in impulse spending debt, Ellyce Fulmore hit a breaking point during the pandemic, when losing her routine exacerbated her inability to focus. She was also on TikTok quite a bit, where she learned about the ways symptoms of A.D.H.D., like inattentiveness, can show up in women. She was diagnosed with the disorder in December 2020.<\/p>\n Ms. Fulmore, an A.D.H.D. finance educator and author of the forthcoming book \u201cKeeping Finance Personal, said that one of the main challenges for people with the condition is what\u2019s referred to as the A.D.H.D. tax: the extra costs that people incur because of its symptoms.<\/p>\n A.D.H.D. doesn\u2019t always cause people to spend. I know multiple people in personal finance whose A.D.H.D. causes them to fixate on money, some to the point of struggling to spend.<\/p>\n But because activities like planning or budgeting don\u2019t usually give people with A.D.H.D. a dopamine hit, they can find it harder than neurotypical people to get started or stick to accounting activities. This results in extra costs \u2014 paying cancellation fees for missed appointments, late fees for not opening a bill on time, or losing refunds because we missed the deadline for returning an unwanted purchase.<\/p>\n Ms. Fulmore offers an A.D.H.D. money management program that incorporates whatever makes it exciting, novel, or interesting to follow the dopamine road to financial success.<\/p>\n She used sticker charts, colored progress trackers, and bullet journaling to \u201chack the system\u201d of her brain. She also automated her savings and debt payments.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, what has helped has been unlearning a lot of the neurotypical expectations,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m going to approach things differently, and it\u2019s not going to be the way that traditional personal finance education tells you to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Fulmore started therapy to deal with the shame she had accumulated from a world that reflected a message that her struggles were her fault. She also started the stimulant medication Vyvanse, which helped her focus and reduce her spending. Aside from her student loans, she\u2019s now free of debt.<\/p>\n Madison Kemp\u2019s husband, who was diagnosed with A.D.H.D. in elementary school, forwarded her a TikTok video showing a stack of boxes on a porch and a reference to \u201cdopamine purchases\u201d arriving all at once. \u201cYou do this all the time,\u201d she said he told her.<\/p>\n Ms. Kemp, 33, always felt like she was chasing her financial tail: as soon as she resisted spending, she\u2019d reward herself with more spending. She played what she calls \u201crent chicken,\u201d hoping a rent check wouldn\u2019t get cashed until after payday.<\/p>\n She found her diagnosis satisfying. \u201cUntil I was diagnosed, I was like: \u2018Everyone has to go through life like this, right?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Now that she\u2019s on the non-stimulant A.D.H.D. medication Strattera, she can wait a full day to consider a purchase, and she finally feels ready to take on home buying.<\/p>\n She follows A.D.H.D. TikTok accounts like Catiosaurus, finding relatable examples of habits she has had her entire life.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, there are people who also do it like that, for that reason,\u2019 and you really just feel like there\u2019s actually a community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Shannon D. Smith had neglected her money journal. When she finally tallied her expenses, she realized why money felt tight the last month \u2014 her family had spent $700 dining out.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I cried,\u201d Ms. Smith said. \u201cI felt irresponsible. I felt like a bad mom. I kept thinking: I should know better.\u201d<\/p>\n Her inability to focus at work made her worry it might be the onset of Alzheimer\u2019s, a disease that runs in her family. But she found that when she was working on her own business, she could focus into the night. Her doctor recognized features of A.D.H.D.<\/p>\n Ms. Smith\u2019s A.D.H.D. diagnosis last year, at age 42, helped explain her struggles with delaying gratification.<\/p>\n She also internalized the stereotype that women are bad with money.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have that deep-seated belief that you\u2019re not capable of handling money, and then you have that belief kind of be a self-fulfilling prophecy,\u201d Ms. Smith said.<\/p>\n Her diagnosis helped her seek support for herself and her children, whom she suspects all have A.D.H.D., as research has shown it\u2019s hereditary. \u201cIf I had this information when I was younger, I could have been so much further along,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. Smith, who coaches other women, tries to think of A.D.H.D. as less a limitation than as a guide. She reads ADDitude, a quarterly publication focused on A.D.H.D., and follows the podcast Attention Different. She automates savings, uses accountability partners and gives herself a 24-hour rule for spending.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m in a number of support groups, and hearing so many other women share the same stories of struggling with money or struggling with impulsivity or self-control, it was just validating to feel like, OK, well, I\u2019m not the only one,\u201d she said. \u201cSo maybe I\u2019m not as bad a person as I thought I was.\u201d<\/p>\nOvercoming the A.D.H.D. Tax<\/h2>\n
A Satisfying Diagnosis<\/h2>\n
Breaking the Shame Cycle<\/h2>\n