Still Broke on a Good Income? It's an ADHD Money Pattern
If you’re earning more than you ever have before and you know it’s a solid income, but you still feel like a hot mess with your money, that comes with a particular kind of financial shame. You ‘should’ be fine. You ‘should’ be able to pay down your debt. You ‘should’ be able to pay your bills on time. So many ‘shoulds’ that you beat yourself up for ALL THE DAMN TIME. The things that you think will come with earning enough, genuinely enough, don’t. The higher income hasn’t changed anything, and in fact, may actually be adding more financial stress.
How can it be possible? You've done the math. You ‘should’ have some breathing room. And yet, without fail, the last few days, or longer before payday, involve that familiar, low-grade panic if your card will decline at the grocery store or gas station, or if you’ll end up with NSF or overdraft fees.
If this is you, I want to say something clearly before we go any further: the income is not the problem. And the fix is not to spend less on lattes (despite what the ‘old folks’ or other financial experts are saying).
How You’re Feeling is More Common Than You Think
To be very clear: this is common among folks with ADHD, yes, even the high-income earners! This pattern shows up constantly in my financial coaching clients. They are smart, capable, hardworking people who are managing big careers or running successful businesses, who earn good money, and feel genuine shame about not being able to get ahead. They thought more money was the solution too, but it isn’t.
When we start working together to make money shifts, and start to look at what's actually happening, I see two major things on repeat:
A lack of clarity on where they want their money to go
A gap between the plan of where they want their money to go and how to actually make it happen in a way that is sustainable long-term (aka doesn’t involve tracking every single transaction, which can also add more shame)
I also hear that there have been so many attempts to make changes on their own. Each attempt leads to more self-doubt and shame because you can’t ‘stick to’ a budget or find anything that works for longer than a week or two.
Why Does It Keep Happening?
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, like many $, and life challenges. It's often a combination of structural gaps, information overwhelm, ADHD-specific patterns, and a complete absence of any system that accounts for how your brain actually works. And of course, there are our dysregulated nervous systems that impact our moods, which impact our spending.
The Main Challenges:
The Income Doesn't Land the Way You Think It Does
A "good income" also mean a bigger bite of your income going to deductions so you don’t even see a lot of it. Between taxes, benefits, and other deductions, your take-home % tends to be lower with a higher salary. A big jump in income can often quickly be followed by a jump in how much your life costs. A bigger apartment, a newer car, treating loved ones to dinner, and yourself to a few luxuries, because you can afford it. It doesn’t take long for lifestyle creep to take a bite out of your income.
ADHD and Time Blindness in Action
For ADHDers, there is usually now, and not now (which can explain why I’m editing this blog post less than 12 hours before it need to be published). It’s an additional layer that neurotypical money advice completely ignores. When you have $3000 in your account, and rent isn't due for a week and a half, your brain doesn't automatically hold, "but $2,400 of this is already spoken for" in working memory while you're making spending decisions in the present moment. Your brain doesn’t connect "I have money right now" with "this money is needed for something that doesn't feel real yet." The future expense isn't present in the way the current balance is, and mental math can add to the challenge here too. So you spend in a way that makes sense given what you can see, and then the bill comes due, and you don’t have enough to cover it so you’re left scrambling.
The Spending Leaks You've Stopped Noticing
And then there are the small recurring charges that don't feel like decisions because they were set up so long ago you've stopped noticing them. The subscriptions. The monthly apps. The services that auto-renewed. For ADHD brains that are often in avoidance mode with their money, these can add up to hundreds of dollars a month, which is exactly what our very subscription-based society wants to happen! Add in the irregular expenses (car maintenance, a birthday gift, a prescription that wasn't covered), and you start to see why the math never quite adds up, no matter what the income is.
You Don't Have a Buffer
If something unexpected happens, and you don’t have savings to draw from, that makes it feel about 100x more stressful. Meaning that unexpected expenses often go straight onto a credit card or create a cash flow crisis for future you. It means that irregular expenses always feel like emergencies. And managing a continuous stream of financial emergencies is exhausting in a way that makes it genuinely hard to get ahead.
So What Can You Do?
There are things you can do to start to shift how managing your money feels. But I want to caution you because true sustainable change takes time, and I know we don’t have large piles of patience hanging around. You also can’t expect perfection. You don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future, so $hit will happen that you haven’t planned for. Try and be kind to yourself. 💛
Start With the Plan
I know, I know, you’ve built more plans than you can count. But try one more with me. Use whatever tool you already have, or grab my free ADHD Money Toolkit so you don’t have to do any math. It can also help you explore some budget line items you may not have thought to include before that can make it feel like you have fewer emergencies.
When building your plan, don’t build it so that you have to wake up a completely different person tomorrow for it to work. If you need DoorDash on Tuesdays because it’s a late work night and you have to be at Pilates or run your kid to dance, right after work, include it in your plan. If you don’t, you’re setting yourself up to fail; let’s stop that shit!
Build the First Block of Your Money Systems
WTF do I mean when I say money systems? I’m referring to how you set up your account(s) and how you use automation. One of the most effective shifts for ADHD brains is to have separate accounts for bills and spending. It looks like this:
Your paycheck goes into your bills account.
Every payday, a transfer happens to your spending account automatically.
The plan helps you see how much $ you can move to your spending account because you know your numbers.
The benefits?
You have WAY less mental math to do to answer the question, can I afford it?
You can slowly start to feel confident that your bills are covered, because we have to see it happen on repeat to believe it.
When your spending account only contains money that's actually yours to spend, the decision-making gets a lot cleaner. You look at the balance, and it actually means something.
Bonus Action (for an extra gold star!)
Do the A Subscription Audit
But make it FUN! Yes, fun. Create little dopamine trails to help you stop avoiding it because you know this is something you planned to do months and months ago.
It can’t take forever. Set aside 20-30 minutes when you sit down to do this.
Add in a reward. For every subscription you cancel. The next time the payment would have come out of your account, give yourself a little reward. Maybe that’s a little sweet treat, or maybe you transfer the amount of money you saved that month toward a purchase of an item you’ve had your eye on.
Create challenge. Ask a friend or partner to do this challenge with you and see who can save the most money. Decide on a prize for the winner before you start.
Next time you sign up for a ‘free trial’ go and cancel right away. If you decide you still want it after your trial ends, they’ll still take your money, and they might even give you a deal to entice you to sign up!
About the Author
Sherry is an ADHD financial coach who works with adults who are tired of feeling like they should have it together by now. She specialises in untangling the money patterns that keep smart, capable people stuck, not through restriction, but through building systems that actually make sense. Find out more about working with Sherry or book a free no-pressure consultation.
