Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

Welcome back to another episode.

And today we're talking about finances.

Now, please don't turn off the podcast.

I promise you this is going to be interesting, it's going to be fascinating and we're really going to get some fantastic practical tools from someone who really understands about ADHD and money.

So I'm very happy to welcome Tina Mathers.

She's an ADHD money coach, accountant and author of ADHD Money, which is a practical and empowering guide to understanding the emotional side of money when you have adhd.

And Tina helps neurodivergent individuals untangle their financial lives through values based coaching workshops and accessible tools designed for ADHD brains.

This is exactly what we need.

She's also the founder of ADHD Money, which is a fast growing platform that blends real world finance strategies with nervous system awareness, emotional regulation and mindset work.

Because money management isn't just about spreadsheets, it's about safety, identity and self trust.

Couldn't be more true.

So I'm really, really happy to have you here, Tina, and so much of this resonates and I'm sure it'll relate so much to all our listeners as well.

So welcome back to the podcast because you have been on the podcast before, haven't you?

I have.

Thank you so much.

It has been a while though, so it's good to chat to you again.

Yeah, absolutely.

And maybe we will link to the original episode in the show notes so people can go back and listen to that because if it was a good few years ago now, and obviously lots, lots of change, but you're still doing what you're doing, which is incredibly helpful for the neurodivergent community.

So I mean, let's, let's just start a little bit sort of backwards.

What drove you, I guess, from working in this community for quite a long time, obviously understanding yourself and what you need with Regards to finances has led you to write this book.

And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the book.

The book was something that was just really needed in this community.

I mean, now that we're talking, there are a few books geared towards neurodivergence and adhd, which is great.

The fact that there's more coming out, because if you look on any bookshelf or even on Amazon, you know, website, whatever, 99% of books are geared towards neurotypical brains and neurotypical information.

There's not really a whole lot out there that understand how money is for neurodivergent people, especially people with adhd.

Um, so that's just.

That was the motivation to start getting some information out there on bookshelves.

Not everyone's on social media either.

Not everyone likes to digest content in that way.

So just having another medium for people to look at.

And it was really important to me as well, that it was designed for an ADHD brain as well.

The last thing I wanted was just a bunch of words on a page.

So there's.

There's colour and there's worksheets and really easy to digest information, short sentences, really punchy little quotes and things like that that really just help to engage in ADHD brain as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I love the fact that you brought in the concept of the nervous system and regulation and understanding that it's not just money and finances and dry.

This is about feeling safe, this is about feeling understood.

This is about understanding our brains so we can finally lean into how we understand and we process things and money is such a huge part of our life.

Perhaps you can give us a little bit of an indication of how is the nervous system connected to money, especially with adhd.

Yeah.

So with adhd, we, you know, because we've spent our whole lives, as you would know, you know, having a lot of negative information towards ourselves, especially if, as, you know, especially as women as well.

A lot of us have spent our whole lives undiagnosed, so we.

We tend to have really heightened nervous systems, not only just around money, but a lot of other things, a lot of other aspects in our life as well.

Just because we haven't known, you know, why we feel different and why we do things differently, why we process things differently.

And money is one of those subjects where, you know, there can be a lot of different emotions as well.

So people tend to feel, you know, a lot of guilt around money, a lot of shame, a lot of judgment because they don't know how to handle Finances and all of that affects our nervous system.

We tend to have really heightened nervous systems.

That's why if you ever feel like you need to look at your bank account, you really don't want to, and you get the, you know, those sensations in your body just being aware of things like that, which is, you know, what a lot of typical finance books just don't go into because they don't need to think about that before they look at their bank account or something like that.

So it was really important to me to have information out there like that.

And you're exactly right.

Finance isn't just about the dry money.

Looking at our bank account and how much money is in there and savings and things like that.

A lot of it is to do with our emotions around money, Our nervous system regulating our nervous system.

And one of the really interesting things that I found before the concept of this book even was a thing was when I used to work with one on one.

I don't work with people one on one anymore.

But when I used to, I, I found a really interesting trend with my clients and that was that they knew how, how to handle their money.

It was just other things that was kind of blinding them from that.

So it was that I feel really unsafe around money or I don't trust myself with money.

Once we started to clear those blocks, it was actually really amazing the types of things that people could do with their money, finally understand their money, finally, you know, understanding how to work with their money.

It was because we just had to clear those blocks that actually had nothing to do with the physical money in their bank account.

Yeah.

I think what's really interesting is that I think so much of it is like belief work as well, isn't it?

Of what we've believed is true through like family conditioning, society, how we've seen our parents behave with money and talk about money.

And it can feel very unsafe to have a different money belief to what we've grown up with.

Whether it's to do with debt or it's to do with credit cards, or it's to do with charging our worth and all this stuff.

No one teaches us this like we have to learn on the job.

And I do think that some people are more kind of able to absorb it all.

Like it doesn't scare them as much.

And obviously without generalizing too much, you know, neurodivergent brains are all different and very unique.

But I wonder what it is that you notice with ADHD that where we struggle, you know, I know that there's impulsivity.

I know that there's probably an overriding other co occurring trait maybe to dyscalcular.

What other kind of parts of our brain is blocking us from being able to understand money as maybe neurotypicals do?

A lot of it is to do with not understanding how our brain works.

And I'll kind of give you a bit of an example to illustrate what I mean there.

So you're exactly right with impulsive spending.

Right.

So being impulsive with no matter what presentation of ADHD you have, generally there's going to be an element of impulsivity there.

It's one of the criteria of having adhd.

However, with typical finance talk, we're told that being impulsive with money is really bad.

We shouldn't impulsively spend, we shouldn't be impulsive with money.

We should, you know, stop and think about before we do things with money that's actually really hard for us because of that impulsivity that's just really innate to us.

So we tend to have this story about ourselves.

I'm really bad with money because I can't stop spending.

I'm really bad with money because I impulsively spend.

And then we create that story and it becomes what's true for us.

So then when we have that conditioning and some of us have had that conditioning for 20, 30, 40 years of our lives, it becomes very hard to start to unravel that and unwrap that and start to have new beliefs.

And you absolutely, I go through this in the book, you absolutely can create new beliefs, but it takes that work, it takes that deconditioning, it takes that work to start believing those new beliefs rather than carrying the judgment and the shame and the guilt.

Just because that's what you've been told your whole life.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think there's so much of that is true and then there's also the neurobiological perspective of the way our brains are wired differently.

And I'm going through a brain health coaching qualification at the moment with Dr. Daniel Amen in America.

And we're understanding how it shows up in brain scans, you know, the prefrontal cortex with regards to sort of impulsivity or decision making or the amygdala or the limbic system and, and so much of that is connected to understanding money and finances and breaking things down and processing and how we see things or how we problem solve.

So so much like you say, shame has been put on us.

And actually when we get that understanding of our adhd, yes, there's all, all the other stuff.

But actually from a physiological perspective, we are working differently with different brains, and that gives us quite a lot of, you know, self compassion.

And then we can make different choices or we can learn to nurture ourselves in different ways.

But also I'm interested to know, I guess, how we can rewire our brains.

So, okay, for example, personal, kind of, you know, opening whatever you want to call it is.

I really am very physically repulsed by an Excel spreadsheet.

I really struggle with that.

And my poor accountant, you know, you know, he's really had to be very patient with me.

People on my team, I'm just like, I can't work with Excel spreadsheets.

It's just, I see everything moving around and I struggle.

But we've not been given any of the tools.

It's like, well, that's.

If you don't understand, you know, Excel, then there's something wrong with you.

Is there other ways that we can work to see our finances, to break it all down, understand profit and loss and all of that?

Especially when so many of us are entrepreneurs, we're business owners, we have so many amazing ideas, and it's often the finances that block us from success.

I am a strong believer that there's not one thing that fits every ADHD brain.

We do hear a lot about spreadsheets and, you know, beautiful, colorful dashboards on spreadsheets and things like that, but it's not going to be for everybody.

I have had clients that have loved spreadsheets.

I have had clients that just absolutely despise them and will not use them.

There's definitely other things that you can do to look at your own finances.

You can use like a paper money diary or money planner.

You can use just a general notebook.

You can use apps.

There's lots of apps these days.

There's so many different ways.

And that's the other thing people will say, well, you know, this is the, this is the best way to manage your finances.

And if there's somebody with ADHD that hears that and then goes, well, if I can't, you know, is that black and white?

If I can't do it that way and someone says that's the best, then there must be no way for me.

And then, you know, that blocks them from even looking at their finances, which is just a really sad situation.

I wholeheartedly believe that everyone with ADHD can be good with money, that they can understand their finances.

They just need to do it in a way that makes sense for them.

And a lot of it comes down to trial and error.

Sometimes it's not really fun, it's not really sexy to say that, but that's essentially what it is.

It's trial and error.

And even with our brains that tend to need that novelty, sometimes it's doing things a certain way until it doesn't work anymore.

And then you do something a different way.

And we've often been shamed for that as well.

Like why are you trying this way when you've been doing it this way?

Why can't you stick with that?

And it's like, well, our brains, they need it, they need the novelty, they need the excitement.

Who cares if you're using a spreadsheet for six months and then suddenly you start using a, you know, paper planner or something?

If it works, it works.

Yeah.

I mean, I think again I'll come back to my own lived experience on this one.

Being a business owner and who has had to go through do a lot of inner work, a lot of belief work, a lot of nervous system healing.

So much understanding about my identity, identity and social conditioning and family.

Generational financial stories that have impacted me hugely.

And I still feel like I've not even cracked myself open enough because I still see these money stories come in and I know that some of it is about self worth charging and that fear of what will people say when you start charging more.

What you know, who are you to charge?

You know, these prices and life is very expensive now.

Like we know the cost of living is sky high.

It's a struggle for so many people.

And then I, I kind of see my finances very top line.

So I know some people are very detail, whereas I kind of see my ingoings and outgoings in hundreds or ten, do you know what I mean?

Tens.

So I kind of have an idea, but I don't know my specifics.

Is that something that should be embraced or is that something that I should change?

Like, I think it's, there's so much what should it be like?

Like what should it look like?

What are you a responsible business owner if you don't know your finances?

Can you break that down a little bit?

Yeah, look, you know, as an accountant I do, I do believe that business owners should somewhat at least know their finances.

I'm not under any illusion that the average business owner, and what I mean by average business owner, I just mean someone who, you know, isn't into finances, is an accountant or anything like that.

I'm not under any illusion that they're going to be, you know, all over their finances.

Like tracking it to the dollar every single day.

Like, that's something that we do.

That's something that we enjoy, but not everyone's going to enjoy that.

And I think there is something that needs to be embraced there where as long as you have some intimate understanding.

So, yes, you may not need to track the dollar.

That might come down to, you know, if you're really struggling with your finances, if you really were struggling to pay yourself or pay your, you know, expenses or something like that, you might need to drill down a little bit deeper.

But if you are someone who, you know, you're paying yourself, you know, you know, you've got money for your expenses there, you know, loan repayments, whatever it is, I don't really think it needs to be that granular, especially if that's going to, I guess, stress you out as well, because we also don't want to get to the point where we're stressing ourselves out so much that then it's turning us off, looking at our finances and having that understanding, too.

So I think that, yeah, as long as you've got some understanding of your incomings and outgoings, your financial position and you're comfortable with that, you know, that's why accountants exist.

We can help you with that, and we can help you with your storytelling, with your financials and things like that, you don't need to.

You just need to know enough to make important decisions, and then you can always outsource the rest to your accountant to help you understand that little bit more without you being too granular in it.

Yeah.

And if someone's listening now and they are working with a very neurotypical accountant or bookkeeper, what accommodations or help or support could they ask their accountant, you know, if they can turn around and say, listen, I'm adhd.

I've got a neurodivergent brain.

Numbers just, you know, don't come easily to me.

Or what can they start asking for if they don't want to change their accountant?

A little education never goes astray.

So if someone's accountant really doesn't understand, you know, what that means, what having ADHD means, what having ADHD in relation to money means just educating them.

So, like, hey, I really don't understand what's on my financials.

Maybe if there's some dyscalculia there or something like that, you know, could we have a meeting so we can just run through what this all means?

Or, you know, I've had people in the past, even though I'm not A neurotypical accountant.

But I've had people in the past request their financials in color so, you know, like green for positive numbers, red for negative numbers or something like that to make it sort of stand out a little bit more.

And yeah, patience as well.

So with my own business, one of the biggest things I heard was that people's previous accountant just didn't have the patience for them.

Didn't have the patience to, you know, explain all of this.

So I think there's just a few there, a few accommodations there that, you know, people could start asking for.

Yeah, absolutely.

And because there is so much shame there, especially when if you've navigated debt for a long time and you've got yourself into a pickle with maybe some direct debits, you've not canceled, you've forgotten about certain things, even like tax stuff if there's things that you've missed.

So much ingrained shame around finances, which really does impact our self belief and our self worth and self esteem.

Especially when so many of us have amazing business ideas and love what we do, we're passionate about what we do.

And I hear this all the time and I, and I wish it wasn't so that they are running businesses.

They love doing what they love and what they enjoy, but it's the money and it's the finances that block them from success.

And it's like, right, how can we carry this on while we're still working to our, you know, to, to our energy, to what we enjoy, our passion, our creativity and our interest and you know, helping other people.

But how can we do that and be profitable?

And that I often hear is, is the issue is, is that it's never both because we do we struggle or we, we are ashamed to ask the questions or we think it's so obvious how embarrassing that I've got to ask this question, question.

And I had to go through that with my accountant and thankfully he was really patient and I was really open because he knows what my business is.

So it was like kind of like day one.

Just so you know who you're dealing with.

Have you got a cup of coffee in front of you?

Because we're going to be here for a while.

And actually sometimes he communicates on WhatsApp with me because he knows that I miss emails.

You know, if I see an email that says accounts needed or set statements, my brain just goes, that's like, I'll deal with that another day.

Tax, you know, form, fill that in.

It's again, it's kind of like, I don't actually read it.

So it is really important, isn't it, that we get this support because we have so much to contribute to the world and I hate to see so much potential missed and lost because of something that can be healed and can be helped.

Can you give us like some examples maybe, or some ideas of someone's listening and going, yes, this is me, but how do I get over that block, that hurdle?

So a little bit of what you.

Alluded to earlier is having self compassion.

Self compassion goes such a long way and it's that acknowledgement and self compassion can be those first steps to overcoming those blocks.

You know, you can do things within yourself, so you can do some journaling around your blocks as well.

Money story, which I go into my book as well, those beliefs and, you know, they're so ingrained since childhood and how we were brought up and things like that.

Understanding your money story can also help you unblock those things.

But outside of ourselves, you know, we can outsource these things as well.

So you're exactly right.

Business owners want to do what they are good at, what they want to do, especially ADHD business owners, you know, we want to only do our specialty or our zone of genius.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with outsourcing stuff.

I've had clients that will have myself and a va and it was actually the VA that I communicated most with because the business owner is like, I don't understand any of this.

I don't really want to know.

So, you know, when I needed receipts or something like that, straight to the va, business owner would get the VA all the stuff and you know, I would speak with the business owner about the stuff that was a little bit more interesting rather than, hey, can I have this receipt?

So there's absolutely nothing wrong.

There's no shame with outsourcing that stuff as well.

I don't know about other people listening or about yourself, but I know when I started my business I had this ego thing of like, I want to do it all myself because I should be able to do it all myself.

But we really don't need to.

We can lean on other people to help us.

And that's just one way that, you know, we can lean on other people is just outsource the stuff that we really don't want to do or really don't understand.

Yeah, I think that's.

That should just be normalized, shouldn't it?

That conversation.

I remember listening to a podcast with Richard Branson and he said, because he's so severely dyslexic that yes, obviously he's an entrepreneur and he's a business owner.

He's got all these amazing ideas, but he couldn't understand his finances and he just said, you know, that was my accountant.

And yes, I sat and he, we had a layman's conversation and I understood all the top line stuff, but the intricacies in the details, I mean, I, I hope for his sake it served him well and he wasn't sort of, you know, there wasn't any issues there.

But I guess it's like trying to surround yourself with trusted people, like people you can trust and who you can bring in and you, we can have these meetings and have these open conversations to say, I can do this, I feel really comfortable doing this and I understand this.

But if you can help me do this, like, can you help me download my statements and can you help me understand my profit and loss and all of this?

My husband's really good at this.

Like he's just one of those people that just understands money gets money.

He doesn't really have any money blocks or beliefs or anything like that.

So I say to him, just speak to me like I am, like you're teaching me about money for the very first time.

Like, help me understand what I need to do with this tax invoice or this, you know, bill and just break it down for me.

And I'm like, oh, is that it?

In my head I've created a whole big story that money is so beyond my comprehension.

It's almost like a person of that Money has a PhD in biochemical engineering.

It's kind of like I've personified money and this is only because I've done like quite a bit of money work and clearly I need to do more and I've put it on such a high pedestal, whereas I am probably the very lowest bar, you know, but lowest end of the chain.

But I'm.

I think the more work I do in this area and the more I value my contribution and I value my worth.

I know about my energy and my time and what I teach a lot of people.

I understand by my nervous system and I understand it's such an important conversation to have because it is about our self worth, isn't it?

And what, what we should be charging and how we can start living more abundantly and we can start seeing wealth not as a detrimental or something that we should be ashamed of or something that we're not deserving of all of that.

And there's been so much Negative connotation towards wealth and.

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.

Maybe you want to pick a little bit of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I completely agree with you.

And again, it's people's conditioning and people's projections.

You know, if there's someone who has a really negative mindset around money, who thinks that, you know, money's the root of all evil, money is just.

It's neutral.

People put the emotion into it because of beliefs of past trauma of the way they were brought up, and then they have this story, and then they project that onto other people.

And that's why we have this society.

Obviously not everyone, but, you know, a large portion of people that think that, you know, really wealthy people are evil or money's evil.

Money only does bad things.

If you've got a lot of money, well, you must be a bad person.

And it really isn't like that at all.

I would love to see a society where these conversations are just out in the open and we can have open and honest conversations with money just being a neutral resource, because that's all it is.

And we take the emotion out of it and we just talk about money as a tool because that's.

It's.

Money's a tool.

It's meant to help us in our lives.

We tell money what to do rather than money telling us what to do.

And I think the more that we can bring that out inside in ourselves, honestly, the better will be, you know, our money mindset.

We better.

We'll be able to charge what we're worth.

And I just think it will just be a much better place if we could just not have this whole, you know, money is evil and all these emotions and wealthy people are evil and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, I think that's so powerful.

And when you say, like, money is neutral, people might be listening to this for the first time and never see money as anything like that.

Like, that conditioning would have been, you know, like, other people have money, we don't have money.

And we want more money in the system, in good hands.

You know, we don't want powerful men not doing good and pumping money into more war and negative things.

We want.

As a feminist, I'm going to say we want more women to be business owners and doing good things and making money and creating abundant lifestyles and teaching and modeling to their daughters and their children that, like you say, this is.

It's an energy, and it's how.

What we imprint on the money, and then we can put it out and give it to charity.

We can mentor People, we can invest in amazing projects.

We can grow our communities, we can grow our teams, we can pay people, we can experience life, go around the world and seeing what this amazing world has got to offer.

We can invest our money into experiences and helping other people, you know, grow their money.

Mindset.

So it is 100amindset energy shift, isn't it?

But it's it.

The nervous system work is, is kind of.

I see it as like a, it's a vessel that we have to keep opening and opening and it's gentle and it's like breath work, breathing in and going, okay, how would that feel if I charge that?

And our nervous system might say, that's not safe, that's not safe.

No one's going to pay that you're not worthy.

And we edge and we edge and we edge.

And I'm doing all this work as we speak and I know it works because the version of me probably last time we spoke, which was probably about two and a half years ago, two years ago, is a different version.

And maybe, I hope, you know, the version of me in another two years, you know, with, with regards to money will be different.

Tell me a little bit about how you work.

I know you said that you don't see one to ones anymore.

What kind of like platform do you have now?

Yeah, so most of my work these days is on social media or through this book.

Every now and then I do workshops as well as I can, but the more people I can help, the better, which is why I stopped doing one to ones because you know, the, the energy and the resources, if I can get that out to more people, to me that's, you know, that's better.

So, so yeah, you'll find, find me mostly in my book or on social media.

Amazing.

And I think, you know, these resources are vital.

I'm really excited for this book to get out into the hands of lots of people because we, we need, we need more neurodivergent people succeeding and thriving.

You know, I think we both, we both work in slightly different areas.

Obviously mine's women's well being, but I do so much work around nervous system and a huge part of my joy is helping more women fulfill their potential, helping more women find that joy and that creativity and that spark in life.

Especially after they've lived so long not understanding themselves, not knowing how their brain works, living in ways that they feel in sort of in fight or flight mode, in stress mode, and inviting more women to step into their truth and their authenticity.

And often that comes with a career change.

Often that comes with them saying, I don't want to do this anymore, but I still want to make money and I still want to be doing well in life.

So I think we definitely cross over.

But this has been a pleasure and I'm aware that it's like crazy o' clock in Australia for you.

Yeah, I. I salute you for doing one of these podcasts in the evening, because I'm definitely can't articulate myself in the evening.

But just direct people to where people, you know, if they want to find you, they want to follow you on social media, where should they go?

The best place to go is my Instagram, which is at the ADHD Accountant, because from there you'll be able to find everything else.

I've got my link in bio and that will basically direct you to anywhere that you want to go.

Amazing.

And what I'm going to do is this little special treat is I'm going to, after this conversation, I'm going to put a snippet of our conversation back a few years ago, share a little bit more, maybe some of the stuff that we didn't talk about in this conversation, and we can get a bit of a.

A double whammy, maybe just see any of the differences of what we talked about a few years ago, because I think it's really worth sharing and I don't talk about money enough on the podcast.

So thank you so much, Tina.

Oh, thank you for having me.

I've really enjoyed our conversation and I.

Just want to share with you the conversation I had with Tina back a few years ago on the podcast, which I think is still really relevant for today and really adds to today's conversation.

So here it is.

We're going to go back to this ADHD brain of the spending habits, the overspending, the impulsive spending when it's very hard for us to override.

Like, how do you override the ADHD brain when shopping and compulsion has been there for a long time?

Yeah.

And it is absolutely challenging, but it's about being able to slow down our brain before we go into that, you know, Ferrari brain, like they, like some people like to say before we, you know, just go spend, spend, spend, just because we see there's a sale or something like that.

So it is about having to slow down our brain.

And we can do that in a few ways.

So my favorite way is the time rule.

And I've heard this helps a lot of people.

It's helped me always, even to this day, and it's My go to with any ADHD brain and that's putting a time rule on any purchases that you want.

Obviously, things may not come into the time rule, like if you desperately need some groceries or something.

That's not what I'm talking about.

But if there's something that you want that, you know, maybe you can or cannot afford, either way you put a time rule on it.

And this time rule can be 24 hours, three days, five days, whatever you want to make it.

But you tell yourself that you are going to wait 24 hours, three days, whatever your time rule is.

And then if you want that certain product or item after that time, if you still want it, then maybe you can go purchase it.

Often we've forgotten about that thing, you know, after three days or something, because if it is something really, really impulsive, we're going to forget it about it anyway.

So you've saved yourself some money there.

And then, you know, often you might think of it down the track and.

You know, and it's really.

This is a personal thing.

So, you know, after whatever time rule it is, if you still want it, then maybe you take the steps to see if you can afford it or if you do actually want it.

That's a really, really big one.

That does help a lot of people.

The other one can be accountability works for some people, so they can enlist the help of a partner or a family member or a friend or something and just let them know that there's something that they're wanting that they don't know if they should purchase and then they can talk it through with that, with that support person.

Again, with ADHD brains, often we do really well with externalizing these things, these problems that we have or, you know, something that we need a solution to.

So even sometimes once you've spoken about it to this support person, often again you'll just be like, well, why am I even wanting this?

Or the support person will be able.

To talk you through it, like, do.

You really need this?

Can you afford it?

And so on.

And that can be really, really effective as well.

The accountability really helps an ADHD brain.

Yeah, I really like that.

The.

Because you're so right.

The externalizing isn't it.

Sometimes we just need to get it out of our heads, bounce an idea off someone and then we can, you know, really make a decision that's not based on impulsivity.

And then it's.

It's empowering, isn't it?

Because there's nothing worse than making one of those sort of overspending Impulsive choices and then the thing arrives and there's the cycle of shame, perhaps from a, you know, maybe it's come from a partner or maybe it's come from yourself, like why have I done that again?

We don't need another X, Y, you know, whatever.

And that just puts, you know, pushes our self esteem down.

If I had to say to you, what apps would you recommend that we, you know, as an ADHD woman, what would you say are the sort of your top two or three apps to have to help either with finances, budgeting or accounting?

So in regards to sort of more personal finances, there's an app called you need a budget which is very, very popular with ADHDers.

You know the other one that I use, I know some people use it for personal stuff, but it's more sort of entrepreneur based and that zero.

So if somebody is an entrepreneur or you know, a sole trader just going off onto their own little business, having something like zero behind them can really help as well because that will help organize their business finances.

And there's lots of good stuff that comes with that as well.

Not only can you sort of manage your business money, but you can, there's things in there that will help you with your cash flow and all that.

Kind of stuff as well.

So they are, they're the first things that come to mind when it comes to personal and business money.

Yeah, that's really helpful, thank you.

And then just before we close, would you say that affirmations for reprograming those neural pathways, you know, we talked about the neuroplasticity of the brain.

Yeah.

Do you think they, they work, you know, if we pinned it on a mirror, you know, the fridge or car.

1,000%?

Yes, absolutely.

Because that's exactly the way we create those new pathways and create those new beliefs is just repeating those things over and over again.

And whether you want to call them affirmations or you know, whatever, that's exactly what you're doing.

You're just pinning something up, you know, in your bathroom mirror or whatever it may be.

People who work with me know I love my post itself, but post its everywhere.

So you know, you just write on a post it and stick it to where you see it constantly in your car, where you make your coffee, brush your teeth, wherever it may be, wherever you want it.

And it's not only a matter of saying it in your head because that can get very easy very quickly.

And it's really easy if you only say it in your head to then override it with Another thought.

So a really effective way is, yes, saying it out loud in front of a mirror as well, because that feels more uncomfortable, that externalization of it, that's suddenly a whole new ball game.

So saying it in front of a mirror where you can see yourself saying it over and over and over, you do it every day.

Yeah, that is incredibly helpful, especially to an ADHD brain.

So I would definitely suggest that.

And what kind of affirmations do you use?

Or what would you say?

You know, if someone's thinking, well, this sounds perfect, but they can't think of an affirmation to sort of change those neural pathways.

What are your suggestions?

Just anything that makes you feel empowered.

You can jump on Google and find affirmations at the hit of, you know, the enter button once you put in money affirmations.

But you know, some of them can be something like, I'm enjoying learning about managing my finances or I'm enjoying learning about managing my money.

I can learn the skills that I need to learn to manage my money.

Anything like that.

It's thinking to yourself, what do I want to, where do I want to be?

Like, what's my short term goal with money?

And just finding something that will get you there.

And you know, sometimes something that's really effective is an affirmation that is at your goal.

So let's say you have if your.

Goal is to overcome impulsive spending.

And affirmation could be something like, I no longer have to be worried when I look at my bank account, or something like that.

Again, Google them if you need some help or whatever comes to mind, whatever feels empowering for you.

I just love talking about affirmations, but absolutely go down that path.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.