Financial Friday's featuring Rick Webster of Renafi - November - Holiday Addition

It's beginning to look a lot like...financial stress and ADHD. On this special holiday edition of the Men's ADHD Support Podcast, join us for another Financial Friday. Operations Director Shane Thrapp and expert financial coach Rick Webster walk through common money struggles those with ADHD face this time of year.

Rick shares easy budgeting basics and how behavior change remains the true challenge for those of us with ADHD. He and Shane explore how shame, guilt, and a desire to keep up appearances often lead to overspending. We offer tips like setting a gift budget back in March, leaving money out of Christmas, and focusing on who, not what, is around the table.

We have to understand the need for intentionality and external tools to build helpful financial habits over time. Let’s also make sure to surround ourselves with people willing to grow. Join us as we discuss the holistic takeaways that will leave you empowered to gain control of your finances and mindset.

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Transcript

  So today, We are going to be talking about ADHD finances and  the holidays, we're going to cover, obviously, the gift giving and different things of that nature. We're going to be covering the social aspects or pressure that we may be under.

I do want to make sure that everybody is aware that our normal men's group meetings on Sundays at 2 p. m. and 6 p. m. Eastern this month are going to be on social situations during the holidays and the  other one at the end of the month is going to be on boundaries and your family members and the friends around you for the holidays so that we're able to start Putting those things in place.

It's a good time. Everybody's gonna be around you. And when Ethel sits here and says, Oh, everybody has a little touch of the ADHD. You can sit here and say, Hey, actually, let's have a conversation about that. Cause that's really hurtful for me.  And  see what that looks like.  Let's jump into this with a hard question. 

Rick, what do you think is the worst aspect  of having ADHD  during the holidays?  And the financial issues that can come from that.  

Yeah. And I think it's something that.  The bricks are laid a long time ago, right? But I think that we come into the holidays with a lot of financial problems frequently. According to Russell Barkley, 2008, 61 percent of us have chronic financial issues, and that's higher now.

It's higher for everybody, but it used to be 15 percent for the general population, 61 percent for us.  So we come into the holidays. Struggling to pay our bills and our rent and buy food and put shoes on the kids feet and all that. So we're already struggling.  Most people,  the majority of people with ADHD do not have much, if any, reserves, right?

They're just trying to keep up, they're trying to get another job, whatever happens to be.  And that's not all of us, and it doesn't have to be, by any means. I think that ADHD can actually help you in the workplace if  Get the right work. But I think that's the biggest thing. We come into it with problems.

We've been not authentic about those problems. We hide them. We don't tell it, we don't wear our problems on our sleeve and a lot of people have no idea that we have this much. So we've, we've covered all this up and now.

It's going to show the end and we almost like a pendulum swinging from one side to the other. We're afraid it's going to show. And so, instead of spending less on the holidays, which would be the rational thing to do, since we don't have it and we're struggling to pay the rent. We actually ended up spending more on the holidays because we want to look like we're successful and we're doing okay.

And unfortunately. Majority of Americans, I believe, measure their success by money, which is really unfortunate because that's pretty hollow at some point in your life. So I think we bring in the financial problems that we have, we try to cover them up. We do cover them up. We get an increase on our credit card and we.

Spend a couple thousand dollars and we buy gifts and we pretend like everything is perfectly okay. I don't know how you enjoy the holidays at that point. I think of Maslow's hierarchy needs. You've got these deficiency needs that aren't met. You cannot think about anything else. You can pretend, but you can't, right?

If you're struggling so, oh gosh,  how am I going to pay this off after the holidays, right? You're not there emotionally available for your kids or anybody else for that matter. So  that to me is the biggest. Problem. this  imposter syndrome that we arrived with the financial troubles that we have the  huge desire to make it look like we're doing.

Okay.  And it's changing, but especially men suffer from that more than women, but it's changing. Women have that issue too now, but they  men historically have been  considered to be the breadwinners. And when they're struggling, there's a lot of shame and embarrassment and covering up that goes on. 

Absolutely. That's 1 of those biggest things that I've always dealt with up until  good Lord, honestly, until my wife kind of just like,  knocked it out of me when 1 year, I felt like there was this overwhelming.  Urge like October ish or so, oh my God, we gotta make sure we get everybody on list gifts and everything like that.

And  who do we get? What, how much do we spend? And sometimes we were struggling. And again, like you were talking about that shame and the guilt, not being able to buy something for somebody,  especially when a lot of love languages, right? There's the financial gift giving love language for a lot of neurodivergent people, it's also the pebble giving, right.

Have y'all ever heard of that penguin pebbling where you give people gifts to show that you appreciate them, but they're just like really weird kind of  gifts  and.  I've always been one of those people that a lot of, like my dad, would just give my mom money.  And there was a lot of issues with that because my mom wanted him to have thoughtful gifts.

Ideas to give her something. And my dad just wasn't that kind of person. And so from a very young age, I always made sure that I was thoughtful in my gift giving, which then also then turns around and says, well, if I don't really know this person or that person has like enough money to buy essentially whatever they want, then what is a thoughtful gift for a person  I find now that I look back at that kind of all the anxiety that I had, it was just like so much time was wasted on that. And it really did ruin the holidays for me. 

I have a tiny story about that. I'm divorced, got another, got a girlfriend who I've been with for at least 10 years now  and fairly early on, maybe a year into our relationship, holidays came along, and  she didn't have a lot of money.

I actually didn't have much either, but I was better off than she was, but she, rather than trying to  pretend or whatever and buy me some, expensive sweater or something like that, she made me a  a playlist mix from Spotify or something. Costs virtually nothing, right? She already had the subscription, so it was nothing. 

That was one of the best gifts she could have given me. It showed me, I was actually shocked. I said, how do you know all this? How do you know these songs that I like that are from 45 years ago? How do you know all that already?  And then of course, doing the ADHD thing, I fairly rapidly turned that around and said, Oh my gosh, I feel so badly now.

I don't know her nearly as well. So  we don't stay up for long sometimes, but that was an incredible gift and it costs nothing other than her paying attention,  you know, demonstrating what she knew about me.  

My wife  her thing is she doesn't have the ADHD cycle of going through all the different crafting hobbies and stuff like that.

She's actually fairly consistent in what she likes to do.  But every year it seems like she's got a new part of the hobby that she's doing. Yeah, and so like last year, it was quilts this year. I think she's making those towels that go over the the stove arms and stuff like that. She's making a whole bunch of those, but she's personalizing each one of them for all of the different members of her family. 

And I'm like, Oh, it's cost her like. 40 bucks worth of  fabric, but she's also going through and she's finding like old shirts of hers or old  clothing of hers because it has like the logos on it already and she's just cutting all of that out and she's just making things out of that. So just like a little bit, like literally 15 minutes ago, she was like, oh, hey, I made this one out of my old moose pants because my mom likes mooses.

I don't know what the plural of moose is,  and it's just, that's such a, an odd idea that for such a long time, I wouldn't have thought my art or my poetry or my writing would have been worth giving to somebody, but she's taught me so much on that kind of stuff.  Is worth something and people will appreciate it because you're literally you're personalizing for them. 

Yeah.  One of my, one of my daughters is an artist and she paints and her stuff's I think really good. So one year she painted stuff for everybody, small things that  It worked great. And I don't know what the canvas and framing and stuff cost. I'm sure it cost something. But  it was a very personalized kind of gift.

And I think those are the best. You go down there on December 22nd and buy a bunch of stuff at  Best Buy or Walmart, whatever it is. It's not personal at all. And nobody, everybody knows it's not. So nobody's going to really appreciate that.  And it's stressful because then you really are putting all this stuff on the credit card and you've got your little list that says 25 for Uncle Jim and 50 for the mom.

And, we've all had those lists before and they start off with money, which I think is really unfortunate. 

Yeah,  I actually like getting people lottery tickets. I think it's fun to give people lottery tickets that are like the scratch off ones and then everybody like sits around the circle during a family time and everybody scratches it off.

And I've actually had some people one year, like one of the aunts won like 500.  And everybody was just like, oh crap, that's really awesome. And so now that's become a tradition where we all get each other different scratch off tickets. Yeah. Hey, one of us may win big and of course they'll feel gratitude, right?

We'll all get rich.  

As a financial trainer, I can tell you, I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life and I argue against them. But it's a gift I can see it as a gift. It makes some sense. 

 There was one time there was a  just a small note that Las Vegas hosted a physics conference and a bunch of quantum physics  scientists came over.

And they'll never host one ever again for them because none of them went to the casino.  Yeah  I wanted to ask you know There's a lot of most of the strategies when someone's trying to manage their hd Comes with you trying to build your own strategy, but when it comes to finances, it's not to each their own It's really just i'll buy a gift that means this much and I have to resist  Personalize in it.

I know it's good to personalize, but There could be an overabundance of gift giving. This is why I need to affirm myself,  Hey, this is okay.  Put it in here and I should really watch my  budget. And,  yeah, the holidays are coming up and I'm looking at black Friday deals in them.

I'm  oppositional. So I am ready for that comment. Because first I wanna say it is an individual thing. Managing money is very individual. Obviously there's math behind it and we have to live with that math, but very individualized, I believe.

And so we need to do that. And then the second thing, again, my oppositional nature. I will soften on this a little bit because I know a lot of people have not prepared and they've come into the holiday season without a lot of money and they want to buy a few things in there. They're not prepared to not do the gift giving thing necessarily, but Black Friday is not designed to save you money.  If you think the corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars sending out coupons to you to get you to come in so you will spend less money in their store, you are wrong. With all the discounts, they make more money during this three week period than they're going to make all the rest of the year, practically.

I don't know the exact stats.  They don't advertise Black Friday to save you money. And my position as a financial trainer, Don't even look at that stuff. Make your own decisions about what you want to buy. If you get to the store and it's on sale, great. That's great.  Go to the store to buy it because you saw that it was on sale.

Now you're no longer making your own decisions. You think you are, but you're really not. You will spend more money. They're going to give you in Not counting the holidays. They're going to give you a coupon for two for one tubes of toothpaste, right? So you're going to save  three bucks on the toothpaste.

You go into Walmart to buy your toothpaste with your coupon. You get their aircraft carrier shopping cart. You end up going out with it full. They know that. They give you a coupon for something they know everybody wants, so you're likely to use it. You say, oh well of course I'm going to get it because I know I use that brand of toothpaste.

I love that. And then you go out with 300 worth of stuff. That's what they do. That's what they know. There are  genius marketing people out there that, graduated from MIT, mathematics majors, that know exactly how to get you to go in there and spend 300 instead of three.  This marketing is not for you.

It isn't. It is, it is used against  you. 

Yeah. I've been safe enough to  go to the Best Buy Black Fridays and resist the urge to walking  out with a drone. It's one of those things. I don't need a drone, 

but they want you to get the drone. 

You might be right, but I'll tell you out of 100 people, 98 people will say they're not susceptible to that kind of marketing.

And that, oh, no, it doesn't apply to me. I go in and come out without that stuff. You don't, you don't.  If that was the case, they wouldn't be doing it. 

So I'm going to challenge you on that, Rick, though. There are ways to combat that, though. This is 1 of those things that I actually do. And I'm  with Adam on this 1 

well, I cheat. Massively so.  Alright, I cheat because  of how I buy gifts for people.  For me, I pay attention by accident to what people tell me throughout the year of things that they want. Yeah,  and I start because my wife is amazing. I started channeling money back to her and I'm like, Hey, let's put this in the Christmas account.

Let's put this in the Christmas account. Let's put this in the Christmas account. And at the end of the year, between October and November, she and I really start to sit down and we really build the list of what we're going to buy. Who? Yeah. When we do look at the black Friday gifts and everything, I'm that guy who researches, what's the best headphones for somebody, what's the best, TV that's out and everything.

And I will go in with a list and I will buy specifically those things. And I do that because of exactly what you're saying. I know they're trying to get me to buy more things.  Now, the reason I say I cheat. I'm allowed one item that I can impulse spend on.  Ooh, that's a shiny. I'll get that one thing.  Yep.

And this is one of those things that kind of also agrees with what you said. Like, how you spend money and how you save money is very a personal singular thing. Yep. And that works for me. It doesn't work for everybody. Not everybody has the memory to remember to write down when somebody says that they wish they could have something like that, or if they are watching TV with us during another holiday and they go, Oh, that's cool.

Those little inspirational ideas. But that's taken me years to get to a point where I could train myself to do those things. 

Yes, I agree. And I would say, especially since there's no preparation here, we're in the holidays, practically, that yes,  look at the ads and that sort of thing.

But by next year, let's wean ourselves off of that. The sales process doesn't happen just when you're in the store. So just because you take a list with you, doesn't mean, where did you get that list from? You went online and you did some comparison shopping and all that. That's where the sales stuff started.

You wrote down, XYZ headphones and went in and bought them. That doesn't mean you weren't marketed to, so all I'm saying, the higher price ticket, the more we should shop, if you're buying a car, it's important to save 10 percent on the value of that car.

If you're buying something for 50 bucks, saving 10 percent is not so important. And , I really think we should spend time thinking about the gifts that we give people. That's a whole separate thing. If we spend five hours trying to research how we're going to save 50 bucks, you just saved yourself 10 an hour.

You probably get paid more than that. So it's probably better to not do that. Go do some productive work that you can feel good about. Spend the extra 50 bucks and you'll probably end up earning 300 more than the 50 bucks you save or something, who knows it's,  it's not, you don't just save money when you do a whole lot of research.

You're also losing money because you're not working. You're not spending time with your family. You're not doing, you're not living your life while you're working your way through all the coupons they've sent you. 

Yeah, Rick, but you're taking away my hyper focus fun.  Those are rabbit holes, dang it!  That's right. 

How do you combat that shame and that guilt when it comes to gift giving? What are some of the things that you can do to help yourself get past those kind of issues?  

Yeah,  this is going to be a little rough, but this is what my coach, my first coach did with me, and it wasn't about gifts exactly, but I think  it's a parallel. 

I didn't want to go to chat meetings initially, because  they wanted a 5 donation and I felt I can't take charity if I don't have the five bucks extra I'm struggling to put food on the table. So, if I don't have it I'm not going to the meetings and the meetings would could have been really helpful and were really helpful to me at a point. 

My, my coach listened to me talk about this, and then she said, because I framed it, I have too much pride. Sometimes pride's all you got left, which is, I think, what a direct quote of what I told her. And she listened, and  she sat real quiet, and then she said, okay, are you done feeling sorry for yourself now?

Are you ready to do something about all this?  So, I think  that's part of this, we need to  Come out of the closet, so to speak, and admit, you don't wear it on a sleeve, but admit that we have financial difficulties. No, I'm not spending 3, 000 on gifts this year. I just can't, right? My family's more important to me.

I'm paying the rent. I'm going to do all the things that need to be done. And I'm got a real strict budget on gift giving. If people don't understand that, you got the wrong people around you. That's how I see that.  And I think a lot of times we got to evaluate, why do we want to give someone an expensive gift?

Is it really for them or is it just to make ourselves feel better? Because, I don't,  usually  if someone really wanted something, they already have it, right? So buying an expensive gift is really not an altruistic act. It's really to make us feel better. Especially if we're already coming in with some financial pain and shame and all that, we want to. 

Make that facade last a little longer somehow.  

Yeah. Adam, what do you got boss?  

Well, this goes into the deep roots of this could end up becoming a codependency problem too.  One tries to get favors because of gift giving and also solve problems with gift giving. Yeah. And it just forms into one bigger problem over and over and over. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. I never thought of it that way, but that's exactly right. Kind of a codependency. If the gift is  a bargain, right? Hey, I give you this thing, but you know what? You got to come over and help me paint my house next time. That's not exactly a gift. That's a bargain. That's a transaction. 

Like if someone was trying to like maliciously, like gain a to gain a favorite kind of thing. Sure. That's a person doing it intentionally, but I was more thinking in a subconscious way of  that's the wrong expectancy to gain favor or to, this is how I'm going to be going to like me kind of thing.

So inadvertently doing another goal because of the gift giving without actually knowing.  what's happening behind the scenes kind of thing. 

A lot of this is unconscious. That's when you get the person that says with all the stuff I've done for you over the years, they're mad because you're not doing something for them.

Well, all those things they did for you suddenly became, you realize that there was a transaction, they were doing things for you, so you would do something for them. That's a transaction that's not loving someone that's aran transactional kind of thing, which might be okay, but yeah, no problem.

Be honest about it. 

So,  there's a quote that I really appreciate by Gary Vee that kind of encompasses this.  And Gary Vee, he's a motivational speaker, business leader. You know, really, a really amazing guy. If y'all aren't watching him, check him out. Gary Vaynerchuk.  He was asked one day, he was like,  what do you do about people who are taking advantage of your kindness?

Cause he's a very prolific philanthropist as well. And he's like, you can't take advantage of my kindness because if I'm being kind to you, then I'm doing it out of the kindness of my heart. And I have no expectations of any return on what I'm giving you. 

100 percent  

and I thought about that for so long and we see this in the group a lot as well.

I did this XYZ thing for my friend. Why aren't they coming to help me do my XYZ thing? And he continued with the quote. If I'm going to make a transactional agreement between the two of us, where I'm going to do you this favor, I'm going to expect you to do the favor back. 

I have to look and see, did I actually communicate that out there to you?  Did I tell you that this is a favor or this is a gift and I expect in turn, on that and if we don't do that, then we don't have the right to be mad at somebody for not doing it back for us or giving us a gift in return for what we did. 

I just thought there was a lot of value in that, a lot of value in that whole thing. I'll post the thing in the comment section below whenever I find it.  

I hear like one core thing when you're stating right there, affirming your intent. And that is  as a way of communication that is not so much given around anymore, or not emphasizing enough, I would say.

Yeah, definitely. There's, that's one of those things that I've had to put in place over the past few years was, I have to be very judicious in like physical work that I can do for other people because my body doing what it's doing. And I get a lot of people sometimes like, hey, can you come help me move? 

I can come help you move, but I can do XYZ things and I'm not gonna be able to do a lot more than that. Okay. That's awesome. Or if it's something else like, yeah, I can totally do that. I'll need a favor from you one day, just communicating that, that I'm not doing this technically for free.

I'm doing this because I do expect that in the future because that's, that's okay. But communicate that that's what you need or want from them. As far as that thing is concerned, that doesn't make you less of a friend. That's you communicating. Yeah, I can do that.  Let's return to favor one day. 

It makes you a better friend. 

Not the respect in the favor, but communicating makes you a better friend. 

Yeah, I think, and I know I do this a lot myself. I think there is this, we just expect 

people. I think I've spoken about this in like a couple of the men's ADHD meetings. Is that  as people, we just simply believe that people are just supposed to get us. 

And if I have to, and if I have to tell you about like, if you're my friend, then you should already know what I'm thinking. If you're my spouse, then you should already, if you're my sibling, you should already know what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling. And if I don't, and if I have to communicate it,  well, then  our friendship, our relationship, whatever, didn't really matter because. 

I had to tell you, and that's some bullshit,  that's some bullshit. 

Yeah, I love this because I actually see people posting both sides of this thing. Like, why does my husband think that I'm supposed to be able to read his mind and get him what he wants whenever he doesn't talk to me about what he wants?

And then I see other people saying what Jason just said.  Why can't they read our minds and understand that we want? If they knew us, they'd be able to do these things for us.  I love ADHD so much. 

 I do too. I do too. 

I, I've grown, it's funny cause being here I've grown to I  have an, I have a love hate relationship with this sometimes. 

Yeah, I go back to my girlfriend giving me that, that music mix. She didn't read my mind for that over the course of the previous six or eight months. She probably had it in mind. That's what she was going to do. And she asked me all kinds of questions and I was  completely unaware. So, oh yeah, I like these guys.

I like this. I like that. So she was gathering information. She didn't read my mind. She  cared enough about me to, to ask the questions in advance. It's really kind of mind blowing,  because I have a hard time with that kind of stuff. But, she  had this preconceived notion that she was going to give that gift, whatever, six months from now, and she had to do some research to figure it out. 

Yeah, I think we, we teach people how to treat us. And I had a client come, it's been a few years now.  She was always the mother hen that took care of everybody. She had all these friends and she'd always help them. They needed stuff and she'd help them.

And she was quite successful. Everything was going right for her. And then one day, Okay. Whatever, I forgot what it was, but something big happened, and she really needed help from these friends. She was dumbfounded and hurt that none of them stepped up to help her. But the fact is, she had a parent child relationship going on with all those people, and now all of a sudden, because she needed help, she expected them to change who they were, change this relationship, and come to her rescue.

So we, if you want an adult to an adult relationship, you've got to make it that way. Like Shane was saying, Hey, I'll help you move, but I might need a favor from you someday. Set things up like that.  Yep. 

I think we look at that so much as a bad thing because. 

I think we're engraved to believe in this unconditional love or unconditional connection with people and it's  that sounds good and all, but we're all people, we all need something at the end of the day,  we're not just...  I'm not this, unlimited energy that I could just give to you every day, you know?

Everyone has their own lives scratch my back, I scratch yours. And you're just like, well, that's very selfish. 

Yes. What's wrong with being selfish sometimes? Selfish is a good thing as long, we're not talking about Ayn Rand, right? We're not talking about pig in the trough kind of selfish.

We're talking about taking care of yourself, you know, putting your own oxygen mask on first so that you're capable of helping other people. So, yeah, selfish, that's a bad name, but I wouldn't,  basically we should be taking care of ourselves and making sure our needs are getting met.  

Absolutely. What are some tips for people  that are out there listening where, you know, maybe not for this year, because again, like you said earlier, we're kind of at the end of the year. What are some tips between now and next year that people could put in place that could help them? Both give thoughtful gifts, but also make sure that they're taking care of their finances as well. 

Budget, and I know that's boring, and it sounds hard, but it isn't. Budgeting is fourth grade math. The thing that's hard about a budget is changing the behavior. The math is easy. Changing the behavior, that's the hard part. But we need to have line items for these things, and the line items should be there in March.

For the December holiday season, the line item says, I believe within my budget, I can devote 100 a month to the Christmas season, for example, or the holiday season, whatever it is. So I believe  I can put 100 in and you do your budget. You say, okay, that all works out. I have enough discretionary money. I'm only living on 75 percent of what I'm earning.

Everything else is looking pretty good. I'm going to budget 100 a month to that. And if you, Consciously say that's what I can afford, then that would be great.  I came by this later in life, but I would really suggest that we leave money out of Christmas season a limited amount. Yes, with my family with my kids and family at this point. We don't do gifts anymore. When I grew up, there were like huge amounts of gifts showing up, and it was fun, and extended family showed up.  With my family now, we have one gift. We do a white elephant game, there's only one gift, and we limit that to 25 bucks, because we really buy into the idea that it's not what's on the table, it's who's around the table.

So, who's in the room? You're there to connect with people and everything. You're not there to wow them with how much money you can spend, so I think we,  We somehow we got into this gift giving thing. And again, you know, it's marketing. It's these marketing guys that said, Hey,  they're doing everything they can to get you to spend as much as more than you think you should. 

So, but yeah, I would say budgeting is the number one thing make a budget. Decide well in advance of the emotional event, way back in March, decide what you think you can put towards it. And if you find out in June that you're not on track for that because you didn't get the raise you expected or got laid off or something,  you got to face facts, you got to face, what's going on and change that budget, change those line items.

Yeah.  

I mean, that's what we have to do  because my wife's a teacher, so she doesn't get paid for 2 months during the summer. So we have two different savings accounts, 1 is kind of just a general, this is our survival money for those months, but another one, and honestly, there's not a whole lot that's coming out of the checks or out of the money that's going to that account we planned on that, by actually just going percentage based.

I'll put 10 percent of my money this month into that account because  as an ADHD coach, and you know how this is, Rick, you know, Jason, as an artist,  sometimes a month doesn't have a whole lot of money coming in, right? So 10 percent of my monthly means that, some months I may be able to put 500 back and some months I may be able to put 50 bucks back, but I'm at least putting something towards it.

And then when it comes to around October, when we decided to start buying gifts.  This is my budget. This is what I've got to do. And look, I know there's a lot of people out there talking about, I don't know how to do a budget.  I get it. It does seem hard, but like Rick said, it is a behavioral thing, and it does help to have that.

This is one of those reasons why we work with Renify and Rick to give y'all a resource for financial coaching and ADHD coaching. if you look in the links and stuff like that, you'll actually see the  promo code and the ticket that we have for 50 percent off of the ADHD coaching courses that Rick has.

But this is why finances are so important. And it's because that's such a huge issue with people with ADHD, not just because of impulsive spending, but the behavioral aspects and the shame aspects and the other things that are tied so integrally to. our  cultural  gauge of how successful you are being based on the money that you bring in, the productivity that you have. 

So  check out all that stuff. I'll post all that stuff in the comment section below.  

And, I really want to say something about that.

I know we can get kind of tied into these beliefs and such, but the fact is I can teach someone how to budget their money in 10 minutes.  That's just, that is how simple that it really is.  It's the behavior that's difficult. Not the 4th grade math and budgeting and I'm talking about a snapshot.

I'm not talking about projecting into the future of your retirement and all that. But the,  the snapshot budgeting of what you got coming in and what you got going out. That's,  it's easy. It would take the 10 minutes, right? It does take some time, but we have a template and we just put the template up.

You know, I share it on Google and the person enters their numbers and I'm entering some stuff on my side. And it literally in 10 minutes, we have a budget fleshed out.  

Yeah. And, for me, it also requires my external tools like alarms,  3 4 times a month, my Alexa. Y'all have actually probably all heard Alexa go off every now and then whenever it hits 8 o'clock to tell me to look at my task and stuff like that. I also have to do is, once a week on Saturdays, my Alexa goes off and says, Hey, take a look at your, finances and your budget and, go over that. And me and my wife sit down as soon as it goes off, we  look at it.

Okay. I've got 10 minutes and I'll come do that. And all right, cool. And we sit down and we go over it. And she asked me about how much money am I going to be bringing in? She asked me about how much money is going to be going out. She and I talk about the different things, but. This is why we have to have external tools, is to remember to do those kinds of things. 

And if you're on your own and everything like that, this is integral to the process, is making sure that you're not caught by surprise by things, because you're also using that time to take a look at your bank account, take a look at your credit account, to say, okay,  what things went out.

And if you've got an Excel document where you're sitting here like double checking everything, you're able to sit here and say, then go back and say, okay, the 17th of every month, my electric bill comes out. I need to make sure by the 15th money is in that account to cover it.  Right. Or, okay, I've got a lot of extra  expenses here.

I need to figure out, Oh, I've eaten out 17 out of the last 20 days. Yeah. and we know of course, eating out is much more expensive than cooking for yourself, even if we do take the consideration of the time spent doing it. Yeah. Adam, what do you got boss?  

I wanted to actually,  ask Rick, you said something like, that you could teach  finance, like the  grassroots stuff and under 10 minutes. But the actual teaching of the method. It's not that difficult to understand.

It's just more of changing the behavior of I'm going to adhere to it. Or it is if I was a bigger client, just for example, yeah, that roadblock, I teach like a one on one  ADHD kind of group for Chad and every time like I  see people coming in and everything,  I give them a round of applause that time blindness did not win the day and again, because it's more of a thing of get these the People knowing that these symptoms are always in play and honor that  and  it just seems like even like I'm very intentional and when I'm reading and  hearing like advice from like these peer support groups, so I'll go and do actionable steps. 

That's me adhering to you change my behavior, but people come to,  these kind of things and other things they listen, but then it just goes out the other ear and it just, that's because of their brain is working on just reactionary mode. And that's the, I just wanted to ask you, is that what you mean by changing behavior?

They're coming in in reactionary mode and not intensive. 

I can't teach a person everything about financial matters in 10 minutes. That's hyperbole, but what I can show you is that it's a column of numbers of money coming in. It's a column of numbers of money going out. You add and subtract you do the fourth grade adding and subtracting and you figure out if you're living on 87 percent of your money or something like that.

So you know what your budget so you know where you stand. That's the number one thing. 

I'm just saying, like, the bridge towards  people who are listening to it have to change their behavior because they're, they're still operating in a reactionary type of thing. 

If I was reactionary, after this Zoom meet ends, I'm going to go do something else and probably remember just two things. But I'm actually going to go take the steps and be active with  what I learned because I don't want to be reactionary. And that's what I wanted to ask you that is that what the behavior change you're talking about?

Yes.

to speak on what Adam was talking about was a lot of people with ADHD are reactionary  because they were not taught how to be intentional,? Because we are naturally reactionary people that,  why we do make good, crisis kind of things and we come into these conversations and we often do come into it because we are already struggling with money.

That's the whole reason why people come to the financial Fridays is we are struggling with money. And so we are looking for, all right, what do I do next? We actually see this a lot of times when we struggle with therapists, because they often don't give us concrete steps moving forward. And this is one of those places that Rick talks about in other talks that we've talked about, is we do have to have that intention to put in place these steps that we need to take.

And if we don't know what those are, we need to get help with them. We need to get help to learn those things. We need to get help to understand those things, whether it's through friends and family sitting down teaching me how to do a budget. my wife sitting down to talk to me about how to,  maintain it, working with me every month to do it, working with financial planners or financial coaches like Rick, or working within men's group support or support groups like this to start learning those actionable steps. 

And then really taking the time to be intentional about the things that we need and want to do and how we want to accomplish them.  And when we do do that, we see the gaps in our knowledge, then we start reaching out intentionally to the people around us to ask for help. 

I can understand why they're in reactionary,  it is a disorder that it's not articulated well or understood well, and they're even there just to hear and react towards the moment that they're being stimulated. And so it's not even they're taking in the information at the moment.

They just can't  they've been at this all their life. I've been at this all my life and everything. And although. Like, yeah, I see a new framework. I have it in the back of the board right there. If I'm not striking their interest, if I'm not doing the novelty in the right way, they're not taking in that information.

And if they're not like challenged or if I'm over challenging them they might either not be intrigued or they might put their barriers up and everything. So yes, the growth mindset is a odd thing to.  Talk to a person to get into kind of things, either they're there or they're 

not. 

So I put it in the chat about the intention action gap, which is well talked about. Russell Barkley talks about knowledge versus doing, and that's an executive function issue. So I think  the knowledge that we're missing is usually not in our career, right? It's not in our academic education. We know how to do it, but for some reason, we don't activate on it.

The knowledge that's missing is that ADHD is not a character issue, it's an executive function issue. And as long as people say, Oh my God, I'm lazy. I beat myself up. I just got to try harder. If I try harder, instead of buying glasses, I'm going to squint harder, right? They don't address the real problem.

So  when you understand that ADHD is an executive function issue with response inhibition, for example, that's our ability to resist distractions and keep focused on what we're doing with task initiation. That's our ability to sit down and get started and sustain an effort on something when we understand it's not character.

It's actually executive function deficits. Then we go to work solving those problems, and everything starts to work out. ADHD is not on the intelligence spectrum at all, right? We're no more or any less intelligent.  There are reasons why it looks like it is.

More people who are smarter get diagnosed, but that's because, from my own career, I got out of undergraduate and then I went to law school for a very short period of time, and I drove a taxi on the weekend to pay for my stuff.  ADHD didn't affect me at all driving a taxi, but reading 30 books and taking tests on it, that was torture.

And so, it dropped out rather quickly. So, ADHD.  It isn't about intelligence, it's about the situation that we're in and how we manage those executive function things. I know quite a few people who are lawyers that got through law school just fine. That's because they managed those things.  So, basically, what I'm saying is it's not an intelligence issue.

It is, literally, it is an executive function issue and that also includes emotional regulation. It's another one of the functions that's really crucial.  That's what we should focus our attention on. Yeah, 

100%. Because  emotional, the shame, that's an emotion, the anger, the frustration, the stress, all of those things are emotions that we really, because ADHD means that we feel things more, the whole point of emotional dysregulation,  we have to learn how to process those things.

 I do agree with what Rick is saying, it is, and I think that goes for everything. I think we're  we are problem solvers. 

In this kind of neurodivergent, we're very in the moment. It's, we're so in the moment of things. Like I could come up with a schedule for my weekly routine and I could have that going but then it's like oh, I'm bored. New shiny thing,  like even when it comes to eating like I think it, I think it was Shane who said it, that like, eating out is a lot more expensive. It's, it's actually true. Like I bought Little Caesars and I actually went to Instacart  and Instacart. I bought  like 30 eggs, four cartons of milk  and juice and all that equaled just as much as my little Caesar.

So I was like, what the hell? But yeah, it is that instant thinking and I think that is the challenge for many of us is that we're. In trying to mask and make ourselves quote unquote normal, whatever the hell that means  We have to find ways to keep ourselves interested  like that all the time and that is , that's annoying.

Like, I'm a great artist and I know that there's things I have to learn, but then it's like, Oh, I got to read this book.  I'm bored, but then you feel the shame. Cause like, Oh, I have to read this to get to here. Oh, wait, I won't. I think this is why budgeting is so hard for us.  Because budgeting  or like money management issues are a consequence of not doing things  in the long run.

We spend in the moment. So when we spend in the moment, Oh, I can't pay my bills. I can't pay my rent. I can't pay this. I can't do this. Because I spent something here, because I don't have like something in the way of regulating myself. 

Yeah, it's the intention versus reaction, right? We react to things.

That's literally, that's what we do. And this is one of those places where we do have to take time to learn a thing. But  we also need to understand how do we learn things.   Part of the intention of doing the educating ourselves is understanding how do we best learn how to do something.

And so a lot of us sit here and think, Oh, I've got to read a book or I've got to watch a video, or I've got to listen to a podcast, yes. There's value in that.  But for a lot of us, it's actually not as valuable as actually having discussions with people, right? And I'll guarantee that, Jason, you'll understand what I'm saying as an artist.

How much more inspiration do you have when you're around a group of artists, whether it's in a Discord chat, or in  an art room, or something along those lines, where you're back and forth having conversations, or at an art convention? How many times have you gone to an art convention and seen a style that somebody was using where you were like, Oh, I get it.

And then you're talking to the artist back and forth, getting an understanding of the program or the different techniques that they were using. A lot of us need to understand that sometimes the way that we learn needs to be a part of our process when we're trying to figure out how do I move forward intentionally.

Getting a better understanding of how my ADHD affects me, how I spend money, how I do these different things. That's the value of these support groups. This is why we do the weekly calls. This is why we do financial Fridays, so that you can come in and interact with each other and take away the tips and the tricks and ask the questions so that you're able to sit here and get a better understanding of it.

Because what I think happens the most is whenever those people take those one or two things like Adam said, that they take away from it. That's one or two more things than they had originally,  and the more that they do it, the more that they do coursework or  that's like live action where they can ask questions or do the chat meetings or do these meetings or things of that nature.

That's where we see the value in these.  And  a lot of us learn by interacting and having conversations in a kinesthetic manner, not necessarily reading, listening, or watching a video or something like that.  

Yeah, we shame ourselves because we're so focused on doing the practice in a perfect way, rather than saying, Okay, what can work so that I can retain this information in the best way possible,  if I'm not studying perfectly, then I suck if I don't do  I'm a terrible reader, but I'm a great writer.

I don't know how that makes sense. But I've heard from like many people that you're a hell of a great writer. You must read a lot of books. I was like,  no readings torture for me,  

nonfiction for me as hell on earth. I hate it. 

Like I, I could read a comic book all goddamn day, but  I can't, you give me like Lord of the Rings stuff.

No, the words, I was so focused on the number of pages I have to read. I'm like, I check out so quickly. 

That's Lord of the Rings. That's not a good example. You know what I'm saying though. 

Ok, Rick finishing up, speaking on the reaction versus intention,  what are some of the things that people can or should take away from this conversation, like what you spoke on budgeting earlier and the behaviors behind it?

What are some concrete tips on behavior that people can take away where they can start to put in place the things that they need to manage money more effectively or manage time more effectively during the holidays and going forward? . 

Yep. Consistency and conscientiousness are the two number one things.

And people kind of react to that 'cause, well I have ADHD, how can I possibly be consistent? Or how can I be conscientious because those are executive function issues and I have a hard time with that. It doesn't mean we can't get better at them. And consistently saving a little bit of money every month, even if it's a very small amount, seems inconsequential.

It will. Improve over time as you make more money, you save, save more. It's not hard at all to increase the amount later as you start earning more money. So consistency, I would say, is just absolutely crucial. Then the mindset. Anytime you hear yourself saying, I can't.  It's wrong, right? You haven't yet, or you  I hear people say, oh, I have to go to work.

You don't have to. Any of these absolutes, they're almost always wrong. You don't have to go to work. You can live under a bridge if you want to. You go to work because you... would rather not live under a bridge and maybe the paycheck gets you some things. You don't have to, you want to. So it's a bargain you've made.

And it's a lot easier to go to work when you say, yeah, I don't really like the work, but I, I want to get that paycheck because it's going to do something with, it's going to take me to the next step. So we want to watch our language.  I want to make, and I'll probably stumble over this because I'm just making it up as I go here, but the, I want to make an offer.

We, we, some people know we've an  affiliate partnership with the men's group and when people from the men's group sign up with us using the promo code, we donate whatever, a portion of it back. And it's no secret, it's 15%.  Anybody who wants to join us using that promo code between now and January 1st, Okay.

We'll donate  50%. I was reading Shane's request for 2, 500. You got to pay those bills. I know what it's like to have to pay the bills, and we all do. So we'll donate back  50%. First of all, the code gets you 50 percent off, and then we'll donate 50 percent of what you pay, which is whatever, 25 percent of the normal membership  back.

And our course cycle  ended a little while ago, but it restarts on the 12th, and the very first course is personal finance, the very first course. And the next one that starts a week later is entrepreneurship. So two things that I think a lot of people with ADHD would be interested in. And  then the last piece, I think I was hearing something you were saying, Jason. 

We channel other people.  Far more important than what you know is who you associate with. And if you associate with a lot of people who say they're disordered and they're complaining and  they're never fixing it. They just complain year after year after year. That's who you will become as well.

If you're with people who proactively take steps to have a growth mindset and to learn and to not be in the same place next year that they're in right now, then you will also adopt those behaviors. Jim Rohn said we, as a sales trainer a long time ago, he said we are the sum total of the five people we spend the most time with.

There's so much truth to that. So if you want to be more successful with money, Hang out with people who are more successful with money. Don't shy down, just say,  Hey, I want to be in this group because I want to be like them. I don't want to be in that group because I don't want to be like them.

Show me your friends. I'll show you your future. 

There you go. And that's just, and it's just so, so true. And you're not going to be hanging out with. Billionaires right off the bat, that's for sure. He's not going to happen. And maybe you wouldn't even want to, but you can hang out with people who had their life together, who are purchasing a home that are raising, whatever it is that you want to do, you can hang out with people who are doing it and you will be much more likely because you will channel the behavior.

I remember many times my very first coach, he taught me a lot of things and then I'd be in a situation and I said, well.  What would, I don't know what to do here. What would Nancy do? And I could kind of put my mind in her mind in some sense and say, Oh, I know how she thinks this is what she would probably be doing.

So I, I learned how to channel her behavior. And we do that with all kinds of people. And we learn the good stuff and we learn the bad stuff. There's another saying that if you want something, find somebody that has it and figure out how they did it and what they did and do it. 

If they earned it, it's not, you have to reinvent a wheel. Somebody's done it. You go figure out how they did it and channel that. 

Yep. I just want to add on to that like Rick said earlier, this what we deal with is an executive function issue.  We have to put in place external tools.

We don't have a measurement of time in our brains like neurotypical people. So we have to make sure that we have access to clocks and alarms and  reminders. We don't have a working memory function that neurotypicals do. So we have to do lists and reminders and things that go off to make sure that we're doing our chores.

We have to put those things in place. These are external tools to help us build the behaviors that we want to have moving forward.  And... Until you start to understand that that's not a weakness, that's just a function of how you work, you're not going to make it through things. And to  speak on what Rick was saying, having people around you, being in men's support groups like ours, being in other groups where they're actively working to learn how to be better together, this is how you start to function more in your world. 

And, we see this a lot in the group where people are sitting there, they post something about how they're struggling and everything like that. And then we see post after post after post of people sitting there and commenting, talking about, Oh, yeah, I deal with this to deal with this to deal with this too.

And then there's other posts that are popping in there. Hey, these are the ideas. These are solutions. Here's some concepts I use. Here's the doctor I talked to. Here's what I learned in therapy. Here's what I saw in a course that I did. And that is showing the evolution of what we're talking  about moving from the victim mindset of whenever you first start finding out that ADHD  is one of the reasons why you struggled for so long to going into the mindset of, okay, I'm moving into a growth mindset of, yes, I have ADHD.

However, here's my strengths, here's my values, and here's the things I've learned moving forward.  So  wrapping all of that up, I really appreciate Rick, you coming on and having these with us every month. It's been a pleasure. Adam, Jason, thank y'all so much for coming on. We appreciate all the input and information that y'all have given us.

We're going to call this a day. Thank y'all so much. And remember, you deserve love and respect.