Overcoming Perfectionism when Budgeting with ADHD

Do you want to break free from the grip of perfectionism and finally take control of your finances? Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by the constant pursuit of flawlessness in your budgeting?

I have the solution that will help you develop healthier financial habits and achieve the financial empowerment you desire.

By overcoming perfectionism and celebrating small wins in budgeting, you can finally experience the freedom and peace of mind that comes with taking charge of your money.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover the intriguing interplay between budgeting and the pursuit of perfection
• Recognize the crucial role of addressing emotional and mental barriers in handling finances
• Unearth practical and efficient solutions to the common struggles of adhering to a budget
• Learn to triumph over perfectionism and rejoice in the progress you make with your budget
• Appreciate the significance of curiosity and self-compassion as catalysts for a successful budgeting journey

Don't let perfectionism get in the way of your budget. Budgeting is a tool for awareness, not judgment. - Dave DeWitt

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back to ADHD Money Talk, the show that helps dynamic but distracted ADHD brains take back control over their money or stress less for the more enriching white throughput of new and amazing possibilities. And I am your humble and fairy ADHD host, Dave DeWitt. So guys, I'm going to have a very quick podcast today because I have a meeting in 11 minutes. Today we're going to talk about budgeting and perfectionism. Basically, one of the realizations I've had over the past two years or so, you know, finally fully came to the realization that my job with my clients is not just to give them a budget and to help them stick to it. Because, you know, sometimes it's like month one, you didn't stick to it, let's adjust. Month two, okay, didn't stick to it, let's adjust. Month three, month four, month five, month six, month seven, month eight, month, you know, on and on and on. We can easily go look at your cash flow and say, okay, here's where you can pull back. You know, food, we got to cut that by 20%. Okay. Your shopping, you know, the little stuff on Amazon, we got to just cut that back by about 50% because that'll be easy because most stuff is not needed, right? So easy enough. We'll do that. We'll put up some barriers, we'll put up some rules, we'll make it harder for you to actually make these purchases. We'll do all this kind of ADHD-friendly structure. We'll make the cash flow structure so money's flowing where it needs to go in a way that's like, okay, you have one place to look where this is how much money you have left to spend, and it's great and it's good and it's awesome. However, many people still do not stick to it. And that's not weird. I mean, that makes a lot of sense because once you understand sort of why you're not able to stick to it, it'll make a lot more sense because it's not just about having the budget or having the knowledge or having the tools, because we intellectually know where we're spending too much. We intellectually know why we're not able to do this, you know, we intellectually know that we should be spending yada yada, uh, spending less and saving and all this stuff. Something to think about is well, why should you be doing that? Is that something that culture or society has put on you, or is it something that you actually want to do? So getting to the root of that is important. And also figuring out if there's some sort of relationship you have with money that is holding you back that you have not uncovered or have not been able to find, because just having the awareness of something like that would be able to help you address it and move forward. So part of what I'm also been working on is that I want to be much more focused on helping people, not being a therapist per se, but I am pursuing the what will be pursuing the certified financial therapist designation so I could help more with helping people uncover what's really holding them back, what's the obstacles emotionally, mentally, all this because I got it down. Like I know how to do the budget, I know how to pivot when people need to pivot, I know how to set up a budget and look at capsule and structure, cash flow structure. There's many ways to do it. I know how to do all that stuff, but that's not hard at all. I know how to stick with you, I know how to be non-judgmental, I know how to be careful you, but I need to improve on how I talk to you and help you uncover things that you need to know. And one of the biggest things we see is that, you know, routinely I hear from clients and from people that I'm just talking to, you know, as prospective clients, or they're just wanting information is I have no problem setting up a budget, I just can't stick to it. It just I blow it up for whatever reason. You blow it up because you went over one month, or all the little random one-off bills and expenses that come in, it blows it up, and then you can't go back to it. Well, why can't you go back to it? Is my question. Because you should be able to go back to it because just because it blew up one month doesn't mean you you don't abandon it. What I'm trying to get at here is you do not abandon the budget when it blows up, because the budget is not a thing that you have to be uh competing against. It's not like your it's not a test, it's not a report card, it's not that at all, because budgeting is really not to be so that you stick to the budget. I mean, yes, you want to try and stick to the budget. You want to, you know, that's ultimately the goal is that the ultimate goal is that you do want to save and reach your goals and yada yada yada, or whatever it is, or but if you treat it as if pass or fail, then when you fail, you're just gonna be so disoriented and so discouraged and so beat up by that that you just will never go back to it. Or, or the next time you do go back to it, it'll be after a six-month cooling off period, and then you're like, I'll try it again, and then you'll just repeat. And so something interesting that I read or actually heard uh recently from I was talking to someone who really has inspired me. Our conversation I had with this woman named Christine, she's a PhD candidate, and she's gonna be focusing on financial therapy at the intersection of ADHD. I think that's really amazing. And I can't wait to be able to learn more from her over time. But she told me that she's you know very prominent uh person in the f in the industry, and she he told her that like very few people actually budget, and then other people that actually budget, very few people actually maintain the budget regularly, and other people that maintain the budget regularly, very few of them are actually sticking to it. So when you do the sort of um the math on the probability there of someone sticking to the budget, it's very small. It's like probably 1% of people actually stick to their budget. So why would you, as someone with ADHD who knows that it's going to be hard for you to stick to it, why would you go into it thinking that you're going to have to stick to it or you fail? So you don't want to be thinking that way. You want to be thinking of the budget as something that is in a tool that gives you awareness. Because once you have awareness of spending and where your money's going, you can start adapting. And it's not meant to be you have to stay under this for food, you have to stay under this for groceries, you have to stay under this for shopping, you have to stay under this for Amazon operators, you have to stay under this. No, it's just saying, like, okay, I'm gonna just guess that this will be a good amount, and then just see how you do and just learning and going into the budgeting app or however you do it with a non-judgmental to yourself approach. Like the approach is I'm curious to learn how I'm spending my money. I'm so curious to learn where I'm spending more money and where I'm spending less money. And I'm just curious to see where maybe my brain takes me in terms of like some solutions to things because you know I would rather not spend this much on this, but but you want to be in a non-judgmental space here the entire time. That is what you really want to be doing. Perfectionism is a tricky beast. I mean, like, I remember when I first started doing this podcast, I would spend like two days working on just a podcast script and everything, and like I had to be perfect. I felt like I had to be so perfect, but like it's just not important. And with money, if you're putting all that, you know, if if you're putting so much of your emotional energy and time and and worrying about it when you first set up a budget, then you're just gonna burn out and not do it. So uh the whole thing is you just gotta enjoy the journey, you know, enjoy it. Budgeting is not a chore, it's not restrictive, it's prioritizing. It's just saying, I just want to prioritize what I how I want my money to go. I want to prioritize setting on these things that I like because I like these things, I want these things. They could bring me satisfaction, they bring me even dopamine, whatever. But so I want to send my budget and prioritize what I want, and then just not prioritize what you know, I kind of don't want. And then you need to make your budget realistic because part of the issue is that we're setting up these budgets that are like, yeah, you look at your cash and you go, yeah, I could be saving this much money if I just cut my food spending by 70%, if I just cut my shopping by 70%. That's not gonna happen. So what you need to be doing is when you set it up, just set it up in a way that is easy. Easy to win. You need to give yourself wins. I mean, part of the whole problem with us with ADHD is that so many of us have been beaten up our whole lives with traumatic little mini traumas over time, over, you know, yada yada yada that we're just so used to failing or to be being a disappointment. So it's like we just set ourselves up with like this, you know, it's almost like people pleasing. You're trying to please the budget, like you're trying to make the budget happy and make it all work, but that's not how it's going to work. It's just simply not. You need to give a lot of wiggle room, and with all the wiggle room that you give, you're gonna be able to get an easy win. And even if you don't get the win, if you're close, if you change, if you went from spending$2,000 on food as a total category, you know, DoorDash plus groceries plus all anything food related, you go from that to spending$1,700, but you set a budget for$1,500, that's a freaking win. You should be celebrating, you should be excited, you should feel good that you actually made progress. And you just have to believe that in yourself and develop your self-confidence. You can't just go from sucking to being amazing at this. You have to slowly get small wins, build up small wins, keep small little rewards for you. Get the small win, break it down to week by week. What are you gonna change? What are you gonna do? What's the reward? And just do it this way. So don't let perfectionism get in the way of your budgeting. Budgeting is a tool for awareness, not a tool for judgment, not a tool for not a report card, not a test. It's not going to scream at you. It's it's just you and the budget. You do not need to let it bring you down. You need to just pick back up and you got all of it. And if you're having a bad month and you're just like don't have the motivation to check it, because that's what happens. If you don't want to check the budget, most of the time it's because you know it's doing bad. It's poor, it's not, you're not on track, you're not doing what you felt like you wanted to do. So that's a lot of times why we don't look at it. Because if we were doing really well, imagine if you set up the budget and after 15 days of the month go by, you're well under the budget, and you can see how much money you're on track to save it. You're gonna want to look, and you're gonna kind of know that in the back of your mind. You're gonna want to look at it because now you're doing something successfully. You're gonna get a dopamine hit from seeing that success. So if you don't want to look at it, it's because you kind of know you're not doing right. But that doesn't mean you blow it up. That means you just get back on the horse next month and try again and adapt and listen to podcasts and learn and just keep going, keep going. So don't let perfectionism get in the way of your budget. That's what I have to say for you guys today. Um, this is just a little hold you over podcast episode until I get back on the horse doing more uh podcasts more often and more frequently. And I look forward to bringing you a lot more quality content. Um, definitely going to be sticking or doing a lot more stuff on the psychology side of stuff. So, anyways, have fun out there. Keep being you. You're unique, you're awesome. You're bool. See you later.