ADHD Money Talk

How I transformed my relationship with money (and how you can too)

• David DeWitt • Season 1 • Episode 75

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On this episode, I'm sharing a transformative system that has eliminated my impulse spending by using something called a "token economy" with gold stars that can be redeemed for desired purchases. 

This approach bridges the dopamine gap for ADHDers like you and me by providing immediate, tangible rewards for positive financial behaviors.

• Token economies provide external rewards that help ADHD brains connect daily actions to long-term outcomes
• The system creates your own "currency" earned through completing chores, habits, and financial behaviors
• The system teaches your brain to weigh desire against effort, creating a natural spending pause
• Over time, this approach reduces overall desire for impulse purchases

Visit ADHDMoneyTalk.com to share your experience if you try this system or to ask questions for the show.

Interested in working with me 1:1? Check out my brand new ADHD Financial Kickstarter service: a 90-minute call with me where we dive deep on your money beliefs and financial picture. Within 7 days, you'll get a personalized roadmap designed to help you transform your relationship with money for good.

Head to shamelessmoney.com/adhd-financial-kickstart to learn more.

Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.

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Dave:

Welcome back to ADHD Money Talk. I'm Dave DeWitt, the ADHD Money Guy. On today's episode. I'm so excited I'm sharing this new system I've been using that has completely transformed my relationship with money and pretty much eliminated impulse spending. It's magic. So if you've ever found yourself with a maxed out credit card wondering like, how did I wind up here again? Did I wind up here again? Then this episode is going to be one that you want to listen to, because this is not just another boring budgeting lecture and it's not going to be another shame inducing just have more willpower type of thing. No, this is going to be a practical, science backed approach that's specifically designed for how our ADHD brains actually work, and I only realized how specifically designed this approach was until after it started working and I was like what is it about this? And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is literally so ADHD Perfect, and so I'm going to be sharing this. It all started with this calendar app. We have that introduced a new feature with gold stars, and we put it in place for our family and, before we knew it, boom, like I'm like dead to the world of wanting to buy stuff. It's amazing, and so we're going to talk about that today and you're going to learn how to reparent yourself. That's what this really is Reparenting yourself to learn how to wait for what you want. So let's get in. Ever notice how your brain lights up when you click buy now, but goes completely dark when it's time to save for retirement. What if I told you there's a way to hack your ADHD brain to actually enjoy delayed gratification? Today I'm sharing the unconventional system that completely transformed my relationship with impulse spending, and it all started with gold stars on a family calendar app.

Dave:

I've talked to so many people about their money and their childhood, and what comes up routinely is that no one taught them how to manage money. What comes up routinely is that no one taught them how to manage money. You may have felt money was abundant, scarce or even used as manipulation, but the common thread no one taught you how to handle it. With ADHD, you'll do what feels good. Your brain treats life like you have one week to live. The future you care about is tomorrow, not 30 years from now. So you start instantly gratifying yourself, conditioning your brain to this pattern. Before you know it, 10 years pass and you've hardened a neural pathway associating immediate purchases with pleasure. The dopamine, then adult responsibilities hit. Your friends are buying houses and maxing out 401ks. You try to stop the cycle. You set up a budget, make goals, but at that crucial moment, when you need to say no, you say yes. That hardwired neural pathway wins. That hardwired neural pathway wins.

Dave:

At its core, adhd is a failure to perform at the precise moment performance is needed. So what can you do? I've come up with something that might set you free. You have to reparent yourself to learn how to wait for what you want.

Dave:

What I've essentially created is what behavioral psychologists call a token economy, a well-established technique used in therapy and education for decades. Token economies provide immediate, tangible rewards for positive behaviors, which can later be exchanged for meaningful rewards. This isn't just a cute idea. It's rooted in solid behavioral science. Research shows that token economies are especially effective for people with executive function challenges like ADHD. Function challenges like ADHD why? Because they externalize the reward system that neurotypical brains handle internally. Those people naturally connect daily actions to long-term outcomes through a well-functioning dopamine system. But with ADHD, that connection is faulty. Our dopamine signaling is irregular, making it incredibly difficult to feel motivated by distant rewards like retirement. Token economies bridge that gap by providing that missing dopamine hit for productive behaviors. What makes the approach I'm going to share so powerful is that it transforms abstract financial concepts like saving into a visible, concrete system. You're not just saying no to a purchase and getting nothing. You're earning something you can see. If you're skeptical, I get it. You've tried everything. For an approach to work, it needs to resonate quickly. If this doesn't click with you, it might not be your solution, but it's worked so well for me that I'm sharing it out of pure conviction.

Dave:

This all started when our family's Skylight Calendar app added a new feature. We have a four-year-old and I definitely struggle with saying no to her. I was trying to balance not teaching her that she gets whatever she wants whenever she wants, while also fighting my instinct to just make her happy all the time. Then this feature came out. This app lets you add chores for everyone in the family. For years, these chores have just sat there undone. Then they added stars for accomplishing chores and rewards. You could redeem stars for Game changer Big time.

Dave:

Here's why my wife suggested we do this for ourselves, because my daughter was doing it and she was crushing it. She was brushing her teeth, going potty, brushing her hair, cleaning up stuff, because she wanted stars, because the stars were tied to a tangible reward, something she wanted. That's something that she saw while she was strolling down the Target toy area. So my wife was like, let's do this for ourselves ourselves too. We had to determine how much money a star would convert to, based on what we could responsibly spend on non-essentials. If we earned every possible star for the month of chores, we wouldn't rack up debt. We also wouldn't save extra, but we probably wouldn't do all of the chores and things that we have in the app anyways. So, worst case scenario, we don't save anything. Most likely, we're saving some money.

Dave:

We each added chores and realized this was perfect for building habits we'd been struggling with besides just doing like household chores. So I get five stars for leaving on time for work, 10 for doing my ice bath, five for a good workout. My wife gets stars for getting the kids dressed before going downstairs in the morning, taking them outside and working out as well, amongst other things. But those are just some examples For rewards. Rewards we started with generic things like a hundred bucks to spend on whatever after we get 200 stars. But the game changer was adding specific rewards with specific star costs. So if a ps5 costs 500 and each star is worth 50 cents, that's 1000 stars. Headphones for 50 bucks, that's 100,000 stars. Headphones for 50 bucks, that's 100 stars, high level. What we did was we created our own currency that we earned by working for it, exactly like real life.

Dave:

The problem is that, for us with ADHD, rewards like retirement and financial independence feel abstract and impossibly distant. We skip learning the small steps and we jump straight to societal pressure to save and be responsible. This system is incredibly powerful because you can use it for daily habits like we started to try and do, like things we already wanted to do to improve ourselves. We could now also earn stars for that. We could redeem for a reward that we want. But you could also earn stars for financial behaviors. You could earn stars for checking account balances, logging your transactions in your budgeting app, reviewing your spending plan, packing lunch, making coffee at home, cooking your own dinner or following the 24-hour rule for unplanned purchases. But, frankly, with this system, you kind of don't need the 24-hour rule for unplanned purchases. But, frankly, with this system, you kind of don't need the 24-hour rule anymore because you have to earn stars to get what you want.

Dave:

Some weekly habits you could do in a system like this, where you're earning stars for the things you want is weekly meal planning, weekly reviewing the subscriptions that you have, reconciling your budget categories, having no spend days or actually moving money to your savings account. You could give yourself some stars for that. Some monthly habits you could try are staying under budget, making extra debt payments, finding expenses to cut or calculating your net worth payments, finding expenses to cut or calculating your net worth. So basically, you can be doing a system where you're earning stars and your own made up currency which kind of detaches it from like month the emotional part of like actual money, which is just thick with stuff. You have your own currency that you get to use to get the things you want so that you can get your dopamine hit, but you have to earn it by doing chores or these habits. So, in terms of the rewards, this is where it gets fun.

Dave:

What really has worked for me is using things like tangible kind of gadgets, shiny new objects that I have always liked to get, but you can get creative and have fun with it. You could have a reward, be a movie night with premium snacks, a massage, concert tickets or a kitchen gadget you've been eyeing up. So here's the thing High level, like we said, we're talking about making your own currency, doing small things that help you or help your household or help your finances, and earn stars. And then you accumulate stars and you redeem your stars for a reward, as opposed to just impulse buying a reward for yourself Because you had a hard day, which is something that happens. You know, I had a hard day. I just deserve DoorDash. You're moving this into a system. So, since starting this system, you're moving this into a system. So, since starting this system, something incredible happened internally for me For the first rewards.

Dave:

I worked hard to get the item and it was a light visor I wear in the mornings to feel better and to wake up, so I don't have to sit in front of a lamp for 30 minutes. I really wanted it and I did my chores, I did my ice baths, I did my workouts. I got it pretty quick. The next thing, the next reward I wanted. It was the same deal, but the intensity of my desire was a little bit less like the intensity of a desire to do all the things required to get the reward was a little less. Not much barely noticeable, but less barely noticeable, but less. Now four or five rewards in I don't really want anything anymore and I'm not really getting anything anymore. It's very odd. There's almost a numbness when I think about my old impulse buying patterns.

Dave:

I've noticed that simply adding items to my reward list gives me dopamine, essentially tricking my brain into thinking I've bought it, like by the time I accumulate enough stars. I often don't find I don't even really want the item that badly anymore. The dopamine was already partially spent just by adding it to my list. You know I get to add the item and emoji the link to it. I've already looked it up. I'm already like yeah, I want these shoes. Yeah, I want this attachment for my VR system. Now I have like a list of like six or seven things. I really wanted at the moment that I put them on the list, but now I'm like and so, and what really is interesting is that over the course of just three months I've basically taught my brain to be able to inherently weigh my desire for the reward versus my desire to do the work for the reward.

Dave:

One on this podcast who's listened in the old days, I guess you could call it now that when you go to the store and you're about to buy a new jacket or new shoes, you kind of ask yourself my values are to be free, to have autonomy, peace of mind, to have financial independence. Is buying these shoes helping me get there, and do I already have shoes that work just fine there, and do I already have shoes that work just fine? That can be a tough thing when financial independence and peace of mind and autonomy is very abstract, and so it's difficult to make that right decision right then and there. But now, with this system, I've trained myself to be like do I want to do an ice bath every day for the next five days and do I want to work out every day for the next five? I already know what the things that I get stars for are and I can much better wrap my head around what that is what I have to do to earn the thing, so I'm able to make that value judgment much more efficiently. And because it was so novel when I first started doing the system and new and it was exciting, my brain has been accepting that that's how I get stuff. Now it's like very quickly changed the pattern from the quick rationalization on the spot and then just getting it to the default is more like got to get those stars, and it's really awesome actually to think about how that's happened and I'm almost bewildered and mystified by the effectiveness of this. But it really works. It's really cool.

Dave:

So if you're hesitant to set up a full system like this, here's a simple way to test this approach. Choose one purchase under 30 bucks you've been wanting and, instead of buying it, write it down with a price in stars, maybe just for simplicity's sake. One star equals $1. Create a list of three habits you want to build. One star equals one dollar. Create a list of three habits you want to build. Each time you complete one, give yourself a star. Once you've earned enough, make your purchase. Allow yourself to make the purchase because you earned it.

Dave:

Pay attention to how this feels compared to impulse buying. I should mention that having my wife participate makes this easier. The built-in accountability really does help. There's a partnership and a camaraderie around it. If you're on your own, it might be harder, but I want you to ride the motivation wave. If this is resonating with you and you've had that little tickle of like, ooh, this is a cool idea, I want you to lean into that really hard, because I really do think. I'm very confident that you'll notice changes if you do this for two months and you stick to it. Don't make it too hard. Just what are the little things that give you a little edge in your day that you can do and reward yourself with stars for that? You can then build up and accumulate towards earning enough for the thing. So this is a systematized way to reparent yourself, to learn how to wait.

Dave:

Prior to this, I've been spending four or five years trying to get myself under control, my ADHD under control, my impulse spending under control, and in large part, I've done that pretty much just by working on clarifying my values, working on thinking through my goals, working on thinking about my family slowing down, and also by working on myself, and I've learned a ton of things, and that is something that I think everyone who's really struggling with almost like what feels like inescapable money patterns that are holding you back.

Dave:

I think that work is absolutely required in terms of putting it in practice. Like those things helped me to the point where I wanted to buy less things in general that were not aligned with my values, but the problem was when something was so exciting to me that and often the things that I that are so exciting to me are also so expensive. So the beautiful thing is that that this has put the final leash on that last kind of remaining part of me that would still get hijacked by a surge of hunting for dopamine, where I would just still kind of blow myself up on a smaller scale. But this system has really put the final leash to hold back that, because now I can still just be like, yes, I really want it. Okay, how many stars do I need? Okay, put it on the thing, start doing my chores and my daily habits, and before long I get to have that option to pull the trigger with feeling, no guilt, nothing at all, just pure. This is in sync with everything because I have the system that works for me.

Dave:

So if you try this and it resonates, I'd love to hear how it's going for you. Go to ADHDMoneyTalkcom to share your experience. You can fill out a form there with comments. You can ask a question for the show, but I want to know if it worked for you and what you're doing to make it uniquely yours and any sort of other tweaks you've made to your system to make it more effective for you. That's it for today's show. Thank you so much. We'll talk again soon, you.