ADHD Money Talk
When your brain and your bank account are constantly fighting, it's time for a new approach.
ADHD Money Talk is the podcast that finally addresses what traditional financial advice misses: how ADHD fundamentally changes your relationship with money. From impulse spending and financial avoidance to the shame spiral that keeps you stuck, we tackle the real challenges that come with managing money when your brain works differently.
ADHD Money Talk
How Buy Now Pay Later Traps You, Explained
Ever wondered why “pay in four” buttons feel irresistible? They’re designed to exploit ADHD brain wiring—leveraging executive function deficits, dopamine manipulation, working memory overload, and future blindness.
Services like Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm thrive on “phantom debt,” with the average person juggling 9+ payment plans and paying hefty merchant fees and penalties. Millennials and Gen Z—especially those with lower credit scores—are prime targets.
I share three harm-reduction strategies, including limiting yourself to 1–2 payment plans and finding non-spending dopamine boosts. That’s why I created the UnBudget—a free ADHD-friendly money system that works with your brain, not against it. Link in description.
Know what you can really spend, in under 1 hour, no overwhelm. Grab free access here → https://unbudgetlite.shamelessmoney.com/
Check out ShamelessMoney.com to work with me directly!
Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.
Learn more about ADHD-friendly financial coaching
Follow me on YouTube
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Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.
Learn more about ADHD-friendly financial coaching
Follow me on YouTube
Subscribe to the newsletter
Before we jump in, here's what's changing. That's going to make this show even better. We're now creating content optimized specifically for YouTube, but don't worry, it works perfectly on the podcast, too. Here's the thing, though. If you want the absolute best experience, youtube is where it's at. You'll get to see my face, all the visuals and the full production value we're putting into these episodes. So hop on over to YouTube and hit subscribe while you're there, but if you love the podcast format, you're not missing out on the core content. Our YouTube handle is ADHD Money Talk, and the link to the YouTube channel is in the show notes. All right, let's get into today's episode.
Speaker 1:I was being hunted Klarna, afterpay, affirm. I felt that these companies were helping me with four things, but they weren't just selling payment plans. They were collecting ADHD brands, and I have the research to prove it. So I fell into this trap hard, like embarrassingly hard. Those convenient payment options that are just everywhere on Afterpay all of them. They're not payment options, they're a neurological weapon. I'm about to show you something that's going to make you furious, because if you have ADHD and you've ever clicked on the split into four payments button, then let me tell you you were not just buying something, you were being hunted. I thought I was just terrible at money. Honestly, that ADHD shame spiral that was me every day and if you're watching this, you probably know exactly what I'm'm talking about. You know that crushing feeling like you're broken and fundamentally flawed. Well, that's not your fault. I'm about to show you why. But then I'd see something. You know the 200 gadget. So you know I'm just minding my own business. Then all of a sudden, oh, this gadget comes up, perfect and need this, need it. I'm like, all right, here we go and it. Then Klarna pops up, pay in four, no interest, what a deal. My brain latches onto that. $50 per two weeks or whatever, like it's salvation. 50 bucks, I can handle 50 bucks. And that was my life on repeat. Back in the days when I was spending like a wild man For this video, I dug into the research and things that I maybe suspected were found.
Speaker 1:It's really sinister. What's going on? It's not just me, it's also them, for sure. The research made me furious and you want to know something terrifying. If an ADHD expert sat down with the only intention to create a system that would financially destroy the whole population of people with ADHD, he would absolutely build what Klarna, afterpay, paypal, affirm have done. I've got four weapons they use to literally zero in target and hunt us ADHDers to try and just destroy us while they make money. So we've got four weapons. The four weapons they're literally trying to reverse engineer, destroy our finances using our brains. Here we go.
Speaker 1:So Russell Barkley's research shows ADHD is fundamentally an executive function deficit disorder. If you are a 28 year old and you have ADHD, your brain's impulse control is functioning at a 17 year old's level, and these companies know this and they are exploiting it. We're like little children when it comes to behavioral inhibition, and these companies know this and they are exploiting it. We're like little children when it comes to behavioral inhibition, and that means we're ripe for the picking. They know it. They offer instant approval. They deliberately bypass the prefrontal cortex functions that are already broken in our brains. They're exploiting it. We're like little children when it comes to behavioral inhibition. They offer instant approval and they are deliberately bypassing our executive function prefrontal cortexes already minimized ability to make a good decision. We're like ooh, fifty dollars, not two hundred. Forget about the rest. So yeah, that's the first weapon, just straight up hijacking a known executive function issue. They know we can't resist.
Speaker 1:Weapon number two exploiting our dopamine pathways. Pet studies show that adhd brains have significantly lower dopamine availability. We live in a chronic hypo dopamodernic state, and what that basically means is we are constantly just searching for the next best thing, the next immediate gratification, and so, in other words, we're literally walking around with brains that are starving for reward all the time. It can be the littlest reward, it can be the most maladaptive reward, it's just a reward. These companies, they're dangling out there exactly what our brains crave most Buy now, pay later. Services function essentially as sophisticated dopamine delivery systems. Immediate reward you get the thing for way less than you thought you were going to have to pay and you defer the consequence. You pay later and probably even more, potentially with the interest. It's engineered addiction. It's engineered exploitation of our brains, everyone's brains.
Speaker 1:Weapon number three is working memory overwhelm. My working memory is good for like the last two words I said. I can probably recall the last two words. Go back in much more than that and maybe the last sentence. That's all I got. When you're being shown from Klarna and Affirm first of all, you can probably choose from like three different versions of this and you get the 12 months, no interest. You get the pay for. You get the 18 months with a lower rate, and then the clawback and then this and then that. So your brain shuts down and that's totally normal. Your brain's not broken. They are breaking your brain on purpose. They're counting on you shutting down and just buying and not really understanding what you're doing, because they aren't really telling you what they're doing. Weapon number four is these buy now, pay later.
Speaker 1:Companies make the future purposefully vague. Adhd creates what Russell Barkley calls nearsightedness to the future. So we are unable to basically think through the consequences of decisions we're making today, those future consequences. We aren't really able to think through them because those consequences have been so far out in the future that they're not tangible and we can't really connect to them. And if we were to connect to them, it would take a long time and we'd have to really think about it and get in touch with all of our thighs and goals and put all of these pieces together and be like yeah, that's not okay. I don't want that for reals this time. But we're just more like I got today, I got tomorrow, maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow's not promised. I'm going for it, I'm just going to do it. Future me will figure it out. That's what they're doing, and these four weapons are really just the brain, chemistry, manipulation.
Speaker 1:Wait until you see how they engineer the entire experience to hide what's really happening. They've disguised the entire thing, every word, every color, every button. It's all psychological warfare. You'll never see the word debt in their marketing. You'll never see loan. You'll never see credit Instead. What do you see? You see split. See credit Instead. What do you see? You see split the payment, flexible payment. This is good for your financial wellness because you can spread it out and keep your budget intact. Come to me and this isn't, I'm not joking Klarna literally has called it financial wellness in their internal documents, in their internal presentations, where they're saying this is what we want to emphasize. Guys, we don't want people to know the truth about our service. We want to call it financial wellness because it's so good for people and us.
Speaker 1:When we make a lot of money off people getting into more debt, they don't understand. They anchor you. Well, we really anchor ourselves, but by doing doing it this way, they are anchoring us to the price we pay today. We actually don't emotionally connect to the whole price. We just think, oh, $200 split in four, $50 I can afford that, we, we just it just doesn't register. Because then we're like, oh, it's just like I'm buying a $25 thing every two weeks, but then you're going to want to do a $50 every two weeks thing in two weeks. So now you're doing $100 every two weeks, but then you're going to want to do a $50 every two weeks thing in two weeks. So now you're doing a hundred dollars every two weeks, then you want to do another one. And that's the math you are not doing. We are being overwhelmed with payments that are just piling up and just coming at us and our working memory can't handle it. We can't handle the math in our head and you know, once we're at like three or four of these things, it's out the window. But wait, just get a load of this.
Speaker 1:The average person using these services has 9.5 different of these things per year across multiple platforms. I would venture to guess we ADHDers skew that average up a bit. We're probably what like 12, 13, 14, 25, 30, whatever. And so think about that for a second. You're not managing one payment schedule. You're juggling 10 different payment schedules across four different companies, and two weeks ago you did Afterpay. Before that you did Affirm, and then you did Klarna and you had, you know, a spree with PayPal paying for.
Speaker 1:So you have five different accounts and you sure as crap aren't going to go log in and go see and track it and put it in a spreadsheet. I mean, how many of you actually use a spreadsheet? Raise your hand. If you use a spreadsheet and you track all this because I don't it just goes into the abyss and you hope, and you think you do, in the exact moment you press buy, that you'll have enough money, because no God's gotten you so far. You're still alive and kicking and you haven't declared bankruptcy yet.
Speaker 1:And before you beat yourself up about this, remember it's designed this way. It's not personal. You're trying to track something that is designed to not be tracked. This isn't a personal failing. They don't make this easy. They want you to be confused, and so this is what researchers call phantom debt, because it's debt that feels like it doesn't exist, because you can't really see it and you won't really track it. You know, you're on. You're on your budgeting app, monarch or rock of money. You're not really linking your affirm. I don't even know if you can do that? I should know.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's in it for these companies. Why are they doing this? Well, they generate 70 to 80 percent of their revenue from merchant fees that are two to three times higher than credit card processing fees, and the cost is basically getting passed to all consumers through higher product prices. Because this is basically how it works. They get money, they get a cut of everything that we buy using it, and the company that you're buying from is selling more things because more consumers are like, yeah, I can afford this, so I'm going to buy it, so why would they not raise their prices? Why would, if they're going to sell more anyways now and they keep the price at the same price and they're just going to lose their profit margin? They need that profit margin to stay per unit, to stay where it is at for their next quarterly conference call with their investors. And here's where it gets really predatory. Late fees range from $8 to $25, or up to like 25% of the purchase price. Bank overdraft fees average $35. So when multiple automated withdrawals hit simultaneously and you can't keep track of all these things, then the penalties are just going to start adding up, and adding up, and adding up.
Speaker 1:And how long do we think a firm's been around? I don't think it's been around that long, but a company is like a firm report adjusted operating income of $381 million on revenue of nearly $1 billion, and the profit margins that these companies are making are mathematically impossible to actually get if you don't have consumers overspending and then extracting fees and fees and fees. Maybe that's a good thing long term for us, because long term maybe these companies will realize that they're sucking out what they can, but it'll run dry. But in the near term, we got to be cautious. And so what else are they doing to just weasel their way into our lives and try and make us mess up financially? Well, they're deliberately targeting people who are vulnerable. 73 of users are millennials and gen z. 23 of people who use these have credit scores below 600, so they shouldn't even be getting credit. It's not good for them. That's why the credit scores exist. It sucks when you can't get the credit you want, but a lot of the times it's for your own good and you don't realize that until later. And so that's 23% of people below 600 and only 2.8% of people with scores above 800 are using buy now, pay later. And the fact that they're partnering with, like food delivery services. Now, I mean, if Klarna is getting in on DoorDash the people actually using it to buy their food what do we really think is happening here? They are struggling financially and klarna sees them as an opportunity for fees.
Speaker 1:The instagram algorithm knows you so well. I used to be on instagram and I was such a sucker for the ads. Every other ad would take me away from whatever it was I was really trying to do, which is just to escape and watch some funny stuff, and because I knew me so well, I would go and I would explore and I'd say, okay, what is the pitch? Let me read this very long pitch and see how many upsells they can do before I say no or yes. And by the time you know you're actually done looking at this thing and maybe you finally worked up the oomph to be like no, not today. You're not going to do this to me today. Well, you spent a lot of time doing that and that's exhausting.
Speaker 1:You are not the customer of a Klarna and a firm. It is the business that is using it. You are the vehicle to exploit. You are who they want you to get into the pocket of. Ultimately, you are the instrument that they play to make themselves very wealthy and try and sell you on something that feels good but is destructive. And so what are we going to do with this?
Speaker 1:Several years ago, when I was studying for the CFP and just all about the financial planning industry, I heard a podcast from a financial planner who said and I loved it she was like I don't give the perfect advice to pretty much anyone. I give the half good advice that I think they will actually follow through on, because half good advice that gets followed through on is better than perfect advice that never gets started. So, first step harm reductions. So maybe right now, if you actually you know, spend 30 minutes actually figuring out how many of these things you have open, and maybe, let's say you have five or six, then make it your goal just to reduce it to having one or two, and then you can just say to yourself I will have no more than two ever at any given time.
Speaker 1:What actually prevented me from doing more of these things back when I was a reckless spender, dealing with the worst imposter syndrome ever, dealing with just shame galore. What really prevented me from making it overly bad was that I hated not knowing. Part of my thing is that I need to understand and know things, even if it's bad, like if I have 30 grand of credit card debt. I wanna know that I have 30 grand of credit card debt and I wanna see it. So that prevented me actually from doing this, because it was so hard to keep track of. I'm only gonna have one at a time, or two at a time, and not until because if you have one or two at a time and it is genuinely paying for no interest or something you know, that can actually be something that is responsible if done with intention and with execution. It's when you're just kind of recklessly doing it that we have the problem.
Speaker 1:That's number one Just have one or two and then you'll be able to keep track of it. Mentally, you'll know, and then when they roll off, you know and you have something else a little bit bigger to buy, you can say, okay, I have space for one. So we're not trying to get rid of it totally, we're not going to be unrealistic, but we're just going to reduce it and then keep some boundary on it. Number two find a substitution for your chronic under stimulation that doesn't involve spending enormous amounts of money or at least not being able to predict the amount of money that you're spending. Maybe you go take singing lessons. That's what I'm actually doing right now, because it one is interesting. I can as much time to sit around throwing dollar bills at all the little fancy gadgets you know that are just constantly being thrown in my face.
Speaker 1:Third reality check time buy now, pay later is dangerous and we must avoid it as best we can. It is debt. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. You're using it because on at to some extent, you are wrapped up in consumerism and you are giving in. The reality is you are giving in all the time to the for the instant gratification and for the reward, and it is going to do damage to yourself if you don't get it under control. So the reality check is number three, and looking internally to see what is really going on and what can I substitute this with? How can I channel this energy somewhere else that isn't going to be causing self-harm? And if there's some level of shame or some level of something that creates the cycle, that sort of adds fuel to the fire, then it's time to get in touch with that and become aware, because the awareness of the issue, that's the deep down issue, is what's going to unlock a mindset that believes that it can get over the problem, because now it understands the problem. So remember when I talked about those 10 different payment schedules you're trying to juggle the spreadsheet. You don't have the money, disappearing into the abyss. Here's what I realized after falling into this trap so hard Protecting yourself from buy now, pay later companies is just half the battle, because even if you delete every app tomorrow, you're still going to be left with the same ADHD brain that got you there in the first place.
Speaker 1:The real problem at the end of the day, for us who are struggling with our money can't seem to get a grip on it, is that most financial advice assumes that you lack knowledge and that if you just knew how to budget better, you would, and if you knew what to do you would. But that's exactly the opposite of the truth for us. We do know better, and if we don't know better, we still can know better. You know, if you both can't control the behavior and you don't know better, then the low hanging fruit is to know better, because we are not bad at learning. Usually, we can figure things out and we can understand concepts and we can get it, and we can just, you know, we just bury our head in the sand when it's time to actually do something, and so this is why I created the unbudget.
Speaker 1:This is a free ADHD money automation financial system, building it from soup to nuts.
Speaker 1:It takes you through every single step of getting a system where you have money going where you need it to go, so that the money that you have to spend is after everything else has been set aside for and and I'm talking about everything, the things that you you aren't even thinking about, like the, the irregular expenses that come up and just you're like, oh, I was doing so good and then boom, this came up.
Speaker 1:I forgot about that. But we take into account everything so that the money that you actually have left over to spend is the money you really can spend with this system. This system doesn't move the money for you, but it takes you through setting it up and getting everything you need together so that you can go implement it in one of multiple options that I provide in this free tool. I spent a lot of time on it. I'm super excited about it. So if you want to check this thing out, it's in the description. It's totally free. There's not a single string attached because you will give me your email, but that's it. Otherwise, totally free, and I'll see you later.