Symptoms of ADHD have a tendency to impact how we deal with our finances. This week on the show, Nikki Kinzer lays out the facts as we embark on a series of conversations dedicated to ADHD and money. While our upcoming guests will help us through budgeting and getting out of debt, this week we focus on finding the money mindset as we set ourselves on a path to live in a more healthy relationship with our finances!
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by The ADHD Podcast Community on Patreon
Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on Rash Pixel FM. I’m Pete Wright, and right over there is Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Hello, Nikki Kinzer. A happy and fine recording day to you.
Nikki Kinzer:
You too. We’re starting a new series today.
Pete Wright:
We are, we are starting a new series and it is a series, it is a triggering series for me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, yes.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I’m sorry.
Pete Wright:
How are we doing this?
Nikki Kinzer:
But this will be good.
Pete Wright:
It is.
Nikki Kinzer:
This will be a good trigger.
Pete Wright:
It’s cathartic. I’ve been planning for it all weekend. I’ve been saying my little meditations, “It’s going to be okay, Pete. It’s going to be okay. This is not about you. This is not about you.”
Nikki Kinzer:
This is not about you.
Pete Wright:
“This is not about your lifelong struggle with this stuff. It’s not about you.”
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
So we’re going to be talking about ADHD and money this week, or this week, this whole month on the show, but we’re starting this week and before we do that, we want you to head over to takecontroladhd.com. You can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to our mailing list and we’ll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Twitter or Facebook at Take Control ADHD.
Pete Wright:
We extend our warmest of welcomes to Dawn and Jackson and Brooke and Susan and Emily and Carol, who all joined us in the ADHD community as patrons in the last week, over at patreon.com/theADHDpodcast. Now this show is and always will be free for all, but it does come at a cost for us to produce and to host and to grow this show. Thanks to all of the wonderful, wonderful people who lend their direct support through Patreon, the ADHD podcast and continue to thrive. If the show has ever touched you or helped you make a change in your life for the better, if you’ve ever found that you understand your relationship with ADHD in a new way, we encourage you to become a member at patrion.com/theADHDpodcast. It’s listener supported podcasting, with a few dollars a month you can help guarantee that we continue to grow. Visit once again, patrion.com/theADHDpodcast, to learn more about our tiers of support. Thanks everybody.
Pete Wright:
Start talking about money and my tongue ties in knots.
Nikki Kinzer:
Money. Does it, why?
Pete Wright:
Nikki, I don’t know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Let’s start with that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, let’s start with that. No, I mean I have always had a complicated relationship with money, in that either I think about it a lot, or I don’t think about it at all. That leads in these massive pendulum swings and not a lot of stability. So the stability for me, thankfully came when I got married and had someone else to be my monetary accountability buddy, to just have somebody to talk about money and growth and stability in a way that didn’t just cause crazy, crazy disruption in my life and discomfort. So, but without that, I’m a wash at sea. So I’m eager. I know we have a set of fantastic guests coming up this month and I’m eager to hear from them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, me too.
Pete Wright:
Because I know I have a lot to learn. I am definitely in a mood, provoked to learn this month.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), it’s interesting because we’ll talk about this and just in a minute here about how you view money and where that came from. It really does start with how we grow up. Right?
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
But it is, it’s interesting. I’ve gone through waves in my life where I worried about it, I didn’t worry about it, I was in debt. Well, I guess that means that I didn’t care enough about it. Right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Then I ended up marrying somebody who is actually very good with it and I’ve learned a lot from him. So I’m at a point now where I’m actually very comfortable talking about money and comfortable with it, but that is because again, I married somebody too, that’s really good with money.
Pete Wright:
Really good with money.
Nikki Kinzer:
I was really able to learn a lot and go from there. But yeah, so it’s going to be good. We’re going to have, it’s going to be sort of a money series, right? So for the next four weeks. Today we’re going to start with an introduction and I’m going to share with you some facts and stats around money and ADHD to give people a better understanding of what’s going on and the challenges that they face specifically around ADHD and money. Talk about your mindset with money, the relationship you have with money, and then breaking it down on what it means to work on your finances, because so many times I’ll ask even my groups, my coaching groups. I’ll say, “Well, what do you guys want to talk about? What’s important to you?” Let’s talk about money, that is so big. Okay. Which part of money do we talk about?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So really figuring out how to break it down and setting reasonable goals of where to start.
Nikki Kinzer:
I’m really excited about having our experts on the show. In the next three weeks we’re going to be having Chelsea Brennan from SmartMoneyMamas.com. We’re also going to have Stephanie Sarkis, the author of ADD and Your Money, come on the show. I am just really looking forward to having them really address more of the specific concerns where you and I Pete, can talk about it, but we’re not coming from the expert view. Right? So I’m really excited about having them on the show.
Pete Wright:
Me too.
Nikki Kinzer:
So much, that some of the things that I’m going to say today, actually come from the book, ADD and Your Money from Stephanie Sarkis. So if you don’t have that book, I highly recommend getting it. It’s one of the only books out there that is specific to ADHD and money. So I think it’s a good investment if this is something that you’re struggling with.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, so let’s dig into some of the facts, if we can use this week as an opportunity to set the table, so to speak, for the conversations to come this month.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Well, so some of these statistics are actually probably not going to be surprising, but they’re depressing. So, just remember that we’re going to be talking about strategies and help too. So it’s not all bad.
Nikki Kinzer:
People with ADHD have a greater amount of debt. They have more difficulty paying their bills and less people… or I’m sorry, and less money saved up than people without ADHD. People with ADHD have lower incomes than those without ADHD, even when they have a similar education level. People with ADHD also miss more days of work due to unofficial absences. People with ADHD are more likely to take risks that lead to loss of money. Then additional research outside of the book that I found too, is that people with ADHD are two thirds more likely to be fired from jobs, three times more likely to impulsively quit their jobs, and 50% more likely to have changed jobs in a given period.
Nikki Kinzer:
These statistics clearly show us that there is a challenge around money, and if it’s not recognized and manage the consequences can certainly become very severe. A lot of resulting in broken relationships because if you notice that a lot of the stats around marriages and divorce is money or money issues.
Pete Wright:
Well yeah, and I was going to say, if you’re 50% more likely to quit your job impulsively, what other relationships will you quit impulsively? Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly, yeah. High levels of debt and bankruptcy. I mean this also yes, what other relationships absolutely. Are you hiding what you’re buying, hiding purchases? I mean, I see some of that sometimes, the impulse of buying can be a huge issue. So hopefully we’re going to end up talking about a lot of that stuff with our experts too. But those are some of the stats, not great.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, kind of grim, not great. That’s okay. It’s all about building muscles. That’s the whole point of this, is figure out what new muscles we have to build.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right? Being aware of it is one of the-
Pete Wright:
That’s right.
Nikki Kinzer:
… very first pieces of it. So what does ADHD have to do with this? Well, it really goes back I think to the basics of what executive functions are. Okay? Because we have to look at how executive functions directly impact money management. One of the executive functions that I’m going to highlight today that that affects directly money management is, well, actually there’s a few. Planning, organizing, working memory, and self regulation. So those are major components that we have to really understand in order to understand how ADHD affects how you think of money.
Pete Wright:
If those sound familiar, it’s also because they affect everything.
Nikki Kinzer:
They affect everything, absolutely, absolutely. We’ve talked a lot about planning in the last couple weeks and how hard that is, but what I’m going to do is just break this down a little bit and give everybody a little bit of an education if they’re not real familiar with what executive functions are, or how these ones would relate to money.
Nikki Kinzer:
With planning, what happens is many ADD-ers have a difficult time thinking into the future, right? So they’re looking at what’s happening right now. They can’t remember the past and the future may be too overwhelming to really tackle. So designing a financial plan may seem like a good idea. You may have the intention of doing that, knowing that hey, this sounds like something I should do. But there are so many roadblocks that can get in the way, because a financial plan, as I was mentioning earlier, is a very vague task. Not knowing where or how to start can really stop someone from doing anything, and so they just continue to do what they’re doing. Whether that’s hurting them or not, they don’t even know because they’re not looking into it enough. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
So they also may be resisting the structure of a budget because many ADD-ers do not want to be told what to do or how to do it. So they avoid a budget altogether because it all, it just feels so constricting. There’s a little bit of I think, denial sometimes, right? Like, if I don’t pay attention to it, it’s not really there. So we have to really pay attention if we want to plan and look into how our future is going to be impacted.
Pete Wright:
It’s so funny to think about this, especially because we called out that in our May workshop that. You asked me directly, how do I feel about structure, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
That structure in terms of time is incredibly helpful for me. It actually helps me feel liberated that I know that my structure I’m going to be taking care of because I have this structure in place. So why is it that a budget, which is effectively the same sort of structure around money that I apply my schedule to time, why is it that a budget makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck? It makes me feel completely irrationally constrained and emotionally impacted.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I would have to, I mean, just my own self, my own opinion on that is that a budget is basically… It’s probably not what you want. Right? So unless you make a lot of money and it doesn’t matter how much you spend, which is well, the 1% of America or in the country, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Who wants that? Who wants to face that I can’t-
Pete Wright:
Who wants constraint? Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I have to make a choice between buying a pair of shoes for myself versus a pair of shoes for my child. Of course I remember, I think I’ve shared this story before on the show. I remember talking to my mom about parenting and that was her example. She’s like, when you need a new pair of shoes or your child needs a new pair of shoes, your child gets the shoes. Who wants to make that choice? I mean we would rather, it’d be great that everybody have shoes. Right?
Pete Wright:
Shoes for the world. Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Shoes for the world.
Pete Wright:
Everybody gets shoes.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I mean I think for me anyway, that’s why I feel constricted by it is that it’s like gosh, I’m having to face the fact that I can’t have everything that I want. I have to make choices, I have to. When we don’t, and I’ve done this before and in my 20s, where then you get that credit card and you buy it anyway. Then all of a sudden you’re in this debt and that feels crappy too.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it does, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, yeah.
Pete Wright:
So that’s the thing that becomes triggering for me, is when we start talking about the same constraints that I’m totally comfortable with around my time and my days and projects, I am uncomfortable about with budgets. This is my month, my month to get over it. I need to get over myself because I feel like I’m about 12 years old, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well right, I mean-
Pete Wright:
I go into that same… Yeah. That, that same childlike state, where it’s that spirit of entitlement. You can’t tell me what to do with my money but in fact, you can, especially when it comes time to like building debt and having those debts called and I’ve been through that road years ago and it is not comfortable either, so.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s not and again, unless you have money just falling off of trees, we are limited by how much each of us have.
Pete Wright:
That’s right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So we have to live within that bucket, and that’s hard because living within your means is not an easy thing when your means aren’t as much as you would like them to be, so.
Pete Wright:
That’s right. Well, and especially when you add… and I think you and I might be in a different context around that particular conversation around income because we’re not salaried. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
We have some sort of predictive mechanism in what we do, but we are freelance and that adds a whole new sense of unpredictability to our financial flow.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and there’s other industries that are very similar too. When you think of anybody that works on any kind of commission, especially real estate, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, commissions, service, tips.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right? Right, if you’re a… and real estate really just pops in my mind. I mean, you’re getting that commission off of whatever houses or homes you sell and if you’re not selling homes, then you’re not making as much money. Teachers, people who yes, they’re getting paid on a yearly basis, but they’re still having some time in the summer that they could potentially have a second job if they wanted to or not. I mean, it’s a funky way to get paid. Right? It’s different. So yeah, there’s a lot of different things you have to think about.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and I think also you saying that Pete, with being a contractor, or being an entrepreneur, you really do have to plan in the sense that if you have a really good couple of months, you can’t just expect that those good couple of months are going to follow. So you really do have to plan for that and not overspend or over do it just because you had two really good months, because that third or fourth month could really suck. Then now you need to go back and use those reserves. So it’s yeah, it’s a very much a balancing act.
Nikki Kinzer:
Now organizing is one of those executive functions too that we’ve talked a lot about in the next few weeks or last few weeks, right? In all different contexts space, time, and now we’re going to talk about money. This is definitely an issue with a lot of my clients, is just keeping the finances straight. It’s not that they don’t have the money to pay for it. They can pay for it, but they forget to pay for it. Now, a lot of that can be taken away by doing automatic withdraws and setting those bill paying systems up. So if you don’t have that at this point, you need to do that because it does make things a lot, lot easier.
Nikki Kinzer:
But just in general, going back to just basic paper stuff too, organizing just doesn’t come easily for somebody with ADHD. So most likely they’ve probably have tried different budgets, they’ve tried different apps, they’ve tried different systems before. Nothing’s really stuck, or they start putting something together, but they don’t actually finish it to have it work. Right? So they start the process but they don’t really finish it. So when we look at organizing, it’s all about decision making and making decisions is not easy, especially when you have a lot of them to make, even by just, what app do you use? Right?
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
What book do I look at and follow their program? Do I look at Suze Orman or do I look at Dave Ramsey, or what do I do?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Who do I trust? How do I figure out who to trust?
Nikki Kinzer:
Who do I trust? Yeah, it’s really quite a frustrating. Like we said, setting up a budget is not any more fun than having a budget and following it, but setting it up is not fun either. It’s a lot of details.
Nikki Kinzer:
Working memory is probably something that you wouldn’t necessarily think about as part of money management, but it really is because to understand how it works, working memory is basically that it’s difficult to remember the consequences, the past consequences of something. So even if you know it’s really important to pay your bills, you may still forget to pay your bills because that working memory isn’t working, right? You’re not reminded. So unless you have some reminders and some real solid systems in place to say okay, every Sunday or every 1st and 15th, this is what we do, and you’re reminded to do it, it’s very easily to get… money is not necessarily going to be top of your mind, and if it is, you’re going to probably want to do something else instead.
Nikki Kinzer:
Ari Tuckman, one of our friends of the show says you can’t remember what you don’t pay attention to and the more you are able to pay attention, the more likely you will remember. So we have to have those little triggers in place to help us remember that this is what you’re paying attention to, is getting your finances in order. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that speaks directly to this whole idea of building a new muscle, and setting new… whatever your organizational structure looks like for your time, applying that to money. That’s my big takeaway here is just, I need to put those daily tasks and not just for doing my planks, but for checking, updating the budget, or just at least thinking about my financial health.
Nikki Kinzer:
What’s going on, right, right. Self regulation, probably not going to be a big surprise when it comes to especially impulsive purchases, but self regulation allows us to regulate our behavior. So when we are exercising good self regulation, we’re able to think before we speak, we can recall past events in order to predict the future. So when it’s in place, we have this good sense of regulation. We’re not making those impulsive purchases. We’re actually saying, “Okay, I really want that new electronic device, but I’m going to sit and I’m going to really think about it first before I just go and buy it because I want it.” So maybe you’re giving yourself that 24 hours to think about it. You’re looking at, do I have the resources? In my case, when it comes to electronic devices, I just call Pete, and unfortunately people will say, “Yes, get this done. Get all of it.”
Pete Wright:
I love spending other people’s money.
Nikki Kinzer:
You love spending other people’s money.
Pete Wright:
I delight in it.
Nikki Kinzer:
But what I think the important point here is though, is I trust you. So I know that if I am considering buying something, you are going to give me the best advice and you are going to tell me what’s good and bad. So I think that that’s an important piece of self regulation is you’re able to step back and say, okay, if I don’t know everything that I should know about this, and we all know that’s a rabbit hole of doing your own research. Then do find somebody that maybe does so that you can make a better decision.
Pete Wright:
You know what I think is interesting about that whole concept of finding somebody to trust? At least I know like when you call me, I tend to be much more strategically frugal when I’m recommending something for you, than when I’m buying it for myself. I could buy the same thing, and I just irrationally upgrade every possible feature. If we’re talking about a laptop, max it out. I don’t even need to think about it, but when I’m doing it for you I tend to be much more reasonable.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
It’s sort of conscious of what you need and what you use. So yeah, find somebody like that.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s because you know how I… Not value, well it’s value and view money. You just know that. Right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know that I have this husband, he’s going to say, “No, you don’t need that.”
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s right. I feel like I’m preparing a defense for your husband. That’s right.
Nikki Kinzer:
That right.
Pete Wright:
It’s like, I just have to make sure every single scenario is accounted for.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right. That’s right.
Pete Wright:
That’s good.
Nikki Kinzer:
That actually leads into our next conversation, and that is your relationship with money. It’s a really interesting dynamic and we all have one. I think I’ve probably shared this story before, when we’ve talked about money and pastimes, but it’s really telling. I remember when I was first dating my husband and he had gotten a bonus, end of year bonus from his sales job and I was like, “Wow, that’s fantastic. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to buy something? What are you going to buy?” Right?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nikki Kinzer:
He’s looking at me, he’s like, “Well, I’m not going to buy anything. I’m just going to invest it.” I’m like, “You’re going to invest all of it? You’re not even going to go buy, like at the time, like a CD?” Back in the late ’90s. But no, he’s like, “No, I’m just going to invest it.” That was, we have two very completely different views on that. Now, he would still do that to this day. I still would take some of it and say, “Okay, I’m still going to reward some of it.”
Pete Wright:
Treat yourself.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. I’m okay with saving most of it, but then there’s going to be some that’s going to be for me too. So I think-
Pete Wright:
You know what I find interesting about that though, Nikki? Is that the same joy that you get out of taking some of it and treating yourself in some special way that’s unique to you, he gets from investing it. Investing it is buying himself something that gives him joy.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
I think that’s really important to understand that mindset because I also don’t have it. Right? Although I can say once it’s done, if somebody takes that money and I never have to see it or touch it and it just goes into an investment and then they start showing me the statements and returns, then I can get joy about it, but it’s that immediate space, that interstitial space where I have to make a choice, that is very difficult for me. That’s why so many of my systems that work with regard to my money are automated systems that I don’t have to touch. It’s taken from me before I have to make a conscious choice about it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Which is really smart, and that is a key, key strategy I think for all of us, but especially for ADHD, because then you don’t see it. You don’t think about it, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Out of sight, out of mind. So it’s gone, you don’t have to make that choice, whether or not you put it into an investment, an IRA or you put it into your pocket.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So yeah, and I think it’s interesting too because in the book ADD and Your Money, the very first part, she talks about how our relationship with money is largely based on how we were raised. There’s this great exercise in the book to help you understand more about your beliefs and just to share a couple of them. What’s your earliest memory regarding money? Which of your parents’ beliefs or attitudes about money do you still carry with you? So there’s more like this in the book that really just gets you to think. It’s interesting because I think about how I grew up and I grew up in a very middle class. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either. I mean, we had to make a lot of choices. I remember my mom saying they liked to go on vacation. So for her, it was more important that they went on a vacation every year than to have a really nice, fancy car. So they would have very reasonable cars, used, but then they would go on two week vacations every year. So it was always like this choice, you always made these choices.
Nikki Kinzer:
So it is, it’s interesting just to think about okay, well, how did my parents spend money? I’m watching a show on Hulu, Little Fires everywhere.
Pete Wright:
Oh yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is so interesting when you think about this, because it is really one economic status that never has to worry about money, that has all of these options and resources, and then another economic status that are all, they’re struggling and they don’t have the same resources. Just to see how that plays out in the show is really interesting.
Pete Wright:
Totally.
Nikki Kinzer:
So, just something to think about is how you view it and what do you think?
Pete Wright:
Well, I’m with you. The script that was written for me when I was five to 15 was, it was one of privilege, right? I mean again, we weren’t super wealthy, but my dad, he was in television and ran a television station newsroom. I never had to question the things that we needed, and I feel like we did not talk about it when I was a kid. In fact, we didn’t start talking about money as a family until a significant investment challenge that my dad undertook, and we had to start making… they had to learn a lot about money and about their relationship with money as a result of losing a lot, and quickly. I feel like that was a wake up call for me too, to realize that I have no language to talk about money, that was developed with me as a kid, apart from academic language, like going through math, economics, accounting classes.
Pete Wright:
So I never really internalized those things. They were always sort of external to me. That makes that even more of a challenge, when as an adult I feel like I’m conditioned to a childlike relationship with that conversation. So it’s hard to embrace, it’s hard to feel like I’m truly a part of it. So as a result, it’s also hard to consistently make smart decisions without guidance.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that that’s an important point that it’s okay to have guidance, right?
Pete Wright:
Yup.
Nikki Kinzer:
It’s okay to have somebody help you with this because it’s not something that is always going to be natural or that you’re comfortable with your own beliefs around it. That leads me into think into speaking a little bit about what your beliefs are around money, right? So there’s this relationship, but then there’s also these limiting beliefs that can come up. Before digging into a financial project, I think it is important that you identify what yours are. What do you say to yourself when you think about money, and if the first thing coming out of your mouth is, “Oh, I’m terrible with money. I can’t ever stick to a budget. I never pay bills on time. They’re always late.” All of these things that we can easily say, then we’ve got to really pick those things apart and which ones are sabotaging you from moving forward? What fears do you have? Because again, think I have to go back to a little bit of that denial factor of, or ignorance is bliss. If I don’t really know that I don’t have to face it, but I don’t know if that’s really going to carry through. I think that’s more scary.
Pete Wright:
I think we could safely say, it’s not going to carry you through.
Nikki Kinzer:
No. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I don’t think there’s any question.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I’m more scared about that then just facing it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, about the uncertainty, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, and figuring out what you need to do. So one of the things that I do with my clients no matter what they’re taking on, any kind of project or strategy or something that they want different in their life, I have them do a desire statement and have them write it out to what’s important and then put it out or put it up somewhere so they can see it. The desire statement is basically three different questions. It’s just saying, asking, what do I want, why do I want it, and how do I want to feel? We want to answer those questions in very, just two to three type of, of words. We don’t want to go into great detail because what we’re trying to do is actually make a statement out of these three answers. So if getting your finances is important, what do you want? Well, I want my finances to be an order. Why do you want that? To have freedom. How do I want to feel? Not stressed. I mean, it can just be really simple things, but just keep that in front of you so that you don’t forget why it’s important to you because again, it’s out of sight is out of mind and we need to pay attention to these things. So the desire statement can be really helpful.
Nikki Kinzer:
Then this last thing that I want to talk about, which I’m sure we’re going to be talking more about with our experts is just thinking about what your goals are. What is it that you want to do?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, and I think it’s important to talk about this on two levels too, because there is one, and I speak personally. One is, what are your goals in assessing your financials and then your relationship with money? But two, more practically, what are your goals with regard to this month? We’re going to go through this series of talking about money together and how might you make a set of immediate goals of how you want to talk about money as we go through June?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that, I think that’s a great idea. It puts it right in front of you right now. Absolutely, and it is such a big topic. So zeroing in on what that means. Is it to get out of debt? Is it to get out of a specific debt? I’ve had some people who are really paying attention to get rid of those student loans. So is that something that you want to really concentrate on? Is it retirement? For you and I Pete, it’s paying higher education for our kids. Is it an overall budget? So I think that we get in this mindset of, Oh, we’ve got to attack it all. But we also know that when we attack something full force like that, it almost always falls apart and we stopped doing it.
Nikki Kinzer:
So I think it’s important to… and talk to your financial advisor, talk to an accountant, listen to what our experts have to say, because this is just me going off of my own thought process. It will be really interesting, that will be one of my questions I think for them is like, do you paint the picture for everything? Or do you start small and just only look at that specific debt? I’m not really sure. So it’d be really interesting to see what they have to say. But doing that self analysis of zeroing in what it is that you want, what’s been getting in your way. Is it because you don’t have the right resources, you’re not paying attention to it, you don’t know what to do? What do you need to help you? Then let’s really figure out what that first step is, which I’m sure our experts will help us with. But we have to break this down in some way.
Pete Wright:
Totally.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because it’s just way, way too big to just go for it. We’re going to talk about financials.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right, well and-
Nikki Kinzer:
What does that even mean?
Pete Wright:
Truly, and I feel like this is going to be a conversation that requires a certain amount of courage. So muscle up, we can do it. Right? We can do it. This is a hard thing. It is hard for many people who don’t live with any of the stresses that might come with ADHD at your special, special, special blend of ADHD, not withstanding. Money is hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
We live particularly, and I’ll speak geographic geographically here. In the United States, we live in a particularly complex system of money. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Pete Wright:
I was reading some posts from some friends who live in Sweden and Denmark and their relationship with health care, or life insurance, those sorts of things. A lot of things that are just taken care of, and he likened it to, as a friend who actually married a woman and moved over to Denmark. His family’s been there for 25 years. He said it’s not like a social safety net like you would think about it. It’s like being part of a frequent flyer club and your level always starts at silver status. It’s just, you always get in to whatever you think about that. There is complexity that is saved by having a system like that, that we don’t have. So I think that causes a lot of additional challenge and additional motivation to hide from the monetary systems that we have to address. Personal, tax systems, retirement systems, these are things that we have to learn that are hard. We have to do hard things. Luckily we can do hard things, we know we can do hard things.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because we are in the growth mindset.
Pete Wright:
Because we’re in the growth mindset. Check that out.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know that was-
Pete Wright:
Check out the growth mindset on us.
Nikki Kinzer:
Word by word or word for word.
Pete Wright:
Right, so we’ll do it. We’ll do it. We’ll do it. I know we can do it. I can do it.
Nikki Kinzer:
We can, we can.
Pete Wright:
Oh my God, what am I doing?
Nikki Kinzer:
You’re going to do it. You are going to be okay. You’re going to be just fine.
Pete Wright:
All right, all right. So let’s do it. So next week immediately, what are we doing?
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a great question. I don’t know that yet. I do know we are working on scheduling. So our schedules for the people that do faithfully come to our live streams on Monday mornings. That is probably, it could change in the next three weeks because we are working on making the schedules work for our guests. Chelsea, the gal from… oh, what is it called?
Pete Wright:
Smart Money Mamas.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Smart Money Mamas is going to be doing a two-part series with us. I’m really, I’m so excited to have Stephanie on the show too. She’s going to be coming back in the fall to talk about gas lighting because she has a book about gas lighting too. So she’s just, I’m so excited to have her as well.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Both of these women are just going to be fantastic. So we are as usual going to wing it a little bit. I know our audience it’s appreciates that and I’m sure that we will be talking about budgeting and impulse buying and what to avoid and what to do and if you have questions, certainly send those to us, but send them to us quickly because we are going to be recording these shows.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I have a pretty good idea, and I think Pete and I, we can figure this out. We’re going to-
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah, we got it.
Nikki Kinzer:
We’re going to kick the brains.
Pete Wright:
We got this.
Nikki Kinzer:
We’ve got this.
Pete Wright:
We got it. We’re going to nail it, we can do hard things.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes we can.
Pete Wright:
Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention on behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll catch you next week at some point right here on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
