ADHD

I just make my direct deposit put certain amounts of money into accounts that cover essential things like bills, mortgage, savings, retirement, etc. Then what’s left gets put in my checking account. Thats basically money for spending on whatever I want or need that week.

I’ve played enough video games to know that I need to take what I can when I can, and when I need to use it I most likely won’t until it’s necessary, and when all is said and done I should have enough to not need it all and there is something to give to the next person. My budget is basically an inventory of time I have already spent vs time that I want to save, so only things that are worth that conversion of time is what I will end up using my bag of coins on.

I frequently check my bank account and use vibes to largely take care of my finances. It isn't completely optimized or strict, but it works since my bills are predictable.

Putting longer term savings into CDs is something I've found to be helpful. I can get to the money if an emergency came up, but otherwise I treat that as my untouchable savings, so i get some artificial scarcity in the mix.

I have a budget. I regularly ignore it.

I've fallen back on putting the bills due for the next week on my calendar every payday. Just to remind myself to do that before I spend the remainder irresponsibly.

A budget is an external framework that helps me manage my executive function. Could totally be getting the causality backwards here but all the most stable times of my life have been when I kept a budget. Without a budget I collapse and start spending money on extraneous consumer goods.

Budgets are useful tools, but they really should be temporary. If you have a major change in income or expenses, it can warrant monitoring for a while. But once you've reached a point of financial stability, you will know what you can afford already. Setting up auto pay on regular bills, putting balance alerts on your accounts, and just acting your wage makes it pretty easy.

But honestly, what you can afford is just a hard cap on what you should be spending. You should be living below your means already so you can build up investments to retire on. Then unexpected expenses are easily handled by scratching something off your emergency fund. And windfalls mean you can reach your financial independence goals that much faster. Until then, you don't have to live as if you're destitute, but just be frugal.

Seriously, the amount of people living paycheck to paycheck is horrifying. If you are one of them, you should be alarmed. Things aren't going to get cheaper, and wages are going to struggle to keep up. And at a certain point, you won't be able to work. So you have to remember that your future self is a dependent for your current self.

If you haven't planned much, here's a helpful priority pipeline for how to work towards financial security. I stole it from one of the finance subreddits. It assumes you're in the US for the tax-privileged efficiency stuff, but the gist is just keep putting your money in the most important/efficient buckets until they're full, then move on to the next.

Me when my wallet doesn't pass the vibe check