How avoiding ADHD tax can save you $7k per year!

Hey new listener, thanks so much for checking us out and there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Hey new listener, thanks so much for checking us out and there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please, please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel, you've heard of income taxes, property taxes, and sales tax, but did you know that you're also paying an extra ADHD tax? Squirrel, I'm going to tell you how you can stop paying it in this episode. Squirrel Hi, I'm Katie McManus, and this is Business Strategy for We Need ADHD for Nurse Squirrel. So I apologize in advance if this topic is a little triggering for you, but I want to talk about the ADHD tax today. The ADHD tax is all the ways in which we, as people with adhd, spend unnecessary amounts of money, energy, and time because we just don't do things the way that neurotypical people do. I'm going to point to something that is probably happening in your own kitchen. Done. Done in your refrigerator. I want you to think about how many vegetables you have that are currently going bad because you've forgotten that you bought them and they are wasting away and rotting away and having a little nuclear reaction in the bottom drawers of the refrigerator. And I apologize for calling. I know no one wants to think about that. I know this is going to be like a weekend thing that you're going to deal with like seven weeks from now. But this is a prime example of the ADHD tax. We cannot buy vegetables, perishables, or anything that goes into our refrigerator and put it away in a drawer because we will never see it again. It takes living with a neurotypical in our homes who keeps track of that stuff and makes sure that we use it before it goes bad. Now, if you are a true ADHD person, I guarantee that you enjoy all the memes that say, oh yeah, I love buying lettuce. I love knowing that in a couple weeks I'll be throwing it out and it'll smell like garbage. The ADHD tax attacks us in a lot of different ways. So vegetables in your refrigerator going bad are 1. Buying duplicates of things I don't know about you all, but I tend to get super obsessive about a certain type of food. And then I'll go to the grocery store, and I will forget that I already have, like, three jars of that nut spread at home. Or I have four boxes of my favorite kind of cereal already. I just assume, oh, well, I'm out, because it was in the cabinet, and I didn't see it during the pandemic. It was really funny. I was home with my family on Cape Cod, and my dad, whenever I'd go grocery shopping, he'd, like, march me around to the refrigerators because we had one on the back porch and one in the kitchen. And then we had a freezer down in the basement. And he'd have me, like, look to make sure that I already knew what we had, because otherwise we just end up with, like, three or four of the same thing. And we wouldn't end up using them because they go bad before we'd actually get to them. There's all these, like, funny things that we can hear about, like, oh, ha ha ha, I do that too. That's totally me. And it's fun until it's not fun, right? It's funny until it's not funny, because it actually does end up costing us a lot of money over the course of our lives. And one of the things that I would do with my clients, if they have adhd and if they're stressing out about money, if we're working on their money relationship, is I have them go through all of the subscriptions that they have signed up for, and this can be very triggering. I'm not saying that lightly. This can actually trigger a trauma response for some people, because when you go into your credit card statement and you see that you've been spending a good $600, and that's happened before with some of my clients, a good $600 a month. So on random subscriptions that you don't even remember signing up for, that can send you into a major spiral of, oh, my God, I'm literally sabotaging my own ability to live. I'm sabotaging my own ability to save for retirement. I'm sabotaging my ability to live longer. Your brain naturally goes to, what could I have spent that money on that $600 that I was wasting on an audible account that I don't use on a store stars and a showtime account that, like, I signed up for the free trial so I could binge watch that one show, but then I completely forgot that I'd signed Up for it. Dating apps that you have to pay for, those are usually on subscription. You know what happens when you meet someone and get married and completely forget about that. You better hope that your spouse isn't looking at your credit card statement, seeing that. There's this guy that I follow on TikTok and on Instagram, I think his username is the Speaker Speech professor. And he talks about signing up for the Dollar Shave Club, which I'm a proud member of. So he signed up for the Dollar Shave Club about 10 years ago. But if you look at this guy, you'll notice something about him right off the bat is that he has a beard. And so he did a whole little video on the ADHD tax, and he called out that he actually started growing his beard eight years ago. Squirrel, Squirrel.

I want to show you the clearest example of the ADHD tax that I think I've ever seen. This is the cabinet in my bathroom. There are 60 razors there. I have about 40 more under my sink. I started subscribing to the Dollar Shave Club about 10 years ago. I started growing my beard out eight years ago. I'm still a subscriber.

Squirrel, Squirrel. There are a couple things going on here. So there's this object permanence thing that happens for us. It's kind of out of sight, out of mind, and so you don't see it all the time. You don't think about it. Even if the razors show up to your house once a month, it's not, like, obvious enough to you to go and cancel it. Now the other side of this is our executive dysfunction jumps in. You know, you may at moments think, oh, yeah, I should probably cancel this. I no longer need this. This is no longer relevant to my life. My wife or my husband will get mad if they see that I'm still accidentally paying for this dating subscription. And thinking that you need to do something is not enough to actually do it. We have to hit the trifecta here. We have to hit the exact moment where we have enough dopamine in our systems that we have some get up and go, and we can actually get up and do the thing that we're thinking about doing at the same moment where we see the thing that we need to cancel. It's brought to our attention, it's out in the open, and that we realize, oh, I need to do something about this. On a normal Tuesday morning, when you open your refrigerator and open that bottom drawer and you notice that the zucchini that you bought two weeks ago have had a little meltdown. They're a little slimy, and there's sludge forming in the bottom of the drawer. Like, that's disgusting. And any normal person would want to handle that and get that out of their fridge right away. For someone with adhd, if we don't have enough dopamine in our system, it's a tomorrow problem. And tomorrow, when we notice it, if there's again not enough dopamine in our systems, it's again a tomorrow problem. And so on and so on until about a week later when we finally get to the point where it's become almost an emergency. And often this is when we do something about it, is when it becomes an emergency. Part of the ADHD tax is the late fees that we end up paying for stuff. I moved to the east coast during the pandemic accidentally, and I've kind of settled in. And there are a lot more tolls on the freeways here than there are in California. In California, you really just have to pay for tolls on bridges. You know, they're called freeways for a reason because they're free to travel on. On the east coast, they're not. They cost a lot of money. And at one point, I kept getting all these bills in the mail for my car, going through areas that were told. And my little box, my fast track that, you know is supposed to be paying everything, wasn't reading for some reason, I didn't realize it. So I kept getting all these bills in the mail, and I'd see them be like, oh, that's important. I need to deal with this. And then I'd put them aside. And that's like, the biggest mistake someone with ADHD can make is put them aside to, like, keep the clutter controlled. Because I'm never going to think about it again. Until one day I finally got a notification from, like, the New Jersey Turnpike association saying that I owed them a ridiculous amount of money for tolls. It was something like $275. And most of that was late fees for me not paying them. Just so, you know, it finally became enough of a problem. So I finally called the number on the bill, and I got in touch with this very nice young man who very tentatively informed me that the bill was now up to about $320. And I said, okay, that's fine. You know, let me know when you're ready for my credit card. And his response was, what? And I was like, no, no, no. Like, just let me know. I'm happy to pay it. I know I owe this money. Just tell me when you're ready for my credit card number. This poor guy was like, no, I'm sorry.

I just. I was expecting you to yell at me for it.

Now, that tells me he hasn't had a lot of ADHD people calling. Because we're so used to having to pay the late fee that we just don't even want to create any fuss about it. We've internalized that embarrassment and that shame so much that we want to be the most pleasant and easy to deal with when we have to go and pay for it. Because it's already evidence that there's something massively wrong with us. It's already evidence that we can't handle our life if we then go and create problems around it. Who. That just. That just makes us a whole different level of person. And we don't like that. So how do we go about stopping paying the ADHD tax? Because unlike actual taxes, it doesn't fund schools. It doesn't ensure the fire department has equipment to save your house if it burns down. It literally just throws money out the window. And who wants to do that? So here are a couple ways that you can stop paying this tax. Join the weeniecast hyperfocus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls, turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals, and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses, and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this. At the introductory price of just $77 per month, it's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperFocus. So the ADHD tax happens in a lot of financial ways for people with adhd. And I want to challenge you to do something. If you have adhd, and I'd love for you to reach out to me and let me know if you did this or even if you, like, went to do this and failed at it, that's okay, too. That'll tell you a lot about what your relationship with money is. But I challenge you to go and look at all of your subscriptions. And if there are any subscriptions in there that you no longer actively use, I challenge you to cancel them. And know that you can cancel them now and reenact them later. And one of the ones that I did when I Did this activity for myself. This is part of my trauma of money work that I do with my clients. So when I was going through this for myself, I went in and I realized that I was still paying for my peloton subscription, which is like $45 a month. It's not cheap.

Peloton, come on, let's get this workout started.

Even though I have an injured tailbone right now, I have a bruised tailbone right now, so I literally can't even be on my peloton. And I probably have a few more months that I can't be on my peloton. So I gave myself full permission to cancel that, knowing that I could restart it at a later date. When I first went to do this homework, I actually delayed it about four weeks because it was so painful for me to go and acknowledge all the ways in which I'd been wasting money. And we don't acknowledge, as people with adhd, we don't acknowledge that there's a lot of trauma that happens when we live life in this way. Especially if you're raised in a society that tells you that wasting money is bad, it's one of the worst things you could do. If it's one of the worst things that you could do, and yet you do it every single month over and over and over again, what kind of person does that make you? That's a really hard truth to reckon with. And so I want you to notice if you. If you got assigned that just now and had this moment of, oh, my God, like, I don't even know if I can go look at that. That feels so shameful. Know that that's literally a trauma response. There are a few different ways we respond to trauma. There's fight, which we know about. There's flight, which is running away. There's freeze, which a lot of us play into. And then there's also Fawn. If you're having a freeze response right now and you're pushed into inaction because it's too scary to look at, I want you to be super gentle with yourself. I want you to know that where you are in this scenario is so normal for how your brain works. And that while your brain is probably going to continue working like this for the rest of your life, there are some ways that you can mitigate the impact. For instance, once you do this first inventory of all your subscriptions, know that that's not going to be the only time you need to do that. There are going to be many more times that you sign up for a subscription and then completely forget about it. Speaking of ADHD costing me money, it's also kind of saving me money on my electrical bill because I have so many light bulbs that are out in my house, I keep forgetting to get light bulb replacements for. And so like I, I just like, my bathroom's dark. Like there's one bathroom that I can only use during the day cause it's so dark. Or I have to like turn the flashlight on my phone on and then like the landing outside my door to like the front door of the building. Like I'm the only person that lives in this building. So like I come home and it's like a creepy dark landing and I'm like, oh, gotta change that. But then I come inside and it's like out of sight, out of mind. And then I leave my apartment and I'm like, oh God, it's creepy and dark again. But it's like literally as soon as I get to my apartment, I close, close the door. It just doesn't exist to me anymore. But it's all my electrical bill. So I mean like, I'm not paying for the light to be on anymore. Let me tell you this, I know this from experience for myself and experience for my clients. The first time you go and check your subscriptions is going to be really scary. The second time that you go and check to see what subscriptions you're paying for that you don't need to be paying for is also going to be pretty scary. The more often that you do it, the less scary it becomes until it becomes more of a routine. And so this is something that I urge you to put, just put into your calendar for maybe the second Sunday every other month to just go in, log into your credit card statements, see what you're paying for, and if there's anything in there that you're not actively using, to just go and cancel it, knowing that you can always re sign up for it later. Now there are two other ways that the ADHD tax gets us. And the next one is one that I know very well. It's our hobby tax. We get so hyper focused on our hobbies and we get so excited and then we want to go and buy all the things. And I mean, that may be a good investment if we stay hyper focused on that hobby for long enough. But oftentimes that hyper focus doesn't last very long. And so we end up spending a lot of money on that hobby and we end up not using all of the materials and all that stuff. And here's where it can create some emotional attacks for us as well, is that we don't ever want to get rid of that stuff. We keep our hobby supplies around because we're afraid. What if I get hyper focused on it again? What if I decide I'm interested in it again and I want to do it again? Like I shouldn't get rid of everything because then I'll have to spend all the money again to get it all set back up. Now, let me tell you, as someone with ADHD who is a serial hobbyist and who works with a lot of folks with adhd, this rarely happens. It rarely happens that we go back to our formal hobbies and if we do go back to our former hobbies, it's rarely with the same intent. So say you were really interested in making jewelry when you were in college and you bought all of the beads and you bought all of the wire and you were really into making like weird necklaces that had all these dangly things from them and then you lost interest and yet you still don't want to get rid of all the beads that you bought and you don't want to get rid of all the wires and you don't want to get rid of all the pliers that you have. Because making wire based jewelry, and I have some experience here, if you can't tell, you know, requires a bit of equipment to make it work. Now, you may get a revitalized interest in making jewelry, but I will bet you good money that you won't want to do the same style of jewelry. You're actually going to end up needing, different equipment you're going to end up needing. Maybe you won't even want to work with beads. Maybe you'll want to work with precious metals and you'll want to actually do some soldering, become like a lord of the rings, making jewelry and rings of power and I don't know, whatever you make. I have a girlfriend in Mill Valley, California who I actually met because I was her knitting teacher and she's currently making jewelry and she just recently found out that she has adhd. And this is exactly how that works. We go through different phases and we have different expectations of quality. And as she's making more and more jewelry, her style is changing, the materials that she wants to work with is changing. And so if you are one of those ADHD hobbyists who has a ton of stuff in your closet taking up space, space that stresses you out. It kind of speaks to you from time to time. You know, you go into that Closet, for one thing. And you immediately feel this sinking sense of guilt of, oh, my God, I have so much of this stuff. Like, I should really get back into that. It's an emotional cost, even though it's not an extraordinary one. It does eat away at you. It does tire you out just a little bit more. It does rob you of dopamine because it's yet another thing that you feel behind on. Even if you were to have a Saturday, a rainy Saturday where you were, like, super inspired and you wanted to dive back in, the fact that you're diving back in after years of not doing it, it's going to feel a little less dopamine heavy because you've put it off for so long. So you don't have to do this. But I urge you to look at those different collections of hobbies and see, you know, what can you let go of at this point? What can you donate to a local thrift shop that maybe has a craft corner? So now that you have canceled some subscriptions, you've cleaned out your closets, you've emptied the disgusting drawers in your refrigerator, you might be crying, you might be a little tender with everything that you've wasted. I invite you to get a little more support than just listening to this podcast. So I've put together this incredible Weenie ADHD Perner community on Mighty Networks. It's a space where you will be surrounded by other ADHDpreneurs who are going through the exact same experience as you. There's support in the community. There's also a monthly call with me where we can talk through anything that has to do with how ADHD is getting in the way of your business and your life. Like the ADHD tax. So did I tell you about how my dad found out he was bald With. Okay, good. Okay, then you've already heard it. All right. This is. The ADHD text also is like. There's. There's a certain period of time where an ADHD person just has to, like, get all the stories they have in them out. You know, it's just like, you have to arrive and you have to be entertaining for a bit, and you have to, like, get the conversation out, and then you can start. Work, work, work, work, work, work. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you struggling to stay focused and organized while juggling a million tasks? Are you looking for ways to improve your productivity but finding it hard to stay motivated? Then you need to get access to my weeniecast for Winners show. That's exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I know you might be thinking. I've tried everything to stay on task and nothing works. But I'm enjoying the advice I'm getting here on the weeniecast and let me tell you, I'm delighted to be able to help you and thousands of listeners just like you, my friend. But the Weeniecast for Winners podcast is next level and I'd hate for you to miss out on it. For just $1.99 a month, Weeniecast for Winners delivers in depth and actionable advice that's specifically designed for entrepreneurs, including those with adhd, whether diagnosed or suspected. I'll talk you through how to increase your sales conversions, keep your mindfulness on point, and even offer practical tips that can help you be more productive and successful in your business, all while catering to your unique needs of being an entrepreneur who might be struggling with adhd. With weeniecast for Winners, you'll get practical tips and strategies that you can use to drive your business forward without the frustrations and setbacks that often come with adhd. So if you're ready to start seeing real Results, subscribe to Winniecast for winners today at weenicast.com winners for just 1.99amonth, you'll gain access to the valuable insights and strategies that can take your business to the next level. Weeniecast for Winners is a show that's worth every penny for entrepreneurs who want to succeed. Subscribe now and start enjoying the benefits for yourself. Join the weeniecast hyper focused community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls, turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month, it's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast. Com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast. Com hyperFocus.