Mastering Your Christmas Budget with ADHD

Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Are you sick and tired of waking up in January with crushing financial guilt and shame over the spending that you did in December? I know I am and I've made immense strides, honestly, over the past few years and dealing with my personal finance that works with my ADHD and not against it. But for whatever reason, despite my best internal verbal Affirmations and whatever I'm doing to manage Christmas season, I can't do it. I have just sucked at it. I get lost in the thrill at some point along the way and there's a day that blows it all up. I find myself in January baffled by how much I spent. The cycle continues year after year. For us with ADHD, this is a staple of life and the relentless loop for me ends this year. A hundred percent it will. And this year I'm following an approach I developed that aligns with my goals, aligns with what I really want to be feeling with about my money, and I'm gonna maintain that spontaneity that I still crave. And I'm gonna have some rabbit holes, I can still go down, but all within Reason because of this approach, and I'm gonna teach you about it today. So let's get going. Welcome back to ADHD. Money talk to show that helps Dynamic or distracted ADHD brains take back control over their money in order to stress less, living more enriching life and open up new and amazing possibilities. And I am your humble and very ADHD host of the show ADHD Super bad with money for most of my life, even though I know all that I would ever need to know about how to manage my own money. It's so much more than that. It's emotional. It's all about how it interacts with our childhood, with our memories of money, with our ADHD. Our poor executive functioning leaves money to be this pit of confusion and Shame and guilt. And I exist on this planet right now to help you Figure it out, so that you can have a future that you can feel proud of and get past this terrible money Stress that can eat us and our relationships alive. That's why we're here and Please like and subscribe to the channel. If you're on YouTube and if you're on the podcast, then I love you. Before we talk about the process, let's talk about the typical Christmas ADHD routine. So what happens is coming around the corner, thanksgiving's over, black Friday happens and we're thrown directly into the industrial marketing things, consumerist, complex, whatever we want to call it and we get sucked in and we are not in a world designed to help our brains and Spending might start to happen. We haven't even had a second to breathe. We just go. We've done no planning, we've said nothing up. We may have taught ourselves I'm going to do better this year, I'm going to be more mindful. That's not enough. So there's no planning and spending sprees happen. We just do. We go down the rabbit hole on Amazon. We go to the mall and we're we're thinking, okay, we're gonna buy some gifts for these people. But the next thing, you know, you're going to all the stores and you're just seeing stuff and you're Disrationalizing on the fly. You're buying stuff and it's just starting to melt down and You're starting to feel that growing bubbling, underlying feeling of Overwhelming regret already kind of coming in. You know it's already there and you're starting to feel the pain with every single buy now and Sound of the cash register opening and closing and you're just feeling it. It's starting to happen now as the actual day of Christmas or whatever you're celebrating, where you're giving gifts, approaches, like it's tomorrow. It kind of just goes away because you're compartmentalizing. You're like, okay, I get to actually give this stuff now and that is awesome, it feels great and you're excited and you are Notoriously a gift giver that rocks. You just are. So it starts to ease and Christmas is here. Now you get a momentary pure relief. You have great joy. You're giving gifts is fun, you are the best gift giver, like I just said, so you walk away from the day feeling accomplished, you are filled with the compliments and the good feels. It's awesome and that makes an ADHD person happy to get that positive Feedback reinforcing that we did great this year. But you know what? January comes, credit card bills show up and the regret and shame and confusion and the absolute astonishment with which you see how much money you spent sets in and it just it's too much to handle. So you go right back into avoidance and basically you're gonna spend a lot of us. I've been there 2024, the next year you're gonna be paying off last year's Christmas shopping for the entire year. In fact, maybe you're even paying off the year before. And let's be real, your kids and your family members don't really remember like I'm thinking about last year. I can't remember half the things I got and who got me what I just don't. So when I'm giving gifts, why do I wanna be paying off things that they don't even. I mean, let's also be real. If this has just been year after year after year after year of just giving the gifts and doing the thing, I mean, how thankful are we all really for all of this? How much of this I mean in your family? Could you just be like okay guys, let's be honest here, this ain't helping us. This is not the way. This repeating cycle is a staple of life for so many of us with ADHD, because we were sucked in by the instant gratification, the instant feels of greatness, of gift giving. It's so fun and so awesome, but there is a better way. There's a better way and you can still be spontaneous. You can still let loose a little bit, but you're not gonna have blow up if you just follow a simple game plan. It takes 20 minutes of planning and creating a game plan that can make all of the difference. You're still probably gonna be upset with how much you spent, but that's all on a scale. You can be blown up, upset or you can be like you know what. It doesn't feel great, but this is so much better than before and I can improve on this this year. You're gonna love yourself, you're gonna love your future self and it'll be so worth it, so worth it, so worth it. So let's move into the next section of this episode and we're gonna talk about Christmas and holiday budgeting. We're gonna talk about this step by step. The only prerequisite to being able to do this approach is that you've at least set up a simple budget or spending plan in the past. You know the basics of how to do it and you'd kind of know what your fixed expenses are, and you can at least accurately see how much you overspent every month, because you understand how to track and these kind of very basic things which, if you want more information on, I've got tons of podcast episodes in the past about budgeting. The first thing you need to do is simply list out all the people you want to buy gifts for. You just do that. You just list it out on a piece of paper, on a note app, whatever you got, and you put a number next to it that represents how much you're willing to spend on them. If you know what you want to get that person already, then you write that down and, of course, you base the amount of your estimate on how much that thing will actually probably cost, if you know For others. I encourage you to write a couple ideas of what you might get for them. You're now pre-setting some level of understanding. You're setting some level of commitment to yourself that this is what's going to happen. So you're already off to a better start than you probably are most years. If you have kids, it's also a good idea to put next to them another number, and this number will represent how many gifts you are okay with buying for them. So I've got two kids, so I'd put for one I'm going to get five, and for the other four, three, whatever. So what I'm doing, what we are doing this year, me and my wife, we are doing a thing where, to make this very structured and easy, to kind of just like bang through, we're getting each kid something to read, something they want, something to share, something they need and something to wear, and it even rhymes. So it's awesome. And so that's 10 gifts total for our two kids. In our case, we've added up the total amount that we're going to be spending on them between the two of them is $300, just so you understand where I'm coming from. I've got my mother-in-law. We've got my siblings-in-law. I've got my siblings, my parents. That's basically runs it and the amount that we are spending on them. Our total budget for this month is $750 of Christmas shopping. I am going to stick to it the best I can. Let me tell you some more about what we're going to do here. So the next thing you do is you add up the total amount of money you just listed out. So this number will probably be a slap in the face and a surprise, because you're now pre-experiencing the amount of money you might spend, as opposed to actually experiencing the amount of money you did spend. And getting these emotions out of the way at the beginning is again a huge leg up in all of this. And to elaborate on the alternative, the alternative is basically running around the mall doing very, very rudimentary and bad mental math and just giving into the full-blown ADHD-style temporary amnesia. And then you find out in January, and the cycle is on. Of course, that method is just not what we want. It's just not. We all know it's not what we want, and so now that you see this number, you can make adjustments. Now, feelings are great. Use feelings as a guide. If your initial gut reaction was frick, then you should probably reduce the amounts you put for each person you want to get a gift for. If your gut reaction was neutral, then you can go with it. Maybe just tone it down a little bit. And if your reaction is, oh wow, this is less than I expected, then definitely go with it, because you're going to thank yourself later. You can trust me on that. You'll thank yourself later. So now you go into your budgeting app or journal or a whiteboard that's a great idea or your big piece of cardboard, your poster board, whatever. However, you're going to do this. Totally recommend the big, externalized ways. It's great. And, as just a quick tip, using an app that you like that's simple enough to track and set up a simple budget plus an external large format is a great winning formula. So, like a whiteboard or a poster board or something where you're actually rewriting the budget you set every month, and having it somewhere external, it's great. And now you go to your budgeting app or your budgeting journal or your budgeting sheet, however you do it, and you throw that number in that you added up for all the gifts in there under the gift category, and that's not all. So now what you have to do is you have to go through every controllable category that you have. So, like food and other shopping, the personal sort of just general needs and personal wants that you would be buying regardless of the month mostly food, just so we're really clear on that. It's probably food is where you're going to be needing to make some sacrifices. But you go through all the other categories and you adjust them so that your budget total spending amount is now the same as it was before you put in the gifts. So, for instance, you might change groceries from 800 to 600 and you might change eating out from 700 to 400, whatever it is. And then, as you're doing this, you're basically saying to yourself we're out loud or to your partner we will, I will reduce spending in this category. We will eat out less. We will eat out only two times a week instead of the normal average of like three or four. We will. You need to be saying it intentionally and regardless if you're feeling that little internal thing that goes yeah, right, you still got to say it over and over again until you drown that little mother ever out because he sucks. Okay, once you've done this, you have yourself a budget and a spending plan that fits in the gifts and you have a small list and so, right down those little changes that you made, how you're going to fit it in, write them down in a quick little list, on the same sheet maybe, where you have the gift amounts and all that, the gifts list and stuff, and you now have a budget that works on paper. It works right On paper. It works, and we're so good at making budgets that work on paper. They're the best actually. They're pretty and they're great, but we gotta make it work in real life. So now you're ready to do something, but you have to do it, and that's what we're gonna talk about next. So we're gonna talk about the actual process of buying the gifts in a way that makes it still fun, still like a treasure hunt, but within our balance. Now it's time to shop. So and at this point you might feel a little bit stifled, you know, by the rules you set up, you put all these amounts. They don't seem like you know enough. You know, and all this and and the planning, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna do this plan. How boring. Okay, you're so used to just going out and being spontaneous and there is serious fun in that. Like, don't get me wrong. I I really do appreciate that notion, but you are doing the responsible thing this year. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun. It still can be fun, novel and stimulating and exciting. So my first tip is use a cashback service. In fact, this is basically the only tip for this year, just so I don't give you too many options. Just try this one. My first tip is to use a cashback service like Rakuten or swag bucks there's many of these services, depending on where you live in the world and yada, yada, yada. It allows you to buy things from retailers with a specified amount of cashback that you're going to be getting. This is fun because what happens is you go, you log in, you create the account and then you see all of the retailers and all of the amounts of cashback and now you're like, okay, double the excitement, I'm seeing all these retailers. Maybe there's some that you didn't expect to see or some that you had forgotten about. So you get this kind of benefit of being like oh, let me go check out what's here. So you get to kind of do this sort of like fun shopping experience, finding things that you could get from places you may not have even really considered. So you're not just going to Amazon, you're not just going to the mall and seeing all the same stuff. You're seeing new ideas and things and you get to go explore and follow the dopamine a little bit. You know you get to do this, but you know you get cashback. So you can see all the different retailers Like right now it looks like I've pulled up a racket in on my screen here. So right now we've got Macy's 10% cashback. We've got Walmart 5% cashback. Old Navy a measly 2%, but still cashback target 1%. I would skip that one target. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Samsung 10% cashback. Ulta 4%. Adidas 8%. Footlocker 8% cashback. We've got Levi's 5%. We've got Zappos 6%. We've got Lowe's 3%. Stubhub 4% Buy someone a concert or an event. Zorro I don't even know what that is, but it's 8% cashback. What else there's so much fun here? We've got Groupon 2%. Qvc 2%. Sephora 2. Lenovo, 2. Gap 6%. Bed, bath and Beyond. New online, differently owned one 4%. Ulta I said that one already. Afflita that's a nice store. 2%. Timu if you're okay with the communist government potentially taking some of your information, then you can get 18% back at Timu. I will admit, I bought stuff from Timu earlier this year. I just did and I just accepted that I'm going to be part of the data that could be used against us. I don't know, I'm fine. You can see that there's lots of fun to be had here. You get cashback. Let's take an example of a pretty hefty one, but not like Timu Adidas 8%, I'll say. My spend, all of my 750 out of D does getting a percent. All right, so you get 60 bucks back. So now you've really only spent 690 and if you really want to Extend the amount that you can really shop, then you can say, okay, that's 60 bucks, we can now. We know that in advance. That's how much we're gonna get back. We can spend that on more gifts if you want to do a little bit extra. So that initial planning and having some sort of game plan sets you up in such a good way and doing something like this Still gives you fun. It still gives you the ability to explore and it's great. I mean, honestly, I'm very excited, like to get on here and do some of the shopping myself, like it's I'm. It's new and it's novel for me and I'll probably use racketen throughout the year, but Things wear off. You know the new and novelty of it. Maybe next year going back to the mall will be what's new and novel and feels Exciting for me next year. I never know what's gonna feel exciting, but for me this is what it is. This year, if you are going to the mall, you can try capital one shopping, because capital one shopping works within store shopping. I actually don't know exactly how, but I was doing some light research for this and it can work for in store shopping so you could do something like that capital one shopping. Capital one shopping is one that will uh, I Recommend using racketen and capital one shopping because capital one shopping looks for all. It scrapes the web for all discount codes that might be existing right now and automatically tries them, and so you might get some promotional codes working as you're doing some online shopping or in store shopping, because apparently it works for in store shopping too. So if you like the structure that I'm offering, then, like when you go on to a racketen, you know sort by. You know look at the best cashback options first and try and get gifts there and then move down to the lower cashback If you're not able to find gifts that you know, feel like good gifts. If you just are an Amazon person, like I've said before, sort by the biggest percentage off of the deals and see if you can find anything, these little things make a big difference. They really do. So that is the next step of this process. It's simply being intentional with the shopping and then, as you're buying things for people, you're going to just take the amount that you bought and just write it next to the. In fact, I want to go backwards for one second and say on the budget sheet that you you create, if it's analog, like it's on paper, then when you do gifts, you do gifts and then you can have, like, just for this month, that can be the group. And then you can subgroup and say all the people and put the sub budget amount. Now, wait, as you're buying, before you it hits your credit card or whatever you can just quickly jot down Okay, I spent this much on there. And you just keep looking at that thing as it fills up and you just see, okay, I spent, okay, I'm on track, I'm on track, okay, I went a little over here and I can pull back now on the gift for this person, so-and-so. And you just do this. What I really want for you is to have the feeling of control and the feeling of the having the plan to be infectious for you, for it to fill you up with the good feelings that's rewarding, that makes you want to continue this kind of approach to budgeting for the rest of your life as well, because the feelings, the good feelings that can come from the feeling of control and then the feeling of Having a January that's not full financial stress and getting to start a new year on a better stage, is Rewarding. So the other thing that you want to do is, if you do stick to this and all of that, then make sure you put a reminder in your phone in January to like celebrate a little bit to reinforce that you won, because there's enough time between the good behavior now in January where you just forget you're like, oh, whatever, no, you want to like remind yourself how great you did and how amazing it was and how great you feel about what you did. By doing all these things, you are able to offset the ADHD pull towards Impulsive, random spending. Yes, I basically covered that and I guess I ended it kind of with like, even if you followed half of this advice, you're gonna be better off than you would be otherwise. So there you have it. So I guess, to recap, make a list of all the people you want to spend for, put the amount you want to spend for them. For kids, put an extra number, which is how many you want to get for each kid, and then add up all the amounts of money you wanted. If your gut reaction is great, this looks good, go for it. If your gut reaction is, wow, I'm gonna spend this much money on Christmas, then reduce all the spending amounts. If you've got reaction is, oh, wow, look at me, I'm only gonna spend this much, then go with that number. You're gonna Thank me later and then you go and put that total amount that you kind of agreed to yourself You're going to spend into your budget and you're going to adjust all the other controllable categories down to fit it in so that you're left with a net same as you normally budget for. Then, when you go to do your shopping, use the cashback service like racketing, because it is like a treasure hunt. You can get cash back at the same time as treasure hunting for things, for people that maybe you weren't considering before, and if you go into the store, try capital one shopping and Also try capital one shopping for the online as well, because it's going to try and get you discount codes and you're gonna do all these things and then you're going to reward yourself in January for the great job you did and you're gonna get off to a better start in 2024. Good luck, stay ADHD, stay fun, stay exciting, stay awesome. Don't beat yourself up. Give yourself grace. I love you all. See ya.