I remember seeing this maybe a year or so ago, and related so hard in many areas of my life!! For YNAB, the thing that has helped me a lot is refreshing my category groupings and also renaming them to Taylor Swift lyrics - I even renamed my budget to So It Goes 🤣 I've also used emojis on my categories and fun names for a long time. I also run my life by checklists and reminders, so having a reminder I get to check off everyday to 💰 Check YNAB is really motivating.
Before I sound too together, I did this reset when I had a bunch of tedious work I was avoiding 🤣 but it created the momentum to tackle the tedious work so #winning? This was really helpful when I was doing a low-buy January, so I could see how making the choice to spend very little (where possible) had an immediate impact.
TLDR - if I make it fun and creative, I'm more interested in opening it up every day to see what's going on!
Examples:
🫶 This is Me Trying - category group at the top with my current fun goals, like 📅 Next Month (where our paychecks go), Adventures with Josh & Dakotah, Visit Rachel, and Christmas. These are the goal categories I think I'll put leftover funds into but having smaller goals and having them front and center has made it easier to put extra money received towards those goals.
🌟 I Can Handle My S - all the general monthly categories like food, gas, dog stuff and fun money. There's also a category for food for the months with 5 weeks.
🐝 I Protect the Family - all the monthly fixed bills.
✨ Dancing Through the Lightning Strikes - this is the group that fluctuates from month to month. I don't try to budget each category. Instead I have a 🤷♀️ I'm Not Sure Yet that I put a fixed amount of money into to cover those categories, which are things like clothes, haircuts, and 🐦🐿️ Sanctuary - yes we are into birds and also feed the squirrels.
🗓️ Long Story Short has our categories that I'm putting small amounts into each month. Our sinking funds/true expenses.
🎒 I Know Places We Can Go - our travel categories. I have categories in there to break down trip expenses mainly for planning ahead. I have trip categories of various things we want to do. If they become more serious, I will move one up to This is Me Trying.
🧾 The Manuscript - these are long-term categories without much in them, like Appliances, Furniture, Home Improvements.
The gamification of budgeting is what does it for me. YNAB is like play and when it wanders too far from that I change things up so that it is fun again.
I love that you have a principle that you come back to so you can stay on course even as things change over time. It's really easy to "set it and forget it" with this kind of thing.
Love this write up. The wall metaphor is pretty good (I'm not sure it fits exactly what I feel/think/do) but I see where it can create awareness and those create positive actions toward the end goal. I would love to see any tips or hints from others with ADHD put together into actionable items around money! I love reading through many different people's thoughts because there will usually be at least one thing that I can take with me and improve what I'm doing to keep the wheels on YNAB (and finances in general).
I adore YNAB but I will have great stretches of time and then horrible stretches of time reconciling, or lets be honest, even logging in! Every little bit helps. Thank you for writing about it thought - it's something you don't see out there a lot.
For me, using hyperfocus as a tool - so ADHD is a benefit for YNAB. I can now spend hours on YNAB instead of facebook... channel your superpowers, you got this.
Debbie, YNAB is probably the most interesting app on my phone these days! I've gotten rid of the black hole apps that drain me.
I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about but your comment reminded me of this recent Substack I read about someone who decided to fight back against filling every spare moment with infinite scrolling to consciously filling her spare moments with reading https://petya.substack.com/p/lessons-in-reading-from-scrolling
I remember seeing this maybe a year or so ago, and related so hard in many areas of my life!! For YNAB, the thing that has helped me a lot is refreshing my category groupings and also renaming them to Taylor Swift lyrics - I even renamed my budget to So It Goes 🤣 I've also used emojis on my categories and fun names for a long time. I also run my life by checklists and reminders, so having a reminder I get to check off everyday to 💰 Check YNAB is really motivating.
Before I sound too together, I did this reset when I had a bunch of tedious work I was avoiding 🤣 but it created the momentum to tackle the tedious work so #winning? This was really helpful when I was doing a low-buy January, so I could see how making the choice to spend very little (where possible) had an immediate impact.
TLDR - if I make it fun and creative, I'm more interested in opening it up every day to see what's going on!
Examples:
🫶 This is Me Trying - category group at the top with my current fun goals, like 📅 Next Month (where our paychecks go), Adventures with Josh & Dakotah, Visit Rachel, and Christmas. These are the goal categories I think I'll put leftover funds into but having smaller goals and having them front and center has made it easier to put extra money received towards those goals.
🌟 I Can Handle My S - all the general monthly categories like food, gas, dog stuff and fun money. There's also a category for food for the months with 5 weeks.
🐝 I Protect the Family - all the monthly fixed bills.
✨ Dancing Through the Lightning Strikes - this is the group that fluctuates from month to month. I don't try to budget each category. Instead I have a 🤷♀️ I'm Not Sure Yet that I put a fixed amount of money into to cover those categories, which are things like clothes, haircuts, and 🐦🐿️ Sanctuary - yes we are into birds and also feed the squirrels.
🗓️ Long Story Short has our categories that I'm putting small amounts into each month. Our sinking funds/true expenses.
🎒 I Know Places We Can Go - our travel categories. I have categories in there to break down trip expenses mainly for planning ahead. I have trip categories of various things we want to do. If they become more serious, I will move one up to This is Me Trying.
🧾 The Manuscript - these are long-term categories without much in them, like Appliances, Furniture, Home Improvements.
AMAZING. (Long Story Short is genius!)
this is so funny I love it!!
This is SOOO creative and fun!!! Thanks so much for sharing this. I’m very inspired by you!!
Aww...thanks! Emojis and creative category titles REALLY help!!
The gamification of budgeting is what does it for me. YNAB is like play and when it wanders too far from that I change things up so that it is fun again.
I love that you have a principle that you come back to so you can stay on course even as things change over time. It's really easy to "set it and forget it" with this kind of thing.
Love this write up. The wall metaphor is pretty good (I'm not sure it fits exactly what I feel/think/do) but I see where it can create awareness and those create positive actions toward the end goal. I would love to see any tips or hints from others with ADHD put together into actionable items around money! I love reading through many different people's thoughts because there will usually be at least one thing that I can take with me and improve what I'm doing to keep the wheels on YNAB (and finances in general).
I adore YNAB but I will have great stretches of time and then horrible stretches of time reconciling, or lets be honest, even logging in! Every little bit helps. Thank you for writing about it thought - it's something you don't see out there a lot.
For me, using hyperfocus as a tool - so ADHD is a benefit for YNAB. I can now spend hours on YNAB instead of facebook... channel your superpowers, you got this.
Debbie, YNAB is probably the most interesting app on my phone these days! I've gotten rid of the black hole apps that drain me.
I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about but your comment reminded me of this recent Substack I read about someone who decided to fight back against filling every spare moment with infinite scrolling to consciously filling her spare moments with reading https://petya.substack.com/p/lessons-in-reading-from-scrolling