The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
‘Having ADHD has cost us thousands’
Sufferers are more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions than most – but can have difficulty managing finances, reports Charlotte Gill
When Kirsti Nicole Hadley lost an original Banksy artwork, it epitomised decades of her issues managing money. “Admittedly I did only pay £ 20 for it back in the early 2000s,” she says, “but that same print recently sold for around the £20,000 mark.”
She is one of many who struggle with finances owing to ADHD. A survey by Monzo and YouGov last year found that 60pc of people with the condition said it directly affected this area of their lives, costing them an average of £1,600 per year – in what is sometimes referred to as the “ADHD tax”.
Hadley, 50, was diagnosed in 2021, when she also discovered she had autistic traits and dyscalculia, a difficulty understanding numbers. Previously she was at a loss to understand a string of expensive events. There was the time she worked in a café and kept forgetting to charge customers.
“Needless to say the job didn’t last long,” she adds. In another role, as manager of a photo-processing shop, she wrote the safe combination password on the wall above it “because I couldn’t remember it and knew that if I wrote it in a notepad, I’d just lose it”. Eventually the store was broken into. “I may as well have gift-wrapped the safe,” Hadley says.
Bryony Lewis, 39, a mother of two from Portsmouth, was also diagnosed in midlife, at 37. “Before that, I didn’t have any idea why I struggled with managing my finances and impulse control when it came to shopping. If I’d had a rubbish week, I’d want to be shopping to get that new thing – happiness, I guess – and that was particularly bad in my late teens and early 20s when I was at university.”
Hadley and Lewis are not unusual in their delayed diagnoses. In childhood, the ratio of boys to girls diagnosed with ADHD is approximately 3:1, but it grows nearer to 1:1 in adulthood. This has been attributed to the fact that ADHD manifests differently in girls, who are more likely to display behaviours such as being distracted, disorganised and forgetful, compared with boys whose ADHD manifests more as hyperactivity, impulsion and aggression. Additionally, researchers suggest that social stigma – girls being judged more for sloppy behaviours – means they expend far more effort in hiding ADHD symptoms.
Lewis started to rack up debt. After she turned 18, spurred by banks “throwing” low-interest credit cards at her, she “was buying computer games and films”, which stacked up. “Clothing was another quite bad one for me with university. I was constantly trying to reinvent myself.” Lewis says she didn’t check her bank balance as she “didn’t want to see or think about it”. Before she knew it, she had a debt of just under £20,000.
At the age of 26, Lewis met her husband who was “very good with money” and her “opposite”. The crunch came when they wanted to move in together. She knew her finances might be a barrier and came clean. He helped her devise strategies to reduce the debt, which she eventually paid off.
It’s not unusual for people with the condition to turn to loved ones. According to a study published in 2020, “adults with ADHD are more financially dependent on family members, face more financial difficulties paying bills, open fewer savings accounts, use credit cards more compulsively and are more likely to use very high interest rate borrowing”. The research found that “high default rates, poor credit and increasing financial distress are associated with higher suicide rates with ADHD”.
Dr Helen Read, a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in ADHD, says money management is a “huge issue”. She adds: “Firstly, executive functioning difficulties mean that many people with ADHD really struggle to remember logins, passwords, Pin numbers and otherwise for their banking systems.
“Losing email account passwords, especially if using a system with security requirements to change passwords regularly, is often another layer of impossibility when trying to manage finances. In addition to the issues with executive functioning, people with ADHD, especially if not on treatment,
‘I didn’t check bank balance as I didn’t want to think about it’
often use things like online or in person shopping for a quick dopamine hit.” Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in feelings of reward and some researchers have hypothesised that low levels of it in the brain can contribute to ADHD – leading to the need for quick “highs”.
Read says people with ADHD often buy “takeaways, equipment or items to fuel the latest short-term hobby and January gym memberships, which never get cancelled”. This can reflect “the desperate passion for cure or fixes, which the untreated ADHD- er will often resort to, reflexively”.
Maddy Alexander- Grout, a money coach who has ADHD, says that people with the condition are especially susceptible to being scammed. “We jump at good deals. For example, I saw a deal that was too good to be true last year for an air fryer, and rather than normal people thinking this is too good to be true, I just went ahead and bought it. Then I spent hours trying to get the money back from the bank.”
Alexander- Grout set up an app called Mad About Money to help support people with neurodivergent conditions. “I have struggled with banks in the past, charging me late fees for non-payment of bills, saying it was my fault I got scammed and have signed up for loans and overdrafts without fully understanding contracts.
“Banks need to get better at understanding there is an ADHD tax, and giving more opportunities for people who are neurodivergent to pay if they miss something before it goes on their credit file. It’s not an excuse, but if banks spot patterns where their customers are struggling they should be doing more to support those customers as they are vulnerable.”
Despite their financial challenges, Lewis and Hadley are both self- employed, a website developer and founder of an inclusion consultancy (Generation Alphabet), respectively. Freelancing comes with having to keep on track of your own salary, manage invoices and other administrative tasks, so it’s hardly the type of career you might imagine for people who have regular money struggles.
However, it is not uncommon in those with ADHD: a study in Small Business Economics showed people with ADHD were 60pc to 80pc more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions. Those with the condition are twice as likely to start a business. Hadley says people with ADHD “often find it too boring to work for traditional firms and have difficulty conforming to corporate expectations”. She is now thriving as an entrepreneur.