The following is a transcript of our monthly podcast, The Pension Confident Podcast. Listen to episode 40, or scroll on to read the conversation.
PHILIPPA: Hi, welcome back. Are you one of the 2.6 million people in the UK with ADHD? If you are, you might be finding it particularly challenging to stay on top of your finances. Why? Well, according to the organisation, Think ADHD, it can affect how your brain handles things like planning, focus, and organisation, all of which are pretty crucial when it comes to managing money. So paying off debt, saving into a pension, paying a bill on time, things like that can feel really overwhelming. So this time, we’re going to explore exactly why money and ADHD can clash, find out what can help, and take a look at how to build systems that’ll work for you.
I’m Philippa Lamb, and just before we begin, if you enjoy this episode, we’d love you to subscribe. Just hit the button. It’s completely free. It doesn’t cost you a thing. You’ll be the first to get every episode we release. On top of that, you’ll be helping new listeners to find us, too.
Here to help us dig into ADHD and coping strategies, I’m really pleased to welcome Krystle McGilvery. She’s a Financial Strategist, Coach and Behavioural Expert. Emily Tribe is back with us. She’s Head of Culture, Inclusion, and Wellbeing at PensionBee, and so is Registered Psychologist Dr. Tara Quinn - with us for the second time. Hello, everyone.
All: Hi. Hello.
PHILIPPA: Here’s the usual disclaimer before we start. Please remember, anything discussed on the podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial advice or legal advice. When investing, your capital is at risk. Tara, I thought we might make a start by actually defining ADHD. What is it?
What is ADHD?
TARA: So ADHD is what we call a neurodevelopmental presentation. It can impact the front part of the brain, which is where all of our executive functioning is. So that’s the things that control, impulse control, our ability to plan and follow through with tasks, but also our emotion regulation. So it’s quite an important part. For people with ADHD, there can be differences in how they present and conduct themselves. Sometimes it can cause problems in their everyday life. Sometimes it can be a wonderful thing as well. So hopefully, we’re able to explore both sides.
PHILIPPA: Absolutely. We’re hearing so much about it in the media now. Krystle, you have ADHD. Tell me when you first realised that you did.
KRYSTLE: I’d just started my Master’s at Warwick University and noticed some struggles with my studies. Going back to university as a mature student, it’s a big contrast to the life that you’ve created, the systems and routines you’d put in place, but then going to university and doing a Master’s and following this new way of working. Yeah, that was quite disruptive for me. I noticed some struggles and went to the wellbeing section and explored it.
PHILIPPA: Really? They were helpful? Did they point you in that direction in the first place then?
KRYSTLE: Eventually. I mean, initially, because I’m a Chartered Accountant, because I’ve got a Bachelor’s Degree, because I’ve been working [and] heading up finance departments for years, they initially said, “oh, it’s because you’re studying psychology now as opposed to maths”. I had to push to get a dyslexia diagnosis because I’d done some reading and learnt about it. That’s when the world of neurodivergence really opened up to me.
PHILIPPA: Emily, you must come across this in the course of your work, but it’s a personal thing for you, too.
EMILY: Yes, it is. I’d say in general, neurodivergence is something that runs in my family. I’m also on the path that’s very common for women thinking about getting a diagnosis now in my 30s.
PHILIPPA: So does that feel like a positive thing for you now that you’re getting your arms around the idea that maybe this is why I feel like I feel, why I operate, why I operate?
EMILY: Overall, a positive thing, but I think it’s also quite a destabilising thing because it leads you to questioning a lot about your identity and the way that you’ve been throughout childhood, throughout your teenage years, throughout your adulthood. When you start to recognise how neurodivergence played into that and wasn’t picked up on, wasn’t recognised, there can actually be a bit of grief that comes alongside that as well as the understanding. I’d say it’s been mixed for me.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, because Tara, we hear a lot about children being diagnosed, school children, taking medication for ADHD. But later life, that’s really coming to the fore now, isn’t it?
TARA: Absolutely, and for women, particularly. When we look at the formal diagnostic pathway, people will be categorised, and we have what we call hyperactive presentation and inattentive. Inattentive is the stuff that we don’t tend to notice. It’s the less observable things, and that’s the stuff that women tend to predominantly have. People then are thinking back and going, “actually, I was accused of being a daydreamer at school”.
EMILY: I was just going to say that ‘head in the clouds’, ‘daydreamer’.
TARA: Some of these things that actually get missed, and women are much better at masking as well. So that’s covering up things that they might notice in themselves, how they conduct themselves around other people. So when you add those things together, you get this perfect storm, which is why, because we have so many more wonderful people talking about this now, helping us to understand, reducing the stigma and the shame. We have people going, “hey, this is me, and I’d like to pursue this”, but in a really compassionate way. And it’s not about this diagnosis, this label. It’s about formulating you, and what you need and what you don’t need. And that’s just how it should be. It really should.
PHILIPPA: It’s such an interesting conversation. We’re going to limit ourselves to money, really, in this podcast because there’s so much we could talk about with ADHD. But I’m wondering, Krystle, in terms of managing money, in your personal experience, have you found that ADHD plays into it?
Managing money with ADHD
KRYSTLE: Personally, for me?
PHILIPPA: Yeah, you’re an Accountant, so we’re all thinking you’d be good with money.
KRYSTLE: You’d think. It’s not the case. Not at all. I mean, there was one year that I particularly remember where I lost my bank card, I think four times in the year. But what’s really funny about this story is I’d find it after ordering a new one. But yeah, for sure, when it comes to the admin side of managing your money, doing your budget, even for me as a Chartered Accountant and someone who works in the space of finance all the time, some of these tasks are really monotonous and repetitive. Even as a finance expert, I struggle with some of these things.
PHILIPPA: As an Accountant, obviously, AI and tech really plays into that work now. Does that help you? Do you use that to minimise that repetition that you find challenging?
KRYSTLE: Oh, 100%. One of the common tips I think a lot of people make is around automation and taking advantage of standing orders. Setting up effectively your own Direct Debit. You’re just organising it yourself. Yeah, and same with the admin tasks. I use a range of software in my business that helps get that admin stuff done so I don’t have to think about it. Because back to what you said earlier, it’s less so about being a finance expert. It’s more about having the systems in place to support you in the way that you work. That’s what I’ve done for myself, and that’s what I support the people I work with, do and set up for themselves as well.
The ADHD tax
PHILIPPA: We’re going to get into all that because I think it’s going to be really useful for listeners. But Emily, we can actually quantify the cost of having ADHD. We’ve heard about the pink tax, the single tax, and now the ADHD tax. Tell us about that.
EMILY: The ADHD tax is the concept that all of these issues add up and end up costing money. I’ve got a personal example, which is [that] I really struggle with the executive function required to do a weekly shop at a supermarket and plan what I’m going to eat in advance. I end up just relying on shopping at the corner shop when I run out of stuff. And corner shops, I realised this, it really sank in for me when I saw a supermarket chain delivery van delivering to my corner shop. And I thought, if they’re stocking up from the supermarket, there’s a big mark up there.
PHILIPPA: I’m paying the profit difference there.
EMILY: Yeah. Also, I’ve been trying really hard to get into budgeting recently and using some AI to help me get there and saw how much I was spending on eating out and takeaways, partly because of the executive dysfunction of not being able to have a stocked cupboard and cook from scratch.
PHILIPPA: Because this is the study, the one I’m looking at here is from Monzo, the bank, and they’re saying about £1,600 a year, it’s going to cost you [to have] that dysregulation, that just not being able to plan ahead easily. So, yeah, serious money.
Executive dysfunction
PHILIPPA: Tara, we’re going to get into specifics about how ADHD manifests with people in relation to money. But the overarching term for it would be executive dysfunction?
TARA: Yeah. So the front part of our brain does all these wonderful things, but sometimes it can go on holiday, sometimes it can have little rewiring problems. And it controls our ability to plan and to follow through with tasks. So what we see more often in people with ADHD are issues then in terms of what do I need to do with my money, where does it need to go, and actually then following through on that. But also if you add in the other functions of that part in the brain, sometimes you can be more impulsive about what you’re buying. Your emotions are a huge part of that as well. You can have more of that, in the moment “I want that”, which may then mean that something else isn’t going through, standing order, a debit is cancelled, or you might not also be keeping track. If we throw in the fact that we’re all humans and we have emotions, sometimes you’ll notice those behaviours, maybe at a later stage, sometimes that can infect your emotions. You feel a bit of shame or guilt or low mood because you haven’t got enough money to cope, or that you did this behaviour and it’s something you know you do. It’s looking at what we call those behavioural loops and trying to be really compassionate because that’s a lot to manage.
PHILIPPA: It’s like you were saying earlier, that whole “I did this stuff” and actually only now really understanding why you did that stuff.
EMILY: Self-compassion is the biggest one because I find I get in a cycle where I’ll be really impulsive, spend lots of money. Then the next month, I’ll put as much money as I physically can into a savings account. I’ll be like, “I’m not going to touch that”. Then I inevitably end up doing that because I’ve set too much of a restrictive goal. Then when you add in shame on top of that, you just keep yourself in the cycle.
TARA: I’m so glad you said that because conversations like this can help to reduce the shame that if someone listening goes, “this is something that we all do”, and people without ADHD do as well. We’re all subject to having issues with our frontal lobes and impulsivity. The more we talk about it or the more you share with friends, family, the more, actually, you can help each other. I think that’s a good thing.
Impulsivity
PHILIPPA: It’s not uncommon this impulsivity, is it? That study, that Monzo study, they say 48% of people with ADHD, they do this often, they struggle with impulse control, and that’s compared to 12% of those without it. It’s a big difference, isn’t it? It’s a big driver of that problem. Krystle, I’d like to talk about strategies, specifically around impulsivity. How can people try and iron that out of their day to day?
KRYSTLE: Yeah, it’s so funny when you mentioned the delay part not being a thing. For some people, it works. Some people waiting 24 hours or seven days actually works because they come back and they’re like, “I don’t really care to buy that thing”.
PHILIPPA: Oh, is this the ‘put it in your online shopping basket, but don’t buy’?
KRYSTLE: I was going to mention that, yeah.
PHILIPPA: I use that myself. A lot of us find that quite helpful, actually.
KRYSTLE: You get that dopamine hit of, actually, “oh, I’ve got this stuff in my basket that I could buy”. Then you’ve got to go and cook dinner, then you’re going to bed, and it’s the next day and it’s, “oh, what’s that? Clear it out”. That’s one tip. I think the other is this comes down to the initial organisation and maybe having pots of money for different things. Where you maybe have a bank account that’s for your bills that you have to pay. You don’t need to think about that. But having a space where you have ‘fun money’, where actually you can be a bit reckless with that. You’ve put away your savings, you’ve invested, but you’ve got this spare bit and you can see quite clearly, Well, that’s all I have. It doesn’t have an overdraft feature as well, for example.
PHILIPPA: Absolutely.
KRYSTLE: But then you can be free and allow yourself to have fun because there are going to be moments when you actually just want to buy the thing.
PHILIPPA: That’s a nice idea.
EMILY: I haven’t tried that before, having a fun money budget. I really like the idea. I’ve tried doing a daily budget before and then never end up sticking to it, whereas that - I’m going to go away and use AI to work out what my fun money budget could be.
KRYSTLE: The way I look at it is the wrong way to go about it is saying, “I’m going to stop this bad habit, full stop” because actually it’s serving a purpose. There’s a reason why that habit, whether it’s good or bad, exists. Instead, what we’re doing here is we’re putting something else in place that helps it not be so bad. You’re still satisfying that need.
PHILIPPA: I’m with you. It feels easier to do, doesn’t it? If you frame it that way, less of a hill to climb. The other thing I’m thinking is, the society we live in, we’re driven to spend, aren’t we? If you have a tendency to impulse spend, it’s the worst possible time to exist in the world, isn’t it? So strategies around trying to reduce that noise?
KRYSTLE: Oh, 100%, yeah. I do it myself. I have to go through my emails and just find who’s telling me to buy things and actually just delete, unsubscribe, and get rid, because then it’s not brought to your attention. That’s how it works. If we look at certain products and services and the colours they use and the positioning of how they set up their web pages, they’re using behavioural science, which is my area of expertise, to get you to do the thing. So actually, you can be a bit smarter and be like, “actually, I’ve unsubscribed to that. I’m not going to go there anymore”.
PHILIPPA: Because it really matters, doesn’t it, Tara? Because just having it arrive in your inbox and then deleting it isn’t the same thing, is it?
TARA: Absolutely. I’ve noticed recently, I could be on social media and an advert will come up for something, and I might look at it or even click on it, but then it’s everywhere else. Everything’s against you. That can also help when we come back to self-compassion, that actually this isn’t you and your brain and something wrong with you. You may have your formulation, but these companies are also doing stuff.
PHILIPPA: It’s a whole industry.
TARA: Absolutely. That can help - we can all get drawn into that. What we look at in psychology are what we call our internal regulators. What have I got in me to go, “no, yes, change my environment, what am I looking at?”. But also that there are external regulators. That’s turning off stuff, staying away from things. Doing different pots of money, using AI and different apps as well and getting that perfect balance that fits you.
Time blindness
PHILIPPA: Let’s get back to our list of characteristics and the way this manifests for people. I’m thinking the next one that’s really interesting is time blindness. Tell me about that.
TARA: Again, part of our frontal lobes, our ability to pay attention in the moment can mean it’s very easy to lose track of time and what we’re doing. One of the things you might notice more of in people with ADHD is getting from A to B, for example, and getting there on time, or things like hyper focus, for example, where you’re looking at something, concentrating on something that could be work, outside of work, and four hours have gone by. What it can mean is that you’re more susceptible, therefore, to spending money in different ways. You may realise you’ve been in a pub for four hours, five hours and drunk so much. It’s being orientated and just being compassionate because it’s quite a hard thing to catch actually as well.
PHILIPPA: Yeah. Also, things as simple as being regularly late for work. It’s not going to play well, isn’t it? In long-term career progression, earnings, all that sort of thing. Just little things, but more directly about money, paying bills on time, presumably. You’re nodding.
EMILY: Well, I just automate everything. If it can be automated, I automate it. I set a lot of alarms, a lot of reminders. But the worst one is things that don’t come up very often - tax return every year. I don’t think I’ve managed to complete a single tax return without having at least two meltdowns.
PHILIPPA: Really?
EMILY: Because I hate breaking rules as well. I’m very rule-focused. I accidentally missed a rule because I misread something about the tax return. There was some difference between doing the online/offline version. I can’t quite remember. But anyway, I missed a deadline and I was just devastated by the fact that I’d missed this deadline. It worked out completely fine. I didn’t even have to pay a fine.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, but the anxiety is real, isn’t it? Because, yeah, that study, again, three times more likely to miss bill payments, according to that, ADHDers. That’s a lot. There’s real financial consequences to that, aren’t there? But I’m guessing automation, Krystle, here.
KRYSTLE: Yeah, automation for sure. Like you said, the consequences might be a fine or a fee or other spiralling problems, which can be really problematic. I mean, time blindness is such a real thing, 100%. Actually, it works on both sides because it allows you to complete some amazing things and really drill down into things. But I’ve got this really nice, old-style alarm clock on my table. I set a timer for the work I want to do. Because it’s so loud and aggressive, it’ll disrupt me. But it’s when I need to do a specific task, like update my financial planner, for example. It’s going to take me like an hour, and I’ll get really into it and excited. Before you know, it could be three, four hours, but the alarm clock will stop me in my tracks.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, now it’s interesting using an alarm clock because everyone would automatically think, set a phone alarm, right? But this is a regular noise, isn’t it? They’re quite easy to ignore, aren’t they? The quotidian things.
TARA: It’s easy to stop like [hitting] the snooze button. That’s what you call an external regulator. But your brain will also then just associate that with that thing. Then your brain will be doing loads of stuff for you every time you use that alarm clock for other things as well.
PHILIPPA: But it’s important, and you mentioned this before about the hyper-focused thing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing?
TARA: No, there’s loads of wonderful research about people with ADHD and how hyperfocus can make them incredibly brilliant people to have in the workplace, innovators, entrepreneurs. It’s just recognising that sometimes, like with any behaviour, there can be pros and cons. If you’re hyper-focused and you’ve missed your train to work, or you’re supposed to go and pick your kids up, or you were supposed to do something else, it’s just, again, bringing, we’re going to use that word a lot, compassion around that as well. Try stuff out. That’s what we always say in psychology, test it out. Let’s see if this alarm clock works. What happens after an hour? Do I tend to just turn it off, put it in a drawer, or am I paying attention to it? That’s where the compassion can really help you build up your strategies as well.
PHILIPPA: Yeah. I mean, strategies - just from someone who doesn’t have this, I find my online calendar is an absolute godsend for me in terms of things like you’re saying tax returns, car tax, all those things that pop up only once a year and aren’t on the edge of your consciousness. I throw them in my calendar on repeat every year. It works so beautifully. In some ways, digital is great, isn’t it, for this stuff, as well as driving bad behaviours. I’m guessing things as simple as that. Krystle, do you find it works for the people you work with?
KRYSTLE: Oh, 100%, yeah. I think when we think about finance, again, people think it means numbers and actually being good at that stuff. But no, it’s about having a system that works for you. I think what we’re talking about here is time blocking. What I do in my diary is I actually block out times to do things. So not just for meetings, but actually, “how long will it take me to do this financial planner? How long will it take me to check and update my subscriptions?” and actually put that in my calendar. But same as you, my diary, my calendar is my life.
Body doubling
PHILIPPA: We’ve talked a lot about tech, which is obviously really, really helpful. I’m wondering about other people. Can we co-opt other people to assist with this sort of thing?
TARA: Oh, absolutely. I’m such a dinosaur psychologist. This is old-school stuff. Looking at your environment and the people. Those external regulators can be people or things. If you’ve got a partner or a friend who knows that you’re the person who might be late to the pub or has got the tickets for the airline on their phone or whatever that can message you beforehand and ask you, “what do you need? How can we make this easier?”. And that’s why having the conversations are so wonderful.
PHILIPPA: It’s a lot, isn’t it? I suppose I’m thinking about Emily sitting down doing her tax return and hey, none of us love doing this, right? But if you had someone actually with you while you’re doing that task, so not just telling you, reminding you to do it. Is that at all helpful?
EMILY: I think I’m more inclined to just pay someone to do it for me.
PHILIPPA: Well, there’s that way. Obviously, more expensive. But I’m going to say that’s the more expensive option. It’s called body doubling, isn’t it?
KRYSTLE: Body doubling, I think, is a godsend. It’s worked with so many people I’ve worked with. I need it myself with certain things. It’s where you, if we think about doing it online, because I might be at home. We jump on a Zoom together and we don’t have to work on the same thing. You could be writing a book or you could be, I don’t know, planning your meals for the week, but I’m doing my budget. But we’re both in this space together, committed to doing a task with each other. It’s so powerful. I’ve had people, and I conduct these spaces as well, but I’ve had people get things done that have been on their to-do list for months and months and that you feel so good and so proud of yourself. It’s something about being with somebody, the co-regulation in that space. Try it if you haven’t.
Emotional dysregulation
PHILIPPA: That brings us very neatly to generally emotional dysregulation around money. I mean, shame, guilt, all that stuff we do again and again that we know isn’t good for us or others and just isn’t working for us. You do, the self-loathing creeps in, doesn’t it, about repetition? Why are you doing it again to yourself?
TARA: We’re always the biggest critics of ourselves. We’re less likely to say that to a friend. I always say, a compassionate friend, if your friend was telling you what they’ve just spent and how they feel about it, you’d always judge them differently to yourselves. It’s how we’re hardwired. But being compassionate about it and having conversations also just reduces what I call the ‘ick’. When it’s up here, we tend to feel worse about things. Once we said, “you know what? I feel really guilty or shameful about what I’ve done”. You do feel better.
EMILY: On the point of emotional regulation, probably the thing that’s been most helpful for me is therapy, which isn’t obviously available to as many people as it should be, but having someone who gets it to go and speak to every week about what’s going on. And I think back to the point about not piling on shame, like viewing everything as a learning opportunity.
PHILIPPA: So that’s it, Krystle, it’s understanding what you’re doing, understanding you might do it a few times or keep on doing it, but taking the lesson, because otherwise you’re trapped in that repeat spiral, aren’t you?
KRYSTLE: Yeah. When it comes to making a decision, impulse spending, for example, what I like to remind people is you’ve made this decision because there’s an emotional need. You feel a certain way, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Actually, maybe looking at the fact that, for example, you’ve impulse spent, that’s your go-to technique right now to deal with that emotion. All that needs to happen is maybe learning a new way of doing the thing when you’re feeling that emotion. Reframing that lets people let go of that negative feeling they’re feeling about, “oh, I’ve done this thing again, and it’s problematic.”
Support and resources
PHILIPPA: There’s a huge amount of information about ADHD online, and I’m wondering about curating what’s useful and what isn’t. I don’t know if you have recommendations for people if they want to read into understanding themselves more. Have you got favourites?
TARA: I have unfavourites. Is that alright to say? So I always say, because I’m such a huge pusher of making sure that whoever is talking about it is someone who knows what they’re talking about. So there’s lived experience, which I think is fantastic, absolutely. But also there are people in the mental health space who’re talking about things that are factually incorrect, and therefore you might be more prone to buying and following and paying for programmes and things that aren’t helpful. Look at things like the NHS website, ADHD UK, and they’ll have branches of where to go from there. So they’ll have people talking about lived experience. Follow podcasts where people are talking themselves about experience, and they’ll have lovely lists of things to follow.
PHILIPPA: Guidance you can rely on.
TARA: Yes, absolutely. And it’s nice and structured. So one thing, take it from there.
PHILIPPA: Thinking about the people you work with, Krystle, I mean, how long do you tend to work with people?
KRYSTLE: It ranges. Some people actually just need a little boost, and it might just be a quick phone call. Or sometimes some people work with me over several months, actually. That might be where we start with the reframing and actually getting you to think differently about yourself and what you can achieve and what’s possible for you. Because I think a lot of people start to think that certain things aren’t possible for them, like buying a home or investing. Actually, it is. We just have to find our own ways of getting there. That might be a couple of months, including actually some basic knowledge around debt management or credit score building and things like that.
ADHD and the finance industry
PHILIPPA: The saving, pensions, investments, all the things we normally talk about in the podcast. That’s a stress space here, isn’t it? Because it involves planning, doesn’t it, Emily? Yeah. You’re nodding at me. This is your area.
EMILY: I’m not here because I’m the person who’s cracked financial planning.
PHILIPPA: But it’s a challenge, as you say. If you’re going to struggle with, “what am I going to eat? What’s my family going to eat next week?”. The idea of when I’m older, what will I need? How much money? I mean, that must seem really hard to grapple with.
EMILY: Well, actually, that’s one thing that I’ve done and I’ve prioritised, which is a monthly contribution into my pension that I can afford. I was going to say, I think pensions are actually quite a well-designed financial product for people with ADHD because they’re ring-fenced from impulsivity.
PHILIPPA: You can’t take the money out.
EMILY: You can’t access the money until you’re 55. That was why I prioritised it because I was like, once it’s there, I don’t have to think about it and I can feel good about it and knowing I’m doing something for my future.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, that’s very affirming, isn’t it? I’m thinking there’s 2.6 million people, I think, with a diagnosis. We’ve talked about the possibility of many, many more who don’t, who’re undiagnosed officially. Are banks and the finance industry generally getting their arms around this and offering help, Emily, in your experience? It’s your sector.
EMILY: I think it’s really starting. I think the biggest thing is actually just about listening to your customers. At PensionBee, we do a lot of focus groups and interviews, and we’ve done those with our customers who’re neurodivergent as well.
PHILIPPA: To understand what they want?
EMILY: Yeah, but also I think there’s something really interesting, which is called the Curb Cut Effect, which is about these adjustments that we make for people with a disability actually end up impacting most people positively. They lower the curbs for wheelchair users. But actually, as I discovered on maternity leave, it’s very, very helpful for people with prams. It’s very helpful for people with heavy luggage.
PHILIPPA: That’s such an intriguing idea. I’ve never thought about it like that before. But as you said, well we’ve talked about in this podcast, the things you’ve all been talking about, some of them I use already, and I’m not an ADHDer.
EMILY: They just make good sense. When it comes to our product at PensionBee, we’ve designed it with simplicity in mind, and that helps people who might have ADHD or other neurodivergence, but also it just helps everyone. Everyone enjoys using a simple product. We also have BeeKeepers, so everyone gets that human support. Someone they can call. Lots of people with neurodivergence hate phone calls so we also have live chat, email. It’s about having flexibility, simplicity, and listening, I think.
PHILIPPA: Multiple channels. Krystle, what’s your take on the finance industry? Who’s doing what?
KRYSTLE: Yeah, you’ve got quite a few banks. For example, NatWest have a panel which is all about neurodiversity and creating spaces and making sure their products and services support people with ADHD, for example.
PHILIPPA: I think Barclays, you can actually register with them, can’t you, for tailored assistance? What might that look like?
KRYSTLE: Yeah, it’s phenomenal. It’s about them getting first-hand experience to understand what needs you have so they can incorporate that into their services, which is phenomenal.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, it is. I think M&S, their bank, I think they’ve partnered, haven’t they, with the ADHD Foundation to do work in this area?
KRYSTLE: Yeah, as well. I think what they do is great. They provide actual guidance and support and content for you to help manage your finances properly. I think that’s where it’s really helpful because you can go through the list of everything that’s there and be like, “I’m going to pick and choose these things that work for me”.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, and I’m glad to see, actually, looking down my list of banks and financial institutions, it’s not just the big ones because there’s a challenger bank, Neuros. I think they’re developing tools specifically for neurodiverse customers, too. It’s spreading, isn’t it? But it’s encouraging to know it’s coming.
Thank you very much, everyone. Great discussion. That’s it for this time. You’ll find all sorts of useful links in the show notes. If you want to dig a bit deeper into ADHD and money, remember to give us a rating and a review, it only takes a moment, I promise.
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Join us next time when we’ll be talking about multi-generational living. Now, with housing costs sky high, working people, time poor, could it be a good solution for people of all ages? Just a final reminder, anything discussed on the podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial advice or legal advice. When investing, your capital is at risk. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you next time.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
