ADHD Money Talk
When your brain and your bank account are constantly fighting, it's time for a new approach.
ADHD Money Talk is the podcast that finally addresses what traditional financial advice misses: how ADHD fundamentally changes your relationship with money. From impulse spending and financial avoidance to the shame spiral that keeps you stuck, we tackle the real challenges that come with managing money when your brain works differently.
ADHD Money Talk
I Lost Everything Despite Being a Financial Planner (My ADHD Money Story)
David DeWitt shares his personal journey from financial disaster to freedom, revealing how understanding the connection between ADHD, shame, and money behaviors transformed his relationship with finances.
• Breaking free from the shame cycle that drives ADHD financial behaviors
• Understanding how self-beliefs sabotage financial progress despite good intentions
• Learning that willpower and discipline aren't effective solutions for ADHD money management
• Recognizing how 20,000 more negative experiences shape harmful core beliefs in people with ADHD
• Discovering how to befriend rather than battle financial demons
• Making sustainable progress by addressing emotional foundations first
• Finding freedom through self-acceptance rather than constant self-improvement
Join our Shameless Money community to decode your money story and build sustainable financial systems designed for the ADHD brain. Check out our Financial Transformation coaching package that includes a deep discovery call, personalized roadmap with your money story decoded, and implementation sessions to build systems that actually work for you.
Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.
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Imagine being a certified financial planner with $50,000 of credit card debt and you know better. But you can't stop doing it because your brain just literally just keeps doing things. You are not in control of your brain. Your brain keeps making you do stuff you don't want to do and you're telling yourself you're not broken. You know you're okay, it's going to be okay, you're going to figure it out, but it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 0:So the money thing with ADHD, it feels like a curse. It really does, and that curse feels it's one of the worst curses because the stakes are so high with our money. You know it's a really important part of our life that we really love to bury our heads in the sand about and avoid and that almost certainly spells later worse and worse disasters happening and more and more stress and all the bad things. But you know we just avoid it. It's so common. And you know I spent years beating myself up, taking mental and emotional hit after hit, and you know, if only I had more willpower and discipline, you know, then it'd all be. You know then I'd be great. So let's figure out a way to have that. Well, that's not how our brains work and we're literally not wired to have that. We don't have willpower and discipline for the things that we don't want to do. Get me a plane, some golf, and get me a new like hobby that's stimulating, great, I'll do it. But then like what if that's just an escape from, from pain that I am not confronting? You know what about that? So don't, try and have more willpower and discipline and stop fighting it. And here's the real kicker it's never going to be about willpower, discipline. You're never going to have enough willpower or discipline to will yourself and brute force yourself out of money, stress and money, debt and all the stuff. The problem isn't in our character. It's that we don't know what to do, how to do it or even how to think about doing it. We're playing a game using rules that were not written for us in a language we can't speak. So we just continue on beating ourselves up about it, blaming ourselves for being stupid, and we let the shame and the embarrassment pile on. And before you know it, you know we are scared to crapless of looking at our money, thinking about money, we start to resent money and shame eats away at us, and then we start to feel more and more off and dysregulated and eventually we crumble. But what if I told you that crumbling was actually the beginning?
Speaker 0:I am David DeWitt. I created shameless money because, honestly, I had to. I've spent the last 10 years battling my financial demons. Among many other demons, but the financial one, that one, was the most destructive. It was, it is, and while I am way better off than I was 10 years ago, I'll admit I'm still really behind financially. I still overspend a lot of months, I still fall back into old patterns.
Speaker 0:But here's the difference, here is the difference between me and 10 years ago. I am not scared anymore of my money, of money at all. I don't avoid it, I don't hide from it and I am energized and even motivated about building wealth and, frankly, getting rich the next five years. That's the goal to get rich. I'm not scared of it and that's what I want. And while part of me is still like Ooh, I'll tell you right now I'm going to work relentlessly to battle that, that voice in my head. Well, I'm sorry, not battle, I don't do battling, I do accepting and befriending. Who is that voice in my head? What does that voice in my head want? Why is it feeling that way. But anyways, where are we going with this? You know this might not sound very radical to you, but if you know what I'm talking about the shift from being inescapably stressed out about money to feeling an attitude of hope and energy and true acceptance and desire it's a big shift and I'm proud to say I've made that shift. So I am starting a business that's going to address money and ADHD in the way that it has to be addressed, because it cannot be addressed in a way that is superficial anymore. It can't just be about automate do this and that, have this tip, you know, have this system, you know, have reminders. It's we have to go deeper. It's time to go deeper, and so in the next few minutes, I'm going to share my story with you the disasters, the breakthroughs, and why people with ADHD do need a totally different approach to money management, one that is going to embrace who we are, because this story, it might be your story too. So let's rewind, let's go back in time.
Speaker 0:I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD when I was 16 years old and I didn't really know what that meant. I just I didn't know. I didn't know what it meant. No one told me what it was going to mean and and what it would do to my life and how it would affect me. I was just like, hey, hey, kid, here we're going to give you all these reading tests and all of these, whatever you know, all these tests and we're going to, you know, show you, you know how bad at reading you are and how much you can't pay attention, and and we're going to give you an IQ test and show you how, like, oh, like, you're actually kind of smart. But, like, on this score, yeah, you know, you got ADHD bud and here's some pills. Okay, good luck to you. That's. That's how the experience went for me. Great experience, Let me tell you.
Speaker 0:And as a little kid you know I was. I was the quiet kid, I was lost in my own world. I was always able to play alone, independently, for long stretches of time. I was able to make things and build, and I loved to just be in my own world, just lost in my own daydreams, the most daydreamy kid you could really possibly imagine. And I still love to daydream. Let's be real.
Speaker 0:High school hit and I managed to survive high school with, you know, okay grades, but I had to completely game the system. If you know what I mean and I know a lot of you know what I mean when we're talking about gaming the financial system, because a lot of us are playing that game balance transfers, you know those kinds of things until until until it runs out. So after my diagnosis I was given the meds, but from that point until recently, I pretty much felt like adhd was something you know, from 16 to 30. Uh, adhd, you know 29. I guess the adhd was something to hide, to become embarrassed about. You know kind of. You know like oh, I don't want people to know, I'm going to mask and I'm going to, you know, try to be, try to fit in. You know, nobody told me like I mentioned before, because I'm partially reading notes and I'm partially just ripping because this is, this is fun Nobody told me how much it was going to affect my, my life, every part of my life, every domain of life was going to affect in a big way. So let's keep going.
Speaker 0:So after college, I landed a job at an this is always the hardest thing for me to say at an investment firm as a mutual fund accountant, and I thrived there. I'm going to tell you right now this was the best job for someone with ADHD who had a very tumultuous college and high school experience, because I had the same job every day. I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to turn in my work and check it off. Done Like. It was like boom, self-efficacy, boom. I did it, I did it, I did it. I got promoted and during this time I also developed an obsession with stocks and trading and research. I loved researching stocks. I'm a researcher at heart and I loved investing and trading and learning. I just love learning. I always have loved learning. Let's be real. I know a lot of us ADHDers love learning.
Speaker 0:Then the shift, big shift, came. I joined my dad's investment firm. He basically just took me, just said hey, come here, I'll pay you more. I was like okay. And from the outside it looked like a dream, because you know it's a family business, you know there's client trust already there we're managing people's money, all this fun stuff.
Speaker 0:But on the inside, on the inside of the walls of this business, it was chaos. It was pure chaos. There was no structure my dad has ADHD no direction, no training. I didn't know how to get clients. I had no confidence to be like "'Hey, mr Smith, would you like to give me your $25 million and let me manage it for you? I'm just, hey, I'm just this 24-year-old who you know, who's really got, you know, knows what he's doing.
Speaker 0:No, that didn't come naturally to me. I was scared, poopless, to do that. Yeah, I was totally scared and you know, I was 25, you know, and I was full of imposter syndrome starting to get it big time, because I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't able to get any little wins every day. I just sat there. I didn't know what to do. Half the time. I was literally told what to do. I was just like there as like, like there is my dad's son, the legacy, I'm the legacy, I'm going to take over and do it.
Speaker 0:And so, like I gave solid advice to clients and my personal finances were starting to get messier, and like it wouldn't you wouldn't say it was messy, because the truth of this and this is the truth that I've been very vulnerable over the last four years or five years or whatever, on my podcast and everything. But I'm just going to be straight up with y'all I had access to a significant amount of money at this time. So it wasn't like I was. My finances were not a mess. If you were just to pick it out, you know, just like stop time and be like when date 25 year old Dave, let's look at his balance sheet, he'd be like, wow, he's doing great he. How did he get all that money? The truth is that I had access to an account, a UTMA account, which when you put the UTMA account, when you turn 18, it becomes yours. Your parents like put money in it and then becomes yours and just telling you right now don't give, don't, don't do that for your kids unless your kid is the literally the most responsible person in the entire world, but she's probably not so don't do it. So so I had this account that became mine. It was supposed to be for my college, but my dad didn't want to use it for college because the the, the stocks that he had invested in it wasn't the right time to sell them for college. So he just paid out of pocket for my college.
Speaker 0:Because I'm very fortunate and I've, you know, I've had a lot of things just handed to me. I'm not going to lie about that. I am a privileged white kid. You know who's been handed a lot, and that's just the truth. You know, I'm not going to deny that. But there's a story to every social class and the way that money is handled. And, to steal a line from my favorite band, I wasn't raised in the hood, but I do know a thing or two about pain and darkness, because while I was on paper, a very fortunate would have seemed to have a very fortunate, cushy life it didn't feel. It never felt that way. Yeah, we'll get into that, so yeah.
Speaker 0:So I had all this money and I was just trading it. You know, day trading, stock option training, all the trading, all the just I don't know gambling, really, really. I was just gambling, thinking, though, that I was being smart, and I developed a lot of hubris because I had a lot of these big wins where I'd make like 30, 40, $50,000 on one trade very quickly and I'd be like wow, like I'm set now I'm good, so just fast forward, not a whole lot of time at all. That was all gone. All the money was gone. We're talking a couple hundred grand we're talking about gone. You know, it had gone from a couple hundred to like 400 grand, back to a couple hundred, back, then to 100, then to 50, then to 10, then to zero, then to negative, then to dead. Yeah, that happened. So it was before it went to zero. I had also and there's so much to unpack here I have to keep going because this is going to take too long.
Speaker 0:You know, one day I wanted a car and I have all this money that I didn't earn. I was just like, oh just, you know, I made money on this trade so I'll just buy a car. But I didn't buy a car. I thought, well, you know what would be a better investment? I should just buy a house. So I bought a house because I could just take the money, I could do a 20% down payment and I could feel like I fit in with the world and that I earned this and that I worked hard and that I had you know, it was all of my own making. I could present that persona to the world, knowing deep down that I didn't do that, it was just given to me. And that, when I bought that house is what triggered what I am going to call the blackout era For the next six to 12 months the ADHD impulse spender came out in force Like, boom, I furnished the entire house in a day, just going to the store and saying I want that furniture, let's bring it in, let's put it in the house.
Speaker 0:Like the golf stuff happened and bought the house, put a golf simulator in the garage, like I'm telling you right now, I was depressed, I was very depressed during this time and, yes, I was absolutely filling a deep void with all of this. But, yeah, the money vanished and then the credit card debt happened. And then it feels like I woke up from a dream, because once I realized and took stock of what had happened over this period of time where it was like a manic episode honestly it may have been, I don't know it was as close to that as I've ever been. When I finally took stock of what had happened and where I was, the anxiety, the shame, the shock. I was consumed with guilt and shame and disgust with myself and the cognitive dissonance of still being a financial professional while being financially wrecked was literally unbearable. And so what does that? What does someone who has now developed the pattern of spending with you know, with very, very poor executive function, do when they're feeling unbearable pain? They just compound it. That's what your brain's going to do to survive? Just what felt good even for five minutes? Do that? Keep going. This was like rock bottom number one. There's another rock bottom number two coming up soon, but this was rock bottom number one Turning point. Let's move it up a little bit here In 2021, coming out of this misery, like I was questioning, you know, am I? I'm probably not going to be in this industry much longer.
Speaker 0:I was trying things I was trying to do just to give you more insight into like the full, like me, trying to be something for the world that I didn't feel I was inside at all, but trying so hard to mask and just portray some image of someone who's successful. I started a podcast called the Invest Smarter Podcast. In fact, you could probably go look it up and listen to some episodes of the Invest Smarter Podcast with Dave DeWitt. But in trying to learn how to do podcasting, I was in this group and one of the people in the group was doing a ADHD podcast about like it was like some very niche, like sports and ADHD, and I just was like huh, adhd, like what? Like I have that and you know, up to this point I, every single thing I did stupid. I just literally, I put entirely on myself. It was entirely a reflection of who I was as a person and there was no explanation. Maybe I blamed it on some things in ADHD, I don't remember.
Speaker 0:And so I kind of just like casually, did some research and I found this book I call it, uh, delivered from Distraction by Ed Hallowell, and holy smokes, this was the moment. This was the first time I ever felt different and a little bit better, like at a deeper level. Um, the very first taste of it. This book was like someone wrote it dear David, here's a book about you. And when I he started listing out there was a taste of it. This book was like someone wrote it dear david, here's a book about you. And when I he started listing out, there's a part of it in the beginning where he lists like he just goes through like like a hundred things that like you'll struggle with if you have adhd. Oh, I think it was part of the like you know, if you struggle with a lot of these things, you probably have it. But like he was saying them in a very human and personal kind of like real, real way that I was in tears in the car listening to this book and I was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. I just had no clue.
Speaker 0:And so, like, I finally felt like I knew now, I felt like I understood. Now you know, my money issues weren't my character flaw, you know it's. This is a serious thing. I have, you know, adhd. This is serious Like, and now that I'm going to like understand this, you know, things will start to get better. You know my brain was, you know my brain was just chasing dopamine. Uh, just chasing dopamine. Spending was my hit and there was no one there to stop me and I've never really liked being told what to do, so tell me not to spend any more money, I'll just spend more money. So I was like you know what? I feel a little bit more safe. For the first time in my life, my nervous system actually relaxed a little bit.
Speaker 0:Reading this book and feeling understood and feeling seen and feeling validated and something triggered in me and I started thinking to myself. I was like, well, if I'm going to survive in this industry, well I really ought to. You know, they always say get a niche, so I'll just make my niche ADHD. I'll work with people who I understand. The truth is, when I first started this, it was like I won't feel my shame as much with other people who are feeling shame about their money. So, like, what a great fit. So, while I pitched it as and I'm being just as honest as I possibly can, because being brutally honest is my thing now, because I despise fakeness While I was pitching the service as being a place where you can, we can work with your money and I can help you and understand your money and we can build systems and we can get you on the path towards wealth.
Speaker 0:And you know financial planners that are out there, you know they're really working for with people that already have a lot of wealth and, but, like, you need to learn how to like, get the wealth. So I'll be that guy. But really, you know, thinking about it, I'm kind of realizing this now, or at least clarifying it. It was more of a protection, self-protection for me in the beginning, because I was like, oh, we can wallow in our shame together. Oof, okay, that's a heavy one, but that's okay. So I started the business in focus wealth strategies and I was serving ADHD clients and in 2022, I passed the CFP exam because I was like you know what I'm going to do this right, I'm in recovery of my own financial issues, so I'm going to make sure that I know how to give people a financial plan, the responsible way to give them the right advice, all that stuff. That was the plan. And the business grew. It grew and grew and grew fast.
Speaker 0:I wouldn't even really call it business because I had no idea how to run a business. I had spent three years just dilly-dallying, blowing all my money, not being depressed and not knowing what to do. To now, like having all these clients willing to work with me because, turns out, there was demand for this and I thought maybe there would be demand, but I didn't know there'd be that much. And I just kept on taking clients and I kept charging what I thought I was worth, which was like pretty much nothing. And you know, at this point in time I didn't know how still emotionally raw and perfectionistic and broken I still really was like.
Speaker 0:So when I had like 50 clients, then I felt so much unbearable pressure that I, I collab, I crushed me. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't handle that many clients. I couldn't handle them needing so many people needing me when I couldn't even really take care of myself. It was just overwhelmed, total overwhelm, and I do have really pretty bad like executive function challenges. So it was hard and I had no plan.
Speaker 0:I was winging it, I was trying, it was tough and I, you know, I became so perfectionistic. I became so like I need to come up with something new and new and new. And oh, there's so much revelation around this that I had. There's so much revelation I can't get into it all right now, but this was the second flop, and this flop felt worse, and this flop was like harder and more deep, because now I also had a kid. So it was really painful because I felt like I I don't know, I didn't know what to do. I really did, I just really didn't know what to do. I still don't really often feel like I know what to do. I really did, I just really didn't know what to do. I still don't really often feel like I know what to do. And I just felt so broken again.
Speaker 0:And it was around this time that a friend invited me to church. Now, I wasn't looking for God, and and I and at that time I was a deeply skeptical, agnostic, right, and something and something happened, though, at this church, like I just was, like you know, I'll try anything at this point you'll take me to your church, whatever. Whatever you're my friend and I need to have friends and connection and uh, fine, you know what I'll please you by you know people please you by going to your church. But I'm telling you something something happened at this church that I went to. You know, something happened, something unexplainable.
Speaker 0:I broke down and I did feel something happening to me and I felt grace and I was bawling my eyes out in a church and for the first time in my entire life, I felt I don't even know how to put words to it it was like I was crying and I was sad, but I was happy. I didn't know what was happening to me, but I just knew that in that moment I was surrendering. I was surrendering a lot because I was already so down and this is not a religious pitch at all, this is just part of my story. I think I just surrendered all of it the shame, the pain, the wreckage, the embarrassment, everything I just surrendered. And from there, something you know had changed in me.
Speaker 0:And again, it's not a religious pitch, it's just the accurate detailing of my story and from there something did change, where I now felt like I had permission to proceed with getting help and I felt like I had a bit more boost under me, like a little bit more motivation, a little bit more safety, and it definitely was like the religious stuff, but like that's just the way it was. And then, um, yeah, but something definitely happened to me where, like I all of a sudden was like motivated to get help and to self-explore and to discover and to, and I had the courage finally to like get help. So I had never really gone to therapy, I had tried it, I would quit. You know, I didn't think it was helping me, I don't think, I think I wasn't ready to confront anything really. But finally did therapy, I did EMDR, which life changing, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 0:So I'd started doing therapy and, you know, one thing led to another and I just started becoming very, very into self-discovery and putting the pieces of my life together and healing, meditation, self-inquiry, constant self-inquiry, constant learning everything out. If you were to look at my youtube feed and podcasts I was listening to, it was all about that. Like I was getting so deep into like trying to figure out why, why, why, what. There's more to this story than just my ad. It's not just that I have adhd and can't manage like money, because it's not just, it wasn't just money, it was friendships, it was relationships, it was self-sabotage and just never ending that. And so, finally, just like was like I've had enough of this and I'm ready to do something about it. And so, like reading delivered from distraction had, like, introduced me to the possibility that, like I wasn't broken and that, like ADHD, like now that I understand the ADHD and I've been educated, like I'll be good. That was just like the tippiest tip of the iceberg, the tippiest tip In therapy.
Speaker 0:I saw how so many of my memories, my most vivid childhood memories, were stories of this unseen, hurt and humiliated and broken child and my therapist God bless her helped me meet, you know, little me, my inner child, and who I found when I went to go meet my inner child. The little Dave was a little boy who was scared, alone, sad, unseen, feeling unworthy, feeling like a disappointment, feeling like an outcast. And it's funny because like what little Dave needed? You know, when I met him at the grocery store, I was lost, I didn't know where my mom was and I was alone, I was crying, I was hiding in the corner. When I went to that memory and I walked up to little Dave, what did he need? He just needed a major hug, to be looked square in the eyes and be told you're gonna be okay, I love you so much.
Speaker 0:And when I was starting to put the pieces together of my life and all the things that I just thought were normal for people it's tempting to kind of unpack more than I need to. But you know people in my life who I you know. You know I had shame, deep shame about my identity and who I was. I had my beliefs about myself, I learned, were terrible. This pain that I had been harboring and holding on that because I've been the people pleaser, I've been the perfectionist, I've been the trying to not let anyone down. But by trying so hard to do that letting everyone down and on occasion I would something would break in me and I would my frustration and anger and my resentment at just life would spill out. But for the most part I was just that perfectionist, people pleasing kid.
Speaker 0:But I now finally saw through therapy how my pain had become my identity and how it wasn't that I was making mistakes and that I made stupid errors and that I it wasn't, that it was, that I was a mistake, I was stupid, I am dumb, I am a disappointment, I am unworthy, I am unseen, I am unnoticeable. And so what do I have to do to be noticeable? I have to try to be special. I have to try to make the perfect systems for my clients. I have to try and make the perfect everything for everyone. And I can dress it all up and make it look pretty, because if I make it look pretty enough, maybe people will be convinced that it is pretty and that I am pretty. But the reality is I'm just covering for what feels pretty broken inside.
Speaker 0:You know, when this therapist squarely looks you in the eye and say like, like, what is the core belief driving that behavior? And we did drink down, it's like, oh wow, I am stupid. I believe I am stupid. Saying that I am smart, feels alien and feels uncomfortable. And so why is this even important for any of this? I mean, first of all, I like telling my story because I think people can see themselves in it, especially with ADHD, and it all comes back to money ultimately, because that's the area I've chosen to focus on to help people. But the point of all of this is is that, with shame, which is the business name, is shameless money right? It's so important to me, it's so personal to me, because the word shame I didn't understand and when I understood it, everything started to click.
Speaker 0:When you have shame, it means your belief. It's not a I was or I did a stupid thing, it's I am stupid. And so when you have that belief, your subconscious, the deepest part of your neurological being, believes that is what you are. Then, whenever you do something that's not stupid, or if you believe I am bad at money by nature, born to be bad at money when you have that subconscious belief about yourself, what are you going to do? When you start, like, when you start the new budget app and you have all that and all the dopamine because like it's new and novel and it's fun and it's it's, it's interesting and I'm going to set up this budget and then, when you do well with it for a month and you are making progress look at all that progress you made Well, what do you think your subconscious is telling you and wanting you to do next? Because you're not good at money, are you? No, no, no, you can't be. You are bad at money, remember. So we are going to set up conditions where you will self-sabotage, blow yourself up and go right back to where you were, because your subconscious is familiar with that feeling, it likes that feeling, it's the feeling it understands. So it will always revert you back, which is why shame is a cycle. You try, try, try to get out, you fight it. It becomes bigger ultimately and you're back to where you started. And this is how I finally got free from financial demons. And I couldn't let myself believe that it's just me, because what People with ADHD have 20,000 more negative instances throughout their life than the average neurotypical person?
Speaker 0:What does that do to your self-esteem, to your beliefs about yourself? You have developed neurological programs in your brain that are trained to tell you that when you do something stupid, it's not because you did something stupid that you can recover from, it's because you are stupid. That's what you have a program in your mind telling you to do, and you do it on repeat and nothing ever changes. And you just keep searching and thinking that this thing that I get, this, will be the thing that changes my life, because they are telling me that it will fix my problem. You have to fix yourself from the inside out. It's not fixing yourself, it's just befriending yourself, accepting yourself. Don't push away the shame. Understand the shame yourself. Don't push away the shame. Understand the shame. Don't push away the demons. Keep your enemies closer. Right you understand it. Become a friend, become curious about it.
Speaker 0:So I ended up talking way longer than I wanted to, for this. That's my one of my habit. I don't know how to get across the intensity of which I feel and things in in just 10 minutes or whatever, like most youtube videos out there. I I tried, but I failed at that. But that's okay because I'm thinking I'll just do me and if me is longer, so be it. It was fun to do longer. So the freedom came not just from accepting ADHD, but from accepting my entire self, from decoding my story, putting the pieces of the puzzle together, understanding, confronting people in my life who needed to be confronted, seeing my pain and not fighting it. Understanding my pain, accepting the pain I'd been through and just pursuing real answers. I mean, there's so much freedom and this was a lot of work and this journey that I'm on is not over. This video that I'm doing right now. It's just a stop. It's just a stop in the road. It's just a temporary reflection of an ongoing story and I don't know what's next. Like I can't wait for the next chapter now. Like this is.
Speaker 0:What's so different about me is that I used to be fearful about every step I would take. I would just be fearful, I would just think I will fail. And while I still have that lingers, I've really built up the part of me that can fight it. So here's what's different for me now. You know, the best part about this is I can say this with a smile. I can say this with confidence, with pride, and without that little voice in me telling in my head, telling me that you're being a fake-o right now and that it's not true.
Speaker 0:I've stopped impulsive spending. The impulsive spending that I used to do was outrageous. I've pretty much completely put a stop to that, and it used to be where I would stop for three months and then shame spiral back. Now it's like it's. I have no interest. Now that I know why and there's a lot more to the why there's so much more to all this I've done so much on this, but now that I know why, I can't be bothered to. Oh, that's just a part of a narrative that was built upon. Shame and built upon and now I understand that story. So why? You know that's not a story I'm interested in anymore, not interested in that story. So, while you know that's not a story I'm interested in anymore, not interested in that story anymore I've stuck to my financial plans.
Speaker 0:I've gone pretty much out of debt. There's still some, some debt left, I'm not going to lie to you and and when I slip up, I don't spiral because I do still slip up. And when I do slip up, I don't know. I just have, I've built up a groundedness and an understanding of who I am and such a hyper awareness of who I am and I just can't be bothered now to be to let it get me down too much. Do I still get financial anxiety? Yes, do I still get stressed out? Yes, do I have two kids and a family and I'm trying to grow a business and I still, like I'm learning so much, like, yes, there's a lot of pressure still and I try and deal with that all the time and and I don't know, I think that's probably what it is so like at InFocus Wealth Strategies. You know the financial planning business, which still exists, and for the right type of client. I'm still taking clients at InFocus, wealth Strategies for people that are, you know, do have a lot of income and maybe have gone past some of the most the deepest emotional kind of financial issues.
Speaker 0:But when I was working with clients at In't focus, you know, part of the thing was like like, while I did have financial shame and imposter syndrome and all that, like I still like handed people like really detailed plans of like with with all the subtasks breaking down, like I followed all of the ADHD guides. You know all the tips and I followed all the instruction manuals that you would have to do to help someone with ADHD. You know, help people's hands, help them implement systems where, like money would just go where it goes, and like you have, there's your, here's your rule. You have to follow this rule. You can't do that and you have to. You have to cut this much spending and here's exactly where you're going to cut. No matter what I would do people, just some, a lot of clients couldn't make progress. And I was frustrated because it felt like you know, cause at that point I was internalizing everything as a me like, oh, I'm doing this wrong.
Speaker 0:But through my journey that I've just shared, I pretty much learned through that journey that well, it's because the shame and I think shame is the center issue for so many people with money not just with ADHD, mind you, like I like to talk about ADHD and all that, but for a lot of people it's financial shame and it's real, it's super real. There's money scripts, money beliefs we have that we get when we're kids, that if we don't understand them and don't explore them, we just live by those scripts and it can be very destructive to our futures. There's so much to unpack and we're going to talk about all of this on this channel. I promise not every episode is going to be this long. This was just like I wanted to get my reintroduction, my story, out of the way, because since the last time I did a story, I've come a lot of miles since then.
Speaker 0:But the mission of Shameless Money is about helping you not stop abandoning yourself and to break cycles through compassion and self-exploration and becoming grounded in who we are and what we want, and healing. I mean this is the mission. The mission is to help people break free from financial shame so that they can build sustainable progress over the long term and so on. This channel, we're going to have fun. It's not all going to be heavy like this. We're going to talk about money, emotions systems, tools. I pretty much professionally just build people financial systems. At this point it feels like most of the time and I love doing that. I've learned I'm a builder at heart. We're going to talk about money, emotion systems, psychology, all through ADHD lens. We're going to have fun and coming soon we're going to have coaching, courses and community a tribe of people all decoding their money stories together and understanding shame together and labeling it, naming it, becoming friends with it, accepting it, moving forward with more freedom. We have courses yeah, we talked about that.
Speaker 0:The stakes are too high to keep ignoring this part of life. If I'm speaking to you, then please, I'll just know that the stakes are too high to keep ignoring this part of your life, your future. You is going to thank you in a big way If all this resonates. Subscribe to the channel. If you want to go check out old things I've done ADHD Money Talk podcast. If you want to get on our newsletter and get a free ebook, free value packed updates coming soon and freebies and stuff. It's going to be a very exciting time.
Speaker 0:Then we do have a financial transformation coaching package. It's three sessions, a deep discovery call. You get a personalized roadmap with your money story decoded and a financial system built for you, and then we do two sessions implementing that system. It's going to help you start to understand your money story. It's not going to solve the emotional problems, but it's going to give you the seed. It's going to seed the energy that you are going to want to have to go down that path. If this is speaking to you and I'll see you in the next video, let's make money less scary together and maybe even a little fun, and I'll be with you all the way through it. All right, guys, see you later.