I’ve never been able to. I’ve tried:
Keeping receipts, text file on laptop, trying to keep track… too absent minded. Forget one receipt, it’s all off.
Bank app on phone? Phone stolen last year, wary.
Weekly visit to atm to check balance? Forget pin, can’t remember, locked out of account.
Paying for everything with cash might work, but unsafe neighborhood. And I forget where cash is, random $20 bills found in bizarre locations months later.
At my wit’s end. Any adhd people experience similar?
I don’t know why people are giving you a hard time about “Balancing a Checkbook”. Recording and reconciling transactions (which is all balancing a checkbook is) is a core personal finance concept which still applies, even if you never, ever write checks.
Why should you track your finances? Well, for starters, you won’t really have any control over your money unless you know where it’s going. Not to mention people with ADHD --myself included – tend to struggle with impulse control which can make us prone to reckless spending habits.
What system you use will depend a lot on your goals and the complexity of your personal finances. My personal finances are a monster and I’m super anal retentive about everything. I also have to manage the books for our family business.
I use good old Quicken Desktop. It’s old as shit and has some bugs but nothing I can’t work around. It also does everything under ‘one roof’ and it lets me generate conventional financial reports (i.e. Budget Vs. Actual, Income/Expense, & Balance Sheet) right out of the box. I couldn’t find a single other personal finance suite that could do that.
Your situation probably is not nearly as complicated as mine. There are numerous other personal finance software options out there. Most of the good ones, in my experience, aren’t free but if they make your life easier and help you achieve financial security then it’s money well spent.
One of the main advantages to using a dedicated personal finance app is the many of them can download transactions from your online banking automatically. If you can’t or don’t want to use an online solution, you can use spreadsheets. Or, hell, even a columnar pad from the office supply store will work.
A couple pointers:
Don’t worry about immediately logging transactions. It’s hard to keep up with that. Do it when you can.
Dedicate time to sit down and get caught up. Whether it’s once a week or at the beginning of the month (when you would normally reconcile the prior months bank statements).
I have yet to find a solution that is completely automated. Some personal finance tools can do a lot on their own but you usually have to configure them and then make sure they’re not introducing errors.
Don’t worry about the receipts. Seriously. They’re a nice-to-have but they’re not that big a deal. I make sure to always get one but I literally have a huge box of them sitting in my office that I’m sure I’ll eventually get around to scanning and filing. …Right about the time my kids all graduate from high school.
Remember that personal finance is about one thing and one thing only: putting your money to work for YOU. Your goal is to get the most value for your money and make sure that it’s going to the places you actually want it to go. If your system isn’t giving you what you want, it’s fine to change it. It’s gotta work for you.