Why money fights are never really about money

Money is one of the biggest sources of conflict in relationships — and for people with ADHD, it comes with an extra layer of shame most people don’t talk about.

Cate sits down with Dr. Christine Hargrove, a financial therapist who specializes in ADHD, to unpack why money fights escalate so fast, why who’s the “mental load carrier” matters more than who earns more, and why people with ADHD often give better financial advice to their friends than they follow themselves.

Christine breaks down the concept of “money meaning” — the idea that when couples fight about spending, they’re rarely fighting about the actual dollars. They discuss financial self-efficacy, the five types of couple coping (and which ones actually work), and why body doubling might be the most underrated financial tool for ADHD brains.

Cate also opens up about her own history with compulsive spending, debt, and the shame that kept her from asking for help — and what finally changed.

If you’ve ever felt “bad with money” or avoided opening an app because of what you might see, this episode is for you.

• Watch: Why is money so hard with ADHD? A financial therapist explains

• Watch: Money problems and ADHD? Here’s a financial therapist’s advice

Dr. Christine Hargrove: Figuring out what your money meaning is by what it isn't is often what happens in couples, except that they don't realize that that's what they're doing. So while they're poking holes in each other's money meaning of, "Well, that's not what money is for. Money is not so we can just take a vacation," what they're really doing is figuring out, "I don't care about a vacation, but I do care about spending money on my family or feeling safe." We're kind of finding out what our money meanings are by what they're not.

Cate Osborn: That's Dr. Christine Hargrove, a financial therapist who specializes in ADHD, helping individuals, couples, and families with their relationship to money. Which is wildly convenient for us here on "Sorry I Missed This" because today we are talking about our relationship to money as people with ADHD and how money can impact relationships.

Money is one of the biggest topics of contention in many relationships. And a lot of people with ADHD struggle with how we process money and carry guilt and shame around small mistakes or issues that might arise in terms of money management. And all of those things can impact our relationship. That's why I'm so excited to sit down with Dr. Christine Hargrove today, who is an expert on this very thing.

Hi everybody and welcome back to "Sorry I Missed This", the show where we talk about all things ADHD and its impact on sex, relationships, intimacy, communication, and more. As always, it's me, your host, Cate Osborn.

01:29 Exploring the common struggles people with ADHD face with money.

Cate: I've mentioned this a few times on the show before, but I have always been a person who's had a fraught relationship with money. It feels like as soon as I get money, I spend it, and I've never been particularly good at saving or planning for a rainy day.

But I also live with a lot of impulse control, and there was a while where I fell into a cycle of compulsive spending and I racked up a lot of debt. However much you're thinking, it was more than that. And I carried a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and a lot of embarrassment around even discussing the struggles that I was going through.

And the more that I obfuscated the fact that I was going through these things, the harder it was to navigate my relationships. And it wasn't until I started really understanding my relationship with money and breaking down my relationship to money was I able to really sort of come clean and build structures and systems that work for me and my brain.

And so I'm a huge fan of the work that Dr. Hargrove does because not only is she working on people's relationships with money, but she is specifically working with ADHD populations because this is such a common problem. And it's really funny because when you go to her website, the first thing you see is that she's got a waitlist. And it's because there are so many people out there who are struggling with these issues and they are carrying this shame and embarrassment in silence.

And so one of the things that I just wanted to do with this episode was highlight the fact that this is a thing that people with ADHD struggle with, and there is nothing to be ashamed of, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. And one of the healthiest things you can do is learn how to communicate and learn how to have these discussions in your relationships to make sure that you are approaching money and finances from a healthy and confident point of view.

So that is why I'm so passionate about this episode because not only are these conversations in relationships important, but competence and confidence around money are such an important tool for anybody, regardless of your diagnosis.

Welcome to the show, Christine. Thank you so much for being here.

Christine: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for today.

Cate: What made you want to focus on money and finances as a therapist?

Christine: So I came here to UGA to really focus on supporting individuals, couples, and families with ADHD. I was asked to take on some couples who wanted to be seen for financial concerns and do financial therapy. I thought it sounded pretty interesting and I jumped right in, learned very quickly that it is an incredibly important topic and there's so much good that can be done when somebody is willing to actually talk with couples about money. And I also realized how relevant it is for all of the ADHD clients that I work with.

Cate: Talk to me a little bit more about the relationship between ADHD and finances. Like what do you see a lot of in your work?

Christine: So many different presentations of money stress with ADHD. I see a lot of stress about how to use money, how to think about money. There's a lot of income stress. There's also just that executive functions stress of how do I track this, how do I forecast this. There's also this persistent sense of "I'm not really a grown-up until I have mastered this."

And it seems to be this somewhat extreme idea of what it means to be good with money. So there's not really often a "good enough" approach with money that we really talk about openly. And I think with ADHD, that kind of hits pretty hard in that you feel like you have to be perfect with money. You have to be thinking ahead in every possible way, or else you're terrible with money.

I see objective stress — difficulty saving, difficulty managing money, difficulty maintaining employment — and also a lot of income gaps and those sudden career shifts that often lead to overall lower lifetime earnings. And so when I work with couples, I definitely see different dynamics show up.

So sometimes there's a parent-child dynamic with money, and that especially shows up with ADHD. I also see a dynamic of one person leaning in and the other person just checking out, like it can't be perfect or it's not up to your standard, so I'm just going to leave it alone. So there's a lot of stress about money that is really objective stress, and it's also this subjective, really personal stress. And what makes it even more difficult is that we hardly ever talk about it.

Cate: When we look at studies around relationships and partnerships and that kind of thing, we see that fights around money tend to be some of the most damaging conflicts. Why do you think relational fights around money tend to be the most explosive?

Christine: Usually, when we are talking about money, we're not actually talking about the money. We're talking about a profound sense of safety. We're talking about a sense of control, independence, autonomy. The things that enable us to live out the most base aspects of who we are as people, that's expressed through money.

So we may assign a dollar figure to it. We may say, "Oh, this is for a trip," "This is for income or a new car," but really what we're talking about is what money means to us. And for many of us, the ways that we use money are actually very central to how we assume money functions entirely.

So what I mean is, for someone who feels that money is safety — the idea that money means independence and spontaneity or generosity does not compute. But there are definitely other people for whom the whole point of having money is to spend it and live your life and experience new things and feel free as a bird.

So what happens is when we start talking about what money should be used for, can be used for — particularly when we're disagreeing — we are protecting parts of ourselves that feel very fundamental to who we are. This is so visceral that the claws come out really, really quickly and we have a really difficult time seeing anyone else's perspective.

06:55 Exploring the psychological reasons behind explosive money arguments in relationships and identifying personal financial meanings.

Cate: How do we start understanding the beliefs that we hold around money? Whether it's safety, whether it's freedom, whether it's flexibility, or whether it's very like something that's not flexibility — the opposite of flexibility.

Christine: I think one of the quickest questions to start to narrow down what the possible money meanings are to you is, "If I had enough, what would that enable me to do?" So for some people, they would say, "I could finally breathe. I would feel safe." Other people would say, "I would quit my job" or "I would travel the world" or "I would establish a fund in someone's name" or "I would give money to charity."

Whatever that thing is, if they had enough, they could express that part of themselves that they're really trying to make money for. Sometimes you can get there by figuring out what it's not and you can start to kind of knock those things down.

I think that figuring out what your money meaning is by what it isn't is often what happens in couples, except that they don't realize that that's what they're doing. So while they're poking holes in each other's money meaning of, "Well, that's not what money is for. Money is not so we can just take a vacation. Money is so that we can save it and spend it on family," what they're really doing is figuring out, "I don't care about a vacation. I don't care about independence. But I do care about spending money on my family or being able to quit a job, feeling independent." So that's really we're kind of finding out what our money meanings are by what they're not.

Cate: So you work a lot with neurodivergent couples specifically. So when we talk about financial conflict popping up in the relationship, does it tend to look different than other people's? Because immediately I start thinking about unique experiences around things like demand avoidance or emotional dysregulation or rejection sensitivity, those kind of things. How do you navigate through that when there's so many more layers of consideration aside from just, "Oh, we can sit down and just talk through it," I guess is maybe what I'm getting at.

12:56 Understanding how ADHD traits like shame and executive dysfunction create unique financial challenges and dynamics for couples.

Christine: There's this inherited meaning of money that's really true throughout many families — neurotypical or not — that money management is some kind of character deficit if you're not good at it. You're lazy, you're stupid, you're selfish. And that's the shame that I see that makes it really difficult to turn that around because there has been an assumption that everyone is fully capable of becoming fully financially literate given neurotypical tools. As though it's just numbers.

And if you don't learn this, you either don't care or you're too dumb. Neither one of those things is true. Actually, we have very limited financial literacy tools. They're improving, but we are still trying to kind of run outdated software and apply ourselves to this really complicated topic and then we feel ashamed that we're not getting anywhere different.

So a lot of times what is really important is let's recenter. If the neurotypical way of handling money, thinking about money, conceptualizing money, and mapping money worked, it would have worked by now. It's not that you haven't been trying. So let's try some other approaches. And if I'm working with a couple where one person is neurodivergent and the other person is neurotypical, I'm often functioning as the pace car. We are not moving forward on a financial decision until everybody fully understands where we are right now.

Cate: I love that you named the shame factor because that is something that I run into — both just in interacting with the ADHD community, but also in my own life. I am a person who has been in debt a couple of different times in a couple of different levels. And I carry a lot of shame about it. And it really comes to that — I have dyscalculia. And so I developed this kind of avoidance around my finances. Like if I just didn't look at it, then I didn't have to deal with it and then I didn't have to feel the shame. And then I would look at it and be really bad and then the shame would grow.

And so a lot of times — at least in the folks that I've spoken with — we kind of see this pattern of there is kind of an avoidant person who is maybe like carrying a lot of that shame or guilt or unsurety around the best practices, but then there's another partner who feels like they're carrying the entire mental load around money. I was wondering if you could just talk about how does that play out, when is that healthy, when is that not healthy?

Christine: Thank you so much for asking about my research because I actually wrote a paper about the mental load of the money managers in couple relationships. And the paper that I wrote was based on some survey data that we had from our clients right here at the Love and Money Center. And what we found was we looked at couple financial stress as a couple-level experience.

So household financial stress, it's not necessarily you've got two adults stressing equally. There often is a bit of a delegation of the financial stress. So one person's kind of like, "Okay, this is my problem," the other person's a little bit off the hook-ish.

So there are five kinds of couple coping with stress. Three of them are good, two of them are bad. The first is supportive coping. The easiest way to look at supportive coping would be maybe one person's going through cancer treatment, their partner is like, "I'm right here with you. I am here for you. I can't do it with you, but I'm with you."

The next one is shared coping. That's that 50/50, right? You cook on Mondays, I'll cook on Tuesdays. And then there is delegated coping. You cook, I'll clean. So one person might manage the day-to-day financial management, somebody else might be the one meeting with a planner or figuring out retirement stuff or other life decisions.

The bad ones are hostile coping, which is where you get really mean and cynical. And then there's ambivalent or avoidant coping where you're kind of like, "Sounds like a you problem." And those don't help couples at all. But the first three are all good, but all three of those models of healthy couple coping involve both people.

So both partners are really invested in the money. They know the numbers or at least are aware of the numbers. They also feel that this is our stress. This is our problem. Not your problem, not my problem — our problem, even if you are the point person on it. Because if something happens to you, I've got to be ready to step up.

So when couples take that teamwork attitude, even when one person is the point person or even when you're delegating tasks, you're going to be in a really good position to win as a couple. I think the hardest place to be, though, is when you're stuck in that rut of — sometimes it's over-functioning, under-functioning. Sometimes there's a control dynamic of one person gets really protective of the finances and the other person just checks out. And then it becomes really difficult because we want things to change and we don't want to change. So then where do you begin?

Cate: Christine, you have talked a lot about financial self-efficacy. First off, the question is: can you explain to our dear listeners what that is? And then why it matters so much in context of these conversations?

20:11 Defining financial self-efficacy and why it is a critical skill for people with ADHD to develop.

Christine: Yes, I love this question because I wrote a whole dissertation about this and it's got to be useful for something. It's almost like I have been devouring your work ahead of this podcast.

Financial self-efficacy is your belief in your ability to do the things you've got to do to get to your financial goals. So it is your confidence in your competence. And the more confident that you are that you know what needs to be done and you know that you can do each one of those individual things, the more likely you are to start and persist over time even amidst adversity.

And that is so difficult with ADHD already. So the research is really clear. First of all, general self-efficacy and just about every kind of self-efficacy is worse when you have ADHD, including financial self-efficacy. And it is more important for you if you have ADHD that you have good self-efficacy.

So the links between your self-efficacy and whether or not you'll actually do it are stronger for ADHD than for neurotypical populations. It's a negative link, but it's a strong link. So it is more important for you as someone with ADHD that you work on your self-efficacy. And whatever area it is that you want to see change, you can't just try to white-knuckle it or shame yourself into it or even just have this blind confidence.

You really need to focus on the exact tasks, understand what needs to be done, and then build your confidence in those specific tasks. Like be your own best hype man. Like, "Man, that was an amazing bill pay! It was incredible! I want to see it every month!" But really, we have brains that are — everybody kind of is like this, but with ADHD it's worse or it's more exacerbated — we have brains that are Velcro for negative memories and Teflon for positive memories.

Cate: It's so rude, honestly.

Christine: I know! And it's like it matters even more. That's the really frustrating part is when you have ADHD, it's so much harder to remember the things that you did well, especially those miniscule tasks like paying your bill on time, and it's so much easier to remember all of those times when you messed up. And that negative-to-positive memory ratio affects your future behavior even more than it does for neurotypical people. So you have to be really intentional and really determined.

Cate: When we are exercising that self-compassion, when we are engaging in that self-efficacy, I have to imagine that is also going to then not only improve our relationship with finance, but financial relationships in terms of partnerships and negotiating through conflict.

Christine: Yes, actually. So my dissertation included a couple of quantitative dyadic data analyses, and one of the things that I found was that financial self-efficacy of one partner, including where there were ADHD symptoms, actually affected the financial subjective well-being of both partners.

It is a great way to contribute to your relationship happiness, to your overall couple financial well-being. So taking the time to cheer yourself on in the moment probably feels really silly. But all of those little things build your confidence and the more that you do those little things, and particularly the more that you force your brain to acknowledge that they were really good and that they happened — instead of just doing that little like Teflon thing where it's like, "You did something good, but it doesn't matter" — like stick it, right?

"I did this. I waited 24 hours. I looked into my debt. I read my credit report." All those things that I'm avoiding, even if I read it for five minutes, say that stuff out loud because it really can not only lead to your own better financial well-being but also the financial well-being and happiness of your partner.

Cate: Okay, I've been dying to ask you this one. So tell me about this research about how people with ADHD give better financial advice about other people's situations than their own. Is that kind of like how I won't do my own dishes, but if I go over to my friend's house, I will clean their entire kitchen for fun? Is it kind of that situation?

Christine: It is! So with ADHD — so this big research study, they were comparing people with ADHD to neurotypical populations on these financial competence and financial decision-making and stuff. But one of the things was super interesting, which was that when they had kind of a case study of financial questions and like a scenario and then like, "What should Jane do?" the people with ADHD gave advice that was just as solid as the neurotypical population that they were comparing against. But when it was like, "What should you do?" Nope.

Cate: That's what? Why? That's so wild to me.

Christine: I think it makes perfect sense because knowing is not the same thing as doing. Right? And so we know what we should do, but a lot of times when you have ADHD, you don't necessarily feel like you have the authority or permission to evaluate whether the neurotypical "shoulds" work for you in the first place.

So it becomes this kind of blind winging it, even though it's not, because we only really acknowledge whether we did or didn't do the "should," the neurotypical approach. We don't really take the time or feel like we're allowed to map out the way our own brains work and what we need and how we got it done.

Maybe you hire a bookkeeper. And many people with ADHD, I know because these have been a lot of my clients have been saying like, "Well, I didn't really do that, though." Did you get to your goal? Seems to me like you used some resources at your disposal and you accomplished it. So we discount anything but the neurotypical way of thinking about money, managing money. And so then when we're thinking about what should we do, we're like, "I don't know. Nothing ever works for me. I never really do what I'm supposed to do."

Cate: It's frustrating to me how often there is a shame component that is attached to that that I really feel like is baseless. You know, it's like yes, there is a modicum of privilege that comes with being able to hire somebody, but why are we punishing ourselves, why are we shaming ourselves for facilitating help that allows us to make more room in our brains and in our lives for the stuff that is important to us?

Like that is how I fixed my finances is I hired somebody. I hired an accountant who works explicitly for people with ADHD. And it's been really powerful for me to be able to, one, admit when I'm struggling and just saying, "Hey, I had a really bad month this month." And she goes, "Hey, you know what? That's okay. Like we can project next month, we can do all these things."

It was hard and I had to confront a lot of shame and guilt and embarrassment and just knowing I think I knew how much I didn't know. And that was really hard for me because I sort of pride myself on being like the gifted kid who's good at everything and I was like, "I'm bad at money. I'm sure I'm bad at money."

And it impacted my relationship. It impacted my marriage. Like we went through a really, really rough time and a lot of that was because I didn't have that self-efficacy. I just kind of gave up. I just was like, "It's hard. I can't do it. I get overwhelmed. I get scared. I shut down." And so working with somebody to build those skills, like it really — I have direct firsthand proof of how much it improved my relationship.

Christine: I love that. I think that a lot of people really need to hear that there is hope. And that you can choose to go through the shame that will come up and wash over you and come out the other side.

Cate: It was surprising to me that I lived every time. I'm like, "Today is the day I die from the shame." And then every time somehow I managed to survive and live another day.

Christine: I really think that being able to tolerate your own feeling of shame or embarrassment and keep going is one of the best superpowers you could ever develop within yourself.

Cate: So for our dear listeners who are maybe uncomfortable around finances or are in that sense of shame or guilt or embarrassment, what advice do you have for them on the solo level about improving self-efficacy and just agency around finance?

25:01 Practical solo strategies to build financial agency and reduce shame, such as body doubling and setting strict boundaries around management time.

Christine: There's a lot of things that you can do that don't actually hurt that much to get yourself ready to get ready to go. Right? So you don't need to just jump right in. I would actually say often start watching shows, listen to podcasts, watch podcasts. There are definitely people out there who are really talking with real people about their money and they're looking at the numbers and the — you know, like make it real.

And it doesn't mean that you have to jump into the new system, but normalize that this is something you can talk about. I think additionally, you'd be really surprised when you acknowledge to somebody else that you're just struggling with something and you're feeling embarrassed or you're feeling like you're behind — whole lot of people can be incredibly kind and encouraging.

They might offer some unhelpful advice, they might offer some helpful advice, but a lot of them will say like, "I get you," "I feel the same way," or "I worry about some of the same things." You know, the more that you can desensitize yourself to the topic in general, the more comfortable you can be when you engage with it.

Body doubling is a wonderful thing to do. Scheduling a body double appointment if you've got somebody who you can trust to hop on for 10 minutes and you both just pay that bill, whatever it is. What I really like especially if you can do body doubling that includes like a video component is that your nonverbal working memory doesn't have to work as hard to make the pictures happen in your brain that involve like sitting at a computer and paying a bill because you've already cued that up by the visuals of like you're looking at somebody else and they're going click-click-click, or you're sitting near them.

So whenever possible, set the stage for you to do the things you want to have done. I think it's wonderful to be able to automate if you can. You've got to make sure that you leave a margin in your account, so don't automate down to the last penny — always build in a margin.

And I think — this is advice that people don't like, but I'm not wrong, so I'll stick to it — which is, you know, with ADHD we have this difficulty regulating our attention. And sometimes we're like, "Okay, today's the day! I'm going to roll up my sleeves, I'm going to dive in!" And next thing we know, it's like two days later and we've eaten nothing but popcorn and cereal and slept three hours and we can't remember what day it is.

On any given day that's a bit iffy, but definitely if I've had a few days of deep dive hyperfocus — like it's a mess and I'm a mess. So a hyperfocus session on your money when you are just starting out will backfire.

Cate: That's great advice.

Christine: Even if you get a lot done, the next time you think about engaging with your money, your brain will do that little energy analysis and be like, "I do not have time for that. Nope. Nope. Can't do it. Do it later."

And really money management is — in some ways it's terrible because it's one of those like, you know, do it relatively frequently and it's all like boring and, you know, short-term kind of stuff. Like just log in for 10 minutes. And like the task transition is so heavy for us.

So set a timer when you first start looking at your money. So first kind of like listen to podcasts, normalize this, start talking about it, get your brain ready to go. Then next, set a timer and like you should not be logging in for more than 15 minutes at a time in week one. No. Like turn it off.

Figure out a way, have somebody who is going to like pull you out. Like what is it in "The Odyssey", right? Like the sailors, he was like, "Tie me to the mast and stuff cotton in my ears", right? Like to get past the sirens. And like that siren song of, "I'm going to fix it all at once" — like you have got to prepare yourself for that and set boundaries because that's the only way that you're actually going to be able to really build a healthier relationship with money.

It's like we don't need to get married on the first date. We don't need to spend a whole weekend together. Like why don't we just say hi and, you know, get to know like where you're from? Like kind of do that with your finances. Like a nice, like an old style of courting, you know?

Cate: Court your finances.

Christine: Yes! Court your finances. You don't need to marry that topic and like just get a little comfortable because you need to build that trust in yourself, in your ability to fluently step into a relationship with your money and also step out back into the relationship that you have with the whole rest of your life.

Cate: Genuinely, I think that might be some of my favorite advice that anyone has ever given on this show. I love that, like court your finances. That's so good. So I guess then the follow-up question because we're talking a lot about relationships. So for couples who are trying to get on the same page financially, where do you recommend that they begin as a partnership and as a couple?

29:48 A four-step partnership plan for couples to improve financial transparency and cooperation without jumping straight to conflict.

Christine: I think visibility is step one. And visibility is for many couples not the first step that they are able to take because they're not able to hold onto their emotions and hold their emotions in check while they're actually seeing each other's finances, right? So we have this tendency to jump from seeing something to fixing something.

Cate: Oh, I'm so guilty!

Christine: Right? And that's ADHD, that's neurotypical, but like we just we just want the problem to go away, right? So something I really recommend is like a four-step — and I usually will if it's a couple, I will force it. Like we are not doing these on the same day.

There is the information discovery part. Just get your passwords. Like get it, get it all in a single place. Put it all in a folder, whatever. Set yourself up with an app that has like the couple where you can both see — like just get it all set up.

The next stage is organization. So just under — like assign categories. Just get a lay of the land. You're not actually making any decisions. So organization. The next one is analysis. Like now you're looking for patterns, but only after you've pulled together everything, organized it, analysis. And then only finally at the end do you start like planning and problem-solving.

So a lot of times what happens with couples is they get a little bit of information. I love to start with transparency, that's really important, right? That information discovery. But then they jump right to, "Why do you go to Starbucks so much?"

And I'm like you can have a big fight about Starbucks, but if you have combined housing expenses that are like 50% of your gross income, no amount of Starbucks is going to fix that. No amount of nitpicking each other is going to be able to make a dent in a ratio that is that out of balance, right?

So you really need to get all of your information pulled together, organize it, only then do you begin to look for patterns and analyze, and only after you've actually analyzed it do you say, "Okay, where do we want to put our energy? What do we want to fix first? Do we want to fix a couple little things? Do we want to go after a big thing? Like we actually can't afford this house. 50% of our gross income is unreal. There's no way."

Right? Like how do you want to do it? And that's when you start to do it and then be willing to come back and revisit. Treat every intervention as a pilot, as a test run. Because it's never going to be perfect because you don't know everything you need to know yet.

Cate: Please welcome to the show our new co-host, Dr. Christine. No, thank you, this was amazing. Thank you so so much. This was, oh my god, this was so fantastic.

Christine: This was fun.

Cate: Thank you for listening. Anything mentioned in the episode will be linked in the show notes with more resources. Have a question, comment, burning story you'd like to share? Email us at sorryimissedthis@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

"Sorry I Missed This" is produced by Jessamine Molli and edited by Jesse DiMartino. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright. Production support provided by Andrew Rector. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. And I'm your host, Cate Osborn. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you again soon.

Christine: That's a really good question.

Cate: Thanks.