The budget that doesn't punish your ADHD brain

Most budgets fail neurodivergent people for one reason: they assume you'll log every purchase, every day, forever. You won't — nobody does — and that's a design flaw in the budget, not a failure in you.

The ADHD Money System asks for one thing: 3 minutes, once a week. No daily logging. No categorising every coffee. No shame when you slip. Miss a week? Just pick it back up.

What makes it different

The 3-minute weekly check-in — the whole system runs on one short Sunday ritual, not daily data entry
A built-in Dopamine Budget — a guilt-free spending line, on purpose, so impulse buys stop derailing everything else
A visual dashboard that fills itself in — green means on track, and that's all you need to see
A shared / household tab — money with a partner, split fairly, no awkward guessing
Zero-shame design throughout — falling off the wagon is built into how it works

What's inside

The ADHD Money System spreadsheet — 7 tabs: Weekly Check-In, Dashboard, Monthly Budget, Bills & Subscriptions, Savings Goals, Shared Household, plus a plain-English Start Here guide. Works in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and free LibreOffice.
The Quick-Start Guide (PDF) — get set up in five minutes without the overwhelm
The Impulse-Pause Prompt Pack (PDF) — 20 copy-paste ChatGPT & Claude prompts that talk you down from an impulse buy, get you un-stuck when you're avoiding your money, and hand you quick wins

Instant digital download. No subscription, no login — yours to keep. Works in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.

A planning tool for your household, not financial advice, and not a treatment for ADHD. If money feels genuinely unmanageable, free UK help is available from StepChange and National Debtline.

The ADHD Money System — Budget Spreadsheet + Prompt Pack | Excel & Google Sheets