Never Forget a Bill Again: ADHD-Friendly Money Management Strategies | 110

0:00 All right, hello, and welcome to today's episode. I just want to say a special shout out and welcome to Jade and Sherry for jumping on my website anddownloadingthefreeresourcesihaveavailableyoucanfindthose@debtrebelpodcast.com. If you're interested in learning a little bit more, I'm taking your next step. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for making this podcast what it is. It has been nominated for a Women Podcaster Award again for this year. So if you're listening to this live voting is taking place now.

0:32 So I would love your vote that is going to be in the show notes. And if you're listening to this after April 30th, 2026, voting has closed. But I appreciate your support very much. Today we're going to talk about forgotten bills. Why we forget bills? If you're the kind of person that says how do I stop forgetting to pay my bills? So missing a missing a bill does not mean you're irresponsible. It means that the system that you have set up currently isn't working for you. So it's broken. So let's talk about how we can fix it.

1:02 Because it's not that we are the type of people that say, hey, I don't really want to pay my bills, so I'm just going to forget about it. No, we just life happens. It slips our minds. There's so many other things on our minds. And if you're like myself and you struggle with ADHD, relying on our memory is not a great system right then, especially when it comes to our finances. And so I think this is one of the reasons why if you struggle with some of those, some of the symptoms of ADHD like executive dysfunction and time blindness, that this is where getting our bills paid on time can really feel like pushing a rock uphill.

1:38 So one of the things that I have found is reminders alone aren't the solution. I do have those set up on my phone to make sure that that those have gone through that certain bills have gotten paid. So I rely on automation a lot. And now I want to make sure that you hear me say that I'm relying on automation is not a crutch. This is a support tool that you can use for your brain. It's part of the system. It helps make sure that your bills get paid on time because we can think that, you know, maybe a week has gone by, but actually it's been 3 weeks, maybe it's been a month.

2:13 Or do you have those really annoying bills? I think they're super annoying because they only get paid every three months or every other month. So usually those are kind of like the utility bills, right? So we really want to make sure that we keep our water on and our power on for our families, right? So those types of things, making sure that the bills that are really important, I like to say automate the important things that are very important to like the survival mode budget is making sure those things are on auto pay.

2:41 Now that's something that I do and it has been very helpful for me. And I just make sure that, you know, we have them spaced out. You can talk to your your billers to find out if a due date can be changed. One thing that I started doing was paying them before the due date. And I know this sounds a little, this can sound a little bit crazy, but stick with me because this has been really helpful for us to stay ahead. So I will set up my auto pay. Now, one thing that I highly recommend is to use your bank's auto pay and not the provider.

3:14 You're you're whoever you're paying the bill to is not using their auto pay system because then that's more things you have to keep track of. If you can log into your bank's bill pay, most of them are free now and you can pay your bills right then and there. You can see when the dates come out, you can look at your calendar and know when your pay periods are so that you know how much money is coming in so that money will be there. And then I set those to you know that the next the next day. So if you get paid every other Friday, then that following Monday, I, I'll, I have that auto pay set up to go out.

3:49 And so I know during that pay period which bills are going to be going out and those, those are taken care of. So then I just use some reminders to double check and make sure, OK, those things have gone through. Everything is everything. Today's challenge is to just set up auto pay for one of your bills. Now this is, this is part of the overall system that I teach. All right. So if if paying your bills on time and missing those is a challenge for you, then I highly recommend setting up auto pay.

4:16 Now you might get your bill in the mail or if you get it by e-mail, which I highly recommend, This is a bonus tip. I've mentioned this a few times on the show before, but having an e-mail that is separate that it's separate from your personal, separate from your work e-mail. So I know it's one more thing, but the nice part about that is bills don't get lost and shuffled into into your personal e-mail. But also it helps with knowing, OK, this is my time that I have set aside to work on my finances.

4:47 So it's your, it's your weekly money date that you set with yourself. And you can go into that e-mail, see what needs to be paid. Make sure the auto pays like we're talking about today. Those auto pays have gone through or if any new bills are coming up. The nice part about that too is if you need to adjust some because some bills the same amount every single month, correct? So this helps you get ahead of it. You can adjust that auto pay and it simplifies the system. It takes a minute to set up, but today's challenge is to just set up one auto pay for one of your bills.

5:19 One that I highly recommend is your mortgage or your rent to make sure that that is taken care of and you're never behind in that one because you want to make sure you keep a roof over your head. So that's a great place to start or one of the other bills that goes into maintaining your household. So things like utilities, those are another place if you need some ideas on where to start with that auto pay, Having that set up is going to help you set up the rest of this system moving forward. And that's what we do inside the membership.

5:50 So I walk you through how to set up a simple bill pay system so that you don't have to worry about if your bills got paid, you know they're going to be paid. It's a bigger Peace of Mind for yourself, but also it's going to help you stay on track because late fees are the thing that will slowly drain your budget and you're not going to get you, there's zero benefit from it. So that's one thing that will, that's a huge, a huge benefit from auto pays is setting that up so that it is taken care of. So I know some people have some reservation and some anxiety about auto pay.

6:22 That's why I highly encourage you to do it through your bank's bill pay or auto pay, because that's one login. You can control it and you can stop it faster. If for whatever reason things get things get off track then having to log into each each place that you pay bills to and have to figure out, OK wait when does this one hit? When does this one hit? When does that one hit? If you use that, every dollar app like I use, it will help you also predict based on your pay periods when the best time to pay those bills is.

6:53 So for example, get paid on the 1st, but you pay your mortgage or your rent on the first, then that's going to be a bigger chunk out of that pay period. So maybe you pay some of your smaller bills for your next pay period and so you can set that up and having a calendar printed out to look and see when those do those are due is going to help you also. But you can use that every dollar app, there's a paycheck planning section in there that's really helpful to see whether or not when you can, if you need to change your due dates, that'll help you set that up so that your system is seamless and flawless.

7:28 And it's 1 less thing to think about, but it also takes care of itself in the background so you can focus on other things. So I hope that today's episode was helpful for you. It is a way to help get started in setting up your full financial system that's going to work in the background. And then you can do these little spot checks and maintenance stuff throughout throughout the month so you're not spending all of your time managing your money. All right, we'll talk with you in the next episode.