We love hearing from our PocketSmith users — whether you need a little assist using the software, or you want to share your stories of budgetary success. In particular, we’ve been thrilled to hear positive stories from our base of neurodivergent budgeters over the years.
Whether you’re autistic or dyslexic, have dyscalculia or ADHD, our software is built to handle it all. You can make your budget as customised or as pre-built as you’d like, and get reminders that serve as environmental supports as you work towards your financial goals.
Today, we’ll take a look at Sarah’s story and how Pocketsmith has served her and her neurodivergent friends across their various approaches to budgeting. No two neurodivergent minds are entirely alike — and your budget shouldn’t have to be, either.
Sarah has been using PocketSmith for eight years. In 2017, she was returning home from a stint working abroad. Upon her return, she needed software that would help her manage her money at home and the money she held in an old bank account in the other country from her past foreign paychecks. That’s because transferring the money across borders wasn’t the easiest or fastest process.
PocketSmith was the only software that fully addressed this multicurrency need. She could not only set up automated feeds for her domestic finances, but could also link her overseas bank accounts to get a holistic picture of her overall financial status.
She was thrilled to find that in addition to foreign currency capabilities, PocketSmith had the capacity to address many of her other needs as a neurodivergent budgeter.
Sarah is autistic, and for her, that means that she likes to set up her budget in specific, particular ways. Sometimes that means setting up budgeting categories that don’t exist in the default list. Other times, that means eliminating a category altogether.
For example, she went many years without a car. She simply didn’t have a need for one. Other budgeting software would always include multiple categories for vehicle expenses. She’d leave them blank, but they’d still show up on her spreadsheets, albeit with zeroes next to each line item.
With PocketSmith, she could delete them altogether, decluttering her budget and visual charts.
“With the customisation that’s possible with PocketSmith,” she says, “I can configure my budget to work with how I think about my money as opposed to having to change the way I think to fit the app.”
Sarah grew up in an extremely frugal household, and internalised this frugality as a ‘rule.’ At times, it can be difficult to convince herself to deviate from that rule, which means that she won’t always splurge on things that fall into the ‘want’ category — even when they would bring her joy without wrecking her budget.
“One of the things PocketSmith has been really useful for is enabling me to set different budgets,” she explains. “I can see that during periods when I have enough income, I can buy a ‘want’ even if it’s not a ‘need’ without being so strict with myself.”
If you’ve also got a hard rule for frugality and against spending on ‘discretionary’ items, remember that it’s okay to have fun with your money every once in a while when your budget allows. In fact, in some cases, spending on special interests can boost your overall mental health, which can in turn support your physical health.
Other people might tell you it’s a waste of money to buy action figures from your favourite anime series or collectable DVDs from your favourite TV show. They might say it’s frivolous to splurge on the Egyptian cotton sheets when they’re more expensive than the basic 100-thread count set you can buy at Kmart — even if you have sensory needs.
But we’re not here for that. The things that make you happy can increase your quality of life, and it’s more than okay to spend on them when you’ve got the cash to do so.
While not all spending is bad, and it is okay to break from frugality every once in a while, you do need to be realistic with your numbers. If you’re someone who has the opposite problem and tends to spend money even when you don’t have it, read on. We’ve got solutions for that, too.
On the flip side of the equation, some neurodivergent budgeters struggle with impulsive spending or overgiving. This often manifests with ADHD, though it can also pop up in other forms of neurodivergence, too.
Impulsive spending or giving can be framed as ‘spontaneity,’ and it isn’t always a bad thing — as long as you have the funds set aside to accommodate those impulses. PocketSmith has tools that can help you figure out where those guardrails are, even when you’re not actively thinking about your budget.
One option is to set up a separate deposit account where you hold your ‘free to spend impulsively’ money. You can also set this up as a separate budget using the bank accounts you already have linked to PocketSmith.
When your free-to-spend funds get close to depletion or the category limit, PocketSmith will send you an alert reminding you that it might be time to slow down until you have more funding in this category.
These guardrails don’t deny you the opportunity to be generous with yourself or others. But they do serve as reminders that if you overdo things this month, it may impact your ability to continue to be generous in the months to come.
Another way to approach overspending in any one category is by setting up a visual dashboard. Maybe learning that you spent $800 on clothes, concert tickets, and gifts doesn’t shock you when you see it in numerical form, especially when all those individual expenses are allocated to their own separate line items in your budget.
But a pie graph showing that you spent more on impulse purchases than groceries last month may serve as a wake-up call in a way that numbers alone can’t. PocketSmith gives you all the tools you need to get the type of reinforcement that motivates you best — whether your brain processes things visually or numerically.
Sarah goes through periods of hyperfocus, where she’s working on her budget so intensely that she’s getting a lot done. Breaking that hyperfocus is an inconvenience, and you can’t always predict when that mindset will strike again.
For that reason, she appreciates how PocketSmith’s customer service team goes above and beyond to address the rare issues that she has run into quickly and expertly.
“I’ve always been really impressed that the times I’ve had an issue, the customer service approach has been great,” she says. “Stuff gets fixed fast. And as someone who gets into hyperfocus phases and wants to solve a problem quickly, the fact that the staff are very responsive and very communicative is a big plus for me. I don’t see that with other budgeting apps.”
Sarah loves diving deep into the data. She has friends with ADHD who aren’t as enthused about the finer details, though. Occasionally, she’ll volunteer to help them out with their budgetary questions using strategies like future forecasting.
She loves working with people who also have PocketSmith. Her ADHD friends don’t tend to be as fond of spreadsheets as she is, but they’re easily able to export all their data from all of their bank accounts from PocketSmith into a spreadsheet. Then, Sarah can sift through the data to create budget forecasts, showing them what is and isn’t possible with their finances in the immediate to near future.
As she engages in this process, she notices that by and large, her ADHD friends tend to go for the default categorisations rather than getting super customised like she prefers to do with her own budget. But even with the default categories, the data is rich enough for her to produce accurate projections.
She notes that her experience with her ADHD friends doesn’t mean that all ADHD people budget the same. Nor does her own experience with autism mean that all autistic minds operate in a similar manner.
“If you’ve met one neurodiverse person, you’ve met one neurodiverse person,” she says. “Everyone is different.”
Here at PocketSmith, we value and accommodate those differences with the ability to customise your budget according to how your brain works. Whether that’s by using default categorisation and auto-populated budgets, or by using a system that’s entirely unique to you, we pride ourselves on building budgeting software that’s easy to use for each and every neurotype.
And if you ever do run into one of those rare issues where you need a little extra support, our friendly team is here to help you find a quick resolution so you can get on with what matters most: Bettering your financial future.
Want to share your PocketSmith success story? We’d be thrilled to hear from you! Reach out to our team at [email protected] to get in touch today.
Brynne Conroy is an award-winning personal finance writer, creator of the popular women’s finance site, Femme Frugality, and author of The Feminist Financial Handbook, which was an Amazon #1 New Release across multiple categories including Poverty and LGBTQ Demographic Studies. Her work has been cited in academic texts, and she’s spoken at venues such as Vanderbilt University, the Financial Planning Association and the 529 Conference. Here at PocketSmith, Brynne covers personal finance within American financial systems.
