“What Costs More: The ADHD Tax or the Shame It Brings?”
“I can set my bills to autopay. I can scrutinize my bank statements. I can remove eBay and Amazon apps from my phone; I can keep due dates in a planner and stick Tiles to everything I can’t tie down. But I can’t fix everything. I’d have to rewire my ADHD brain.”
1 Comment: “What Costs More: The ADHD Tax or the Shame It Brings?”
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Thank you for this article. It does help assuage the shame to know that I’m not alone, and I’m forwarding this to a couple of close friends as you’ve explained the challenges better than I. A few more examples from my own life: forgetting to keep track of mileage and expenses, and then forgetting to submit expense reports so that I didn’t get reimbursed. Losing track of time so the parking meter runs out, then not paying the $10 parking ticket on time so it becomes $50 or $100. When I stopped using the library because I couldn’t get the books back on time, I bought more books. I’ve been a free-lance web developer for over 25 years but I forget to track all my hours and hate writing invoices, so sometimes I bill people as much as a year late and charge only 50-75% of the true total. Ka-ching!
I was just diagnosed last year at age 70, and though I made a good salary for quite a few years, I have no savings other than my home equity. I would give so much to have learned sooner just why these seemingly simple tasks were so difficult for me.