The exact budget setup I use with an ADHD brain (every screen, every number)

People ask what I actually use. Not what I recommend, what is on my phone right now. So here it is, screen by screen, with real (rounded) numbers, including the parts that are slightly embarrassing.

Short version: six categories, one weekly number, five minutes on payday, and a rule for the weeks I ignore it completely.

The screen I open on a Tuesday

One screen. Six horizontal bars: Home, Food, Transport, Known bills, Fun, Savings. Each bar shows how much of the month's amount is used. Under them, one wider bar: Fun this week, with the amount left.

That wider bar is the only thing I look at during the week. If it says $61 left on a Thursday, I know exactly what the weekend looks like. If it says $4, I know that too. It takes about as long as checking the weather.

There is no transaction list on this screen. There is no "uncategorised" pile. I do not type in purchases. I have tried every app that wanted me to, and each one lasted about two weeks before the pile of unlogged transactions became a small source of shame I stopped opening.

The six categories and what is in them

Take-home is around $3,200 a month for this example; change the numbers to yours.

• Home: $1,420. Rent, utilities, internet, phone plan, insurance, the one loan minimum. It has not changed in six months. I set it once and stopped thinking about it.
• Food: $320. Groceries only. Takeaway is not food, it is Fun, and calling it Fun was the single change that made this number stop lying to me.
• Transport: $110. Fuel and parking. Car insurance and tax are yearly, so they live in the next box.
• Known bills: $210. Car insurance, car tax, two annual software renewals, the dentist, birthdays (eight of them, I counted), and a holiday fund. Added up for the year, divided by twelve. This box is why nothing has surprised me since I set it up.
• Fun: $640, which is $149 a week. Everything else. Eating out, coffee, subscriptions, clothes, books, the plant I did not need. One number.
• Savings: $500. Leaves by automatic transfer on payday morning, before I see it.

Six numbers. I can recite them. That is the test.

What payday looks like (about five minutes)

Money lands on the 28th.

• Savings goes out automatically. I do not do anything; I just see the bar reset.
• I open the planner and confirm the month's figures. Usually nothing changes. If a bill has gone up, I change one number.
• The Known bills pot gets its $210. In the app that is one tap; the pot bar moves and the list underneath shows what it is covering.
• The Fun bar resets and shows the weekly amount for the number of weeks until next payday. Some months it is $149; a five-week month it is $128, and the app works that out so I do not have to.
• I close it.

That is the whole monthly routine. I used to spend a Sunday afternoon on budgets. Now it is shorter than making the coffee I drink while doing it.

What a missed week looks like

Here is the embarrassing part: about one week in five I do not open the planner at all. Old me would have treated that as the beginning of the end. Reopen, see a blank week, feel behind, "start fresh next month", never start fresh.

Now: I open it, the Fun bar shows what is left for this week, and I carry on. There is no blank week, because there was never anything to fill in. Missing a week costs nothing, so a missed week is not a failure, so I come back.

I cannot overstate how much of the whole system rests on this one property. A budget that punishes gaps will not survive an ADHD brain. A budget that does not notice gaps will.

What I do when Fun runs out on a Wednesday

Move money. Usually from Food if the fridge is full, occasionally from Transport if I have been working from home. In the app it is a drag from one bar to another. I do not touch Savings (it has already left) and I do not touch Known bills (that money belongs to March).

There is no rule that says I have to suffer until Monday. A budget is a map of where the money is, not a set of punishments.

Savings goals I can see

The Savings bar splits into goals: emergency fund, and a "new laptop" pot. Each is a bar that fills up. When the transfer lands, the bars move. I know that a number ticking up in a bank app did nothing for me for years, and a bar filling up somehow does. I have stopped questioning it.

What I deliberately do not do

• Link my bank. Every import creates a pile that must be dealt with. The pile is the enemy.
• Log receipts. The weekly Fun number tells me what I need to know.
• Monthly reviews. The Tuesday glance is the review. If one bar is red three months running, I look inside it. Otherwise I leave it alone.
• Decorate. The app is plain and so is the fridge page. Decorating is setup, and setup is where the interest goes to die.

Why it is an app and not the notebook I started with

I started this system on paper. The six boxes worked from day one. The weekly number worked. What broke was the maths: dividing yearly bills by twelve, recalculating the weekly number in five-week months, keeping running totals. That is the exact kind of small, boring, recurring arithmetic that I will avoid, and avoiding it meant the numbers drifted from reality within a couple of months.

So we built the ADHD Budget Planner to be the notebook with the maths done. Same six boxes. Same weekly bar. Same payday routine. It does the dividing, the resetting and the "how many weeks until payday" for me, it does not care if I ignored it for ten days, and it lives on my phone, which is where I am when the decision happens.

Copy it as it is

You do not need my numbers. You need six boxes you can recite, one weekly number you can carry, a payday routine you can finish in five minutes, and a rule that says a missed week costs nothing. The rest is detail.

Want the same setup on your phone? The ADHD Budget Planner is the tool in this post: six categories, weekly Fun bar, Known bills pot that divides yearly bills for you, visual savings goals, no bank linking and no receipt logging. Works on phone, tablet and computer, works offline, your data stays on your device. One payment, no subscription, in your inbox within a minute of buying. Open the free demo to see the Tuesday screen.

FAQ

What budgeting app is best for ADHD?

One that does not ask you to log transactions or clear an import pile, shows a small number of categories visually, and treats a missed week as nothing. Whichever tool you pick, test it against those three.

How do you budget with ADHD when you keep forgetting?

Build the system so forgetting costs nothing: automate savings and known-bills on payday, carry one weekly number, and use a tool with no blank rows. See why budgets fail ADHD brains.

Do you track every expense?

No. Only the weekly Fun total, as a single number. Everything else is planned once on payday.

How long did it take to set up?

About twenty minutes the first time, most of it listing yearly bills for the Known bills pot. Use the sinking funds worksheet and it is quicker.

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