Mad About Money: Managing Finances (and Life) with ADHD

By Maddy Alexander-Grout

Mad About Money will help you to make sense of your life if you are neurodivergent or suspect you might be.

Maddy, a 40 year old mum of two, has had her fair share of struggles with money, life and business without always understanding why. With her ADHD and Autism diagnosis, everything suddenly made more sense, and she has used her diagnosis to improve her life. Mad About Money: Managing finances (and life) with ADHD is not your typical money book, it is an unfiltered, honest, sweary and inspiring journey through the life of an undiagnosed neurodivergent woman. Award-winning writer and CPD-accredited neurodiversity specialist , money and business coach Maddy Alexander-Grout walks you through the story of her life. By sharing her own difficulties with money, spending, and debt, she shows you how to apply the lessons she learned in climbing back from over £40000 in consumer debt. But this book is not just about money, it's about the struggles she has had along the way as an undiagnosed neurodivergent with ADHD, Autism, Dyspraxia and more.

This book will give you actionable tips to navigate life as a neurodivergent, manage your money, learn to understand your brain and make sense of your past, especially if you are, or suspect you, are neurodivergent.

In the book:

• Applicable strategies for managing your money, parenting , mental health and starting a business as an undiagnosed neurodivergent
• Tips for managing your ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions
• Strategies for how to deal with a range of financial challenges—including debt and spending addictions—when you're neurodivergent

An essential read for anyone who is neurodivergent or suspects they might be, especially if they have struggled with money and life up to now. Mad About Money is empowering, insightful and the perfect read for anyone who feels misunderstood in a world designed for neurotypical people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Apr 21, 2025
• ISBN: 9781394299737

Book preview

Mad About Money

Managing Finances (and Life) with ADHD

Maddy Alexander‐Grout

Logo: Wiley

This edition first published 2025

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Author Photo: © Katie Needle

For my Bear, Ben and Harri.

Foreword

Like Maddy, I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until much later in life – I was 42 when I received my diagnosis. With all of the recent awareness online particularly towards women's ADHD, I knew that's exactly what I had been experiencing all my life but I was still shocked when I was diagnosed. Learning how to manage my ADHD but also finally being on the correct medication rather than having a ton of antidepressants thrown down my neck, it's safe to say that it's been life‐changing.

Like Maddy, I also went the long way around when it came to getting a diagnosis, which involved making some pretty bad decisions in my life in my 20s. You may have even read about it in the papers at some point in the early 2000s!

I developed an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, I got into a lot of debt, I had broken relationships and a 19‐year battle with my mental health. It was as though I had become a 90s popstar cliché! In 2020, I had, had enough! It was time to completely change my lifestyle. I quit drinking, went plant‐based and took up running, which was the beginning of my journey to a happier and healthier life.

Changing my lifestyle meant I could manage my mood so much better – I had more energy and had more clarity. I wasn't chasing quick fixes from alcohol and food anymore and having the extreme highs and the brutal lows. However, I did notice, if I didn't work out I felt empty and low, frustrated, extremely scatty and generally a bit lost, just like I had done all my life. Therefore, I kept throwing myself into running challenges and gym classes, which in turn was having a detrimental effect as I was often ending up with burnout.

When I started perimenopause, all my ADHD symptoms highlighted, even when I was running and going to the gym. I spent a year shaming myself and beating myself up for my mishaps and not being able to regulate my moods. I went for blood test after blood test to see if this was the menopause, but every time it came back that there were no signs of hormone change. Just as Maddy did, I disappeared into hyperfocus‐fuelled online research and discovered an incredible community of people with ADHD – thank goodness there are people out there sharing their stories.

This meant I could finally get the diagnosis I had frankly needed all my life! When the psychiatrist announced the words ‘I can confirm you have inattentive ADHD’, I went through a short period of being angry that this hadn't been picked up sooner. Especially considering I had been in and out of my doctors for 19 years trying to understand my anxiety and depression, desperately trying to get them to understand that antidepressants weren't right and was it something else I was experiencing? It's even come to light that my ADHD gets worse when I'm hormonal and this can be the case for many women – it was horrific when I was pregnant and postnatal.

I am passionate about people getting diagnosed early, to save the pain, confusion, shame and heartache I endured for 42 years. Through this book and her own content, Maddy is on a similar mission.

We both know what it feels like to feel as though you don't fit into the world as everyone else sees it. We know how damaging that can be for your self‐esteem and confidence. And we want other people to get the support they need to embrace their ADHD traits and live amazing lives where they work with their brains, not against them.

This book isn't just for people who have ADHD, or suspect they do. It's also for anyone who lives with or knows someone with ADHD. You'll learn a lot about how to support an ADHDer in your life by reading this, and you'll get a much better understanding of the condition and all its nuances.

So, read Maddy's story. She has shared an incredibly honest, open and brave account of her life with you in these pages. Along the way, she shares a host of valuable tips and advice to help you on your own journey to better understanding and managing your ADHD.

I only wish there had been books like this available to me when I was younger.

Singer, Actress and Performance Coach

Suzanne Shaw

Acknowledgements

For my family and friends who have supported me unwavering through my life, my diagnosis, my permanent oops mode* and writing this book.

For my Invisible To Influential members who cheerlead me in everything I do.

For the specialists who helped me with tips, and generously contributed their advice. Without them, this book wouldn't have been possible.

Thanks to Marie Edwards, who created the full‐page illustrations in this book, G Sabini‐Roberts, who is responsible for the logo, image and cover designs, and Katie Needle who took the fabulous photo of me that's included on the back cover.

And for every single one of my followers on Mad About Money Official who give me my daily dopamine hits.

Preface

Hi, I'm Maddy and I am a money, business and social media coach for people who have invisible conditions. I spent my life feeling like a failed horse when, really, I was a beautifully normal zebra. I just didn't know for the first 38 years of my life. I felt like I did everything wrong all the time.

I have what I describe as a fruit bowl of neurodivergent conditions:

ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is characterised by patterns of inattention, impulsivity and sometimes hyperactivity that interfere with daily life.

Autism: a spectrum disorder which affects how you communicate, interact socially and process information.

Dyslexia: this primarily affects reading and language processing, making it difficult to spell, read or recognise words accurately and fluently.

Dyspraxia: this affects motor coordination and planning leading to challenges with physical tasks and sometimes speech.

Dyscalculia: this affects your ability to understand and work with numbers, often impacting mathematical reasoning and basic calculations including money.

Dysgraphia: this involves difficulties with writing and affects handwriting, spelling and organisation.

Oh, and discombobulation (OK I made that one up).

I also have an autoimmune disease (a condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own cells and tissues), I'm perimenopausal (the transitional phase before menopause when a woman's body begins to undergo hormonal changes leading to the end of her reproductive years), I have PMDD (premenstrual disorder – a severe form of premenstrual syndrome and a chronic condition that causes intense physical, emotional and behavioural symptoms in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle), and half the time I don't know if I'm coming or going. I have bright hair, sometimes it's rainbow, sometimes pink, sometimes blue. The only thing I change more is my underwear!

I'm always the one doing crazy stuff; starting a new business, dancing on a bar on a night out, and accidentally going to a fetish club. Yeah, that happened once! I'm going to tell you my story. Strap in! It's bumpy. I am also going to talk to you about how my neurodivergent conditions have shown up in my life. I was diagnosed with most of them when I was 38; I'm 40 as I write this! And it's eye‐opening. Before my diagnosis, I didn't feel like I fit into this world. Now, I absolutely love my life and my brain.

I'm a huge music fan and all the chapters are dedicated to the songs that remind me of times in my life. Everyone has a soundtrack to their lives and a mixtape that captures their personality. The titles for these chapters are part of mine. If you want to listen along you can download the playlist from Spotify here:

A QR code with the text get The playlist above it.

Those of us with ADHD often listen to the same song on repeat because this helps us focus and maintain our energy, as well as giving us an immediate dopamine hit. A familiar song provides predictability and control in our environment, which creates a sense of security and can be really grounding. I've certainly found that listening to a familiar song on repeat helps me get into a flow state and avoid decision fatigue and procrastafaffing*.

This book was produced in collaboration with Write Business Results Limited. For more information on their business book and marketing services, please visit www.writebusinessresults.com or contact the team via [e-mail].

Trigger warning: This book contains my story, which includes sexual assault, rape and suicidal thoughts. I also talk about prenatal and postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis. It’s important that we talk about these difficult topics, but if any of those are too much for you, just skip the relevant sections and read the rest. There’s a trigger warning in the relevant chapter too, just so you know when the hard stuff is coming up.

Introduction

It's important to know that this book isn't just about money. It's about life, relationships, business, family and more. It's my ADHD journey.

But although I have ADHD, this is not my defining characteristic as a person. There are many things that make up ‘me’ – ADHD and my other conditions are just a few of them. I'm also a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a business owner, a TikTok creator and so much more. So, while I own my neurodivergent conditions, they don't define me.

That said, they have had an impact on me my whole life. A big part of my story is about money. No matter how you look at it, money makes the world go round, and whether you have none of it or lots of it, money affects everything around you.

There are usually two types of people when it comes to ADHD and money. The people who hyperfocus know exactly what they are doing and are living life on full blast. And the people who spend dopamine get caught with ADHD tax, struggle to manage money, never have any of it, can't hold down a job and are always looking down the back of the sofa to find a coin for the supermarket trolley. I was the latter.

If you have neurodivergent conditions and money problems, you are not broken. It's really hard to manage money as a neurodivergent, especially when you don't know you are. This is a story of me and undiagnosed ADHD, how I got into £40,000 of debt – and how I got myself out of it. I don't hold back. I talk about my failed relationships, my failed businesses and my messed‐up life before realising I was neurodivergent. It's also a story of how my neurodivergent conditions have shown up for me over the last 40 years, warts and all.

I have to tell you early on, I'm an oversharer. I'm about to get mega vulnerable with you guys. In fact, writing this book feels like I'm getting naked in front of not just you, but an entire stadium full of people! I had this realisation while at a Foo Fighters gig at Wembley, where I was trying to get an endorsement for this book from Dave Grohl (spoiler alert, he didn't get back to me).

This book will make you laugh, it may make you cry, it will teach you to be better with your money and neurodivergent conditions. If you don't have money problems, you will still find this book useful. I hope it will inspire you to achieve your goals and realise that if I can start smashing life, you can too.

I have what I like to call a fruit bowl of neurodivergent conditions, but I haven't always known about them. Despite the word money being in the title of this book, it is not a boring money book. Far from it. It will help you to be better with money. It may even help you to start a business. It will definitely help you if you have or suspect you have a neurodivergent condition.

I'm hoping you will relate to it and learn a thing or two on how to thrive when you are neurodivergent whether it's with money, business or life. Because this book is written for people who have (or suspect they have) ADHD, I have written it in a way that either you can hyperfocus on it and read the whole thing, or you can just pick out the tips you need by flicking through. Whichever way you do it I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

There are tips scattered throughout the book and you might notice some of them seem to be the same. That's because sometimes we need repetition for the message to get through.

I've also reached out to a whole host of experts in different areas, and they have kindly provided tips and advice specifically for this book. I'm not an expert in everything, and I've found other people's support invaluable on my journey, so I wanted to share that with you too.

This book comes with a warning: I don't sugarcoat things, and sometimes the only way to describe life's chaos is with a well‐placed f‐bomb or two. I know that navigating business, money, and life's struggles can get messy, frustrating, and downright ridiculous. So, to keep things real – and a bit colorful – I've put together a ‘fuck glossary’.

Consider it your go‐to translation guide for all the creative, sweary language that captures the ups, downs and WTFs we face along the way. Hopefully it'll make you laugh too! So, when you see a word or phrase pop up followed by a *, flip to the glossary and get the lowdown. Think of it as a f**k‐filled dictionary that keeps things interesting and reminds you that it's OK to embrace the messy, unfiltered journey.

And man has my journey been messy at times. It's also been traumatic in places, so be aware that I will talk about difficult topics, including sexual assault, rape, depression and suicidal thoughts throughout this book.

Chapter 1

Just a Girl

Just a Girl by No Doubt – from their album Tragic Kingdom

This song is super powerful, and it makes me feel empowered, it made me feel like I wasn’t just a silly little girl.

Before we get to the age where I was rocking out to No Doubt, I'll tell you a bit about my childhood, which, in all honesty, was great. I grew up in a quiet village called Over Wallop. It's in the middle of nowhere, and it didn't have much in the way of amenities – a little shop with a post office, a phone box and a cricket field.

Village life was far from riveting. There were no bright lights or big cities in my childhood.

My parents were loving and my sister Rebecca and I never went without, although I think at times they did struggle for money. My mum worked in IT and my dad was self‐employed, and they both worked really hard.

My dad owned his own business and worked as a rubber merchant at a rubber factory where they made products like matting, hoses and gaskets. Unfortunately, kids hear rubber and think ‘condoms’, so I often got teased about it. Our surname, Comrie, didn't help either – apparently it sounds like condom, so I was given the nickname ‘Maddy Condom’ around the age of nine, which is pretty scarring for a child, even though at that age I had no real idea of what a condom was!

I know that compared to so many people we were really privileged. We lived in a bungalow on a little hill next door to a farm. We had a huge garden with loads of space to run around.

My parents each had their own cars because they worked in different locations and, as I'm sure you can imagine, a village as small as ours didn't have a particularly regular bus service.

That's a broad picture of what my really early life looked like, but what was I like?

WHO AM I?

I wasn’t a particularly hyper kid, not a problem child. I did have loads of energy and I bounced from one activity to another. I think by the time I was about eight years old, I had tried every hobby and musical instrument that my parents could afford to let me try.

Flute, recorder, violin, bass guitar, piano, clarinet – you name it, I'd probably had some lessons and then moved on before making much progress. But my hobbies weren't restricted to music. I also tried trampolining, judo, gymnastics, pottery and horse riding. None of them stuck. I just changed my mind all the time.

My parents were amazing and were very understanding about my many hobbies. They worked hard to provide for me and my sister, they were present, they were loving and they supported us in every way possible. The thing is, like many parents of children in the 1980s and 1990s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) wasn't on their radar, and it certainly wasn't a condition that people expected girls to have.

I doubt it ever occurred to my parents that I might have ADHD or any other condition that I talk about in this book. If you're reading this and you're a similar age to me, it's highly likely that your parents were in the same situation. There just wasn't the research or information available to educate us even 20 years ago that we have access to now. ADHD was just for naughty little boys.

It also has nothing to do with how you are parented or how much screen time you give your kids, I barely watched TV as a kid.

When I was growing up, ADHD and autism were just not common especially in girls. It wasn't my parent's fault in any way that I wasn't diagnosed with these conditions when I was younger. That's also true of your parents. After all, how were they supposed to know when I didn't know myself? The doctors didn't even know. Society didn't know.

Enable, Don't Label

If you suspect your child is neurodivergent, I'd advise you to get a diagnosis earlier rather than later. This isn't about labelling your child as one thing or another, but about helping them learn about themselves and how their brains work earlier in life and providing tools that can support them. In doing so, you're enabling them to succeed and navigate the world.

The key to any conversation about neurodivergent conditions, especially with children, is to help them understand that neurodiversity isn't wrong; it's just a difference. The way I like to think of it is that there are lots of different brains they just approach the world in a different way.

What it really comes down to is that the sooner a child can get a diagnosis, the sooner you as a parent can help them understand their brain and find their own ‘normal’. According to ADHD Aware, it's thought that 15% of people in the UK are neurodivergent.¹

Based on the size of the UK population as I write this, that's over 10 million of us. Imagine the whole population of London, plus about another half a million people. That is a lot of people! So, although it might feel challenging and lonely at times, you are certainly not alone if you are neurodivergent.

If you suspect your child has ADHD, don't panic! This doesn't mean that they're damaged and there are many successful people in this world with ADHD – like Richard Branson and Simone Biles. Your child has incredible potential. There are more tips on what to do if your child has ADHD later in the book.

One of the reasons I think it's best to get an ADHD diagnosis as early as possible for your child is because this will allow you to help them in all areas of their lives, not just at school.

Most of us don't get any formal ‘money education’, ADHD or not. When you have ADHD, this doesn't help, as it can mean that you have a tendency to approach your finances differently.

When I was growing up, my parents didn't really talk openly about money, but I still wanted to know everything about it. I played with money from an early age. I had a post office set, a bank, an office and even a National Lottery (which was actually just a bingo machine). It was fun pretending I had won the lottery.

Shameless Plug

Look at money books for kids that are available. I've written one called That's My Money, which is illustrated by the fabulous Chris Dixon.

The real‐life money I was given was always spent on toys, books or games. Whatever my latest hyperfocus was, my money was heading its way.

My sister Bex and I were given £2 a week pocket money. My parents told me about