Taking care of your finances is important, specially as something that you want to not have to think about. For that is important planning which is hard specially for ADHD. I divided in to 3 areas:
Day to day management - keeping track of your day to day
Budget/ year planning - make a budget for your year to know how much you can spend
Long term financial planning - how to plan for your retirement
Day to day management
Goal: I have control over my expenses and know where the spending is happening and have tips and tricks on how to save money.
System to keep track: using Toshl Finance to keep track of the expenses
how do i make sure that things are tracked correctly
Review everyday yesterday expenses and make sure they are in the correct order
Do it as part of the morning routine
Expenses categories
Principles:
Categories should allow to be useful for budget/expense tracking
How to think about category vs tag
Categories are unique, so they are needed for budgeting your total amount; things that might be substitutable (eg. going out for museum or cinema) should be in same category
Tags allow 2 goals
subcategories of categories (eg. sportsequipment in clothing)
tags across categories for particular insights (weekendgetaway for weekends away)
How to think about yearly vs monthly expenses
Month budget should be only recurring things that happen in the same month
How to save money
Principles:
Saving is only relevant if total cost is considered
cost of time: how much more time i need to spend for getting that saving and what is the cost of that time
cost of money: if i need to put a lot of money upfront for a 1% savings (money would be better invested)
extra costs: if i need to drive it costs extra gas
Always on the look for opportunities, specially quick wins
Areas to look for
Recurring purchases (like grocery items that are non perishable)
Big ticket items -
Recurring memberships / cots
Loyalty programs/coupons on places you shop frequently
research how to maximize Pingo Doce/ Continente
Talk with my father, research online
Taxes opportunities
Research tax breaks
Budget / Yearly planning
Goal: I am able to successfully manage my cash inflows/outflows to achieve my goals
Breakup budget:
Monthly budgets
Food/Groceries
House
Leisure
Annual budgets
Travel/Vacations
Health
Stuff
Long term financial planning
Goal: I get to a point where I have financial freedom