Editor’s note from Fisher: Courtney Gagnon writes about life as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and runs the ADHD Bad with Money Club. Her writing about money shame and building systems that work with your brain instead of against it is exactly why Cake Budget exists, so I asked her to share her story here. Courtney is a Cake Budget partner. Everything below is hers.

Around the age of 40, after decades of pretending money was not that big of a deal, the pandemic and medical issues forced me to look at my relationship with money. And honestly? It was rough.

Money had always been a source of shame for me. My parents had a relationship with money that could be kindly described as schizophrenic and anxiety driven. Their fear and anger connected to money, along with the scarcity mindset they exhibited through stealing money from clients and several family members, worked its way into my nervous system.

I decided to be the opposite of what I witnessed with my parents: I would just ignore money and assume it would always work out for me, while never planning for the future with it. I got my first job when I was 12, and even before that, I was always trying to earn money through little chores around the neighborhood, which, honestly, was always stolen from me by my brothers.

While I wanted to be responsible and good with money, it always scared and overwhelmed me. Then life got complicated fast. I was pregnant with twins in a medically complex surprise pregnancy, had a toddler at home, had just moved to Florida from 1,500 miles away, and was in and out of the hospital almost every week. Suddenly, I was looking at three children to support and a pile of medical bills. I was terrified.

I started reading books and listening to podcasts about money and behavior because I was trying to figure out why I had always struggled with it. At the same time, my twins were born and spent their first year dealing with a series of medical issues. My older son was also struggling. COVID restrictions made the transition to school even harder, and I started realizing that he needed behavioral and therapeutic support. I got a lot of pushback from my now-ex-husband, but eventually my son started occupational therapy.

By kindergarten, when my son’s teacher recommended an evaluation for ADHD and autism, I wasn’t surprised. I had already started seeing so much of myself in him. The more I learned about my son’s behavior, the more I wondered if some of the things I had spent my entire life blaming myself for were connected to the way my own brain worked. So I found a provider who could evaluate me for ADHD. At the time, I thought I was trying to understand my son better. I had no idea I was about to understand myself, too.

After my ADHD diagnosis, and later my autism diagnosis, I went through a period of grieving. I had spent years believing my career history, with more jobs than I could count, and my financial struggles were personal failures. I kept wondering what my life might have looked like if I had known myself earlier. I was angry that my parents, teachers, therapists, and even bosses in education had never suggested I might need to be evaluated for ADHD. Instead, I spent years trying to catch up to systems that weren’t built for my brain while hiding how much I was struggling.

For much of my life, I really believed something was broken inside of me. Eventually, though, I realized I couldn’t stay in that space of grieving. My diagnoses didn’t change my past, but they gave me a different way to understand it. I stopped asking what my life could have looked like and started asking, “What can I build now that actually works for my brain?”

That shift is a big part of why I created the ADHD Bad with Money Club. It focuses on three areas:

Understanding your money patterns
Creating financial systems that work with your brain
Building confidence, income, and a better financial future

While it is geared toward ADHD women, the tools can really help anyone who is neurodivergent and struggles with money. I think of it as part financial coach, part therapist, and part teacher for neurodivergent minds.

As a former educator and entrepreneur, I pulled together ideas that I’ve learned, taught, and used to help other people make changes in their own lives. I love helping people learn, especially when that learning finally gives them a little more clarity about themselves.

If you feel guilty about the financial choices you made before your diagnosis, I get it. I have felt guilt, too. But you can’t go back and make different choices with information you didn’t have. At some point, we must stop beating ourselves up for what we didn’t understand and start figuring out what works now. Your diagnosis can give you a new way to look at your past, but it can also give you a starting point for building a completely different relationship with money.

Courtney Gagnon runs The ADHD Bad with Money Club and writes Neurodivergent Career Coach on Substack.