Managing money is hard for many people — but for neurodivergent professionals, it can feel downright impossible. Executive dysfunction, inconsistent energy, systemic barriers, and the pressure to “manage it all perfectly” often results in a cycle of stress, avoidance, and shame.

Combine this with other pressures like workplace transitions or job hunting, and you’ve got a recipe for major burnout. That’s precisely why we hosted our most recent Office Hours Q&A session, Financial Advice for Struggling Neurodivergent Professionals, led by guest expert Jesse Lee, Finance Educator at Kaizen Lemonade.

If money management advice has never really resonated for you, this is one talk that you’ll definitely want to check out. Read on for the recap, or watch the full recording at the bottom of the article!

About the Experts

Veronica Yao (she/her) is a career coach and owner of Atypical Careers, specializing in supporting neurodivergent professionals. She helps her clients build sustainable work lives, break free from burnout, and advocate for themselves in their professional environments.

Jesse Lee (she/her) is the founder of Kaizen Lemonade, where she creates neurodivergent-friendly money systems built for real life. A hard-of-hearing neurodivergent, she turns complex financial concepts into simple, usable tools. Her work is shaped by lived experience, including a period of homelessness earlier in life, which gives her a grounded understanding of how people rebuild from zero. Today, she helps others strengthen their financial stability one practical step at a time.

“I'm not sitting here pretending to be a millionaire… what is true about where I'm at right now is that I'm no longer drowning." - Jesse Lee, Kaizen Lemonade

The Realities of Money Management

Before diving into strategies, Jesse emphasized an important truth: “Financial struggle for neurodivergent people isn’t a personal failure — it’s often a systemic mismatch.”

Here are some of the most common barriers she explores:

Disability Is Expensive

Tools required for accessibility — such as noise-canceling headphones, hearing aids, therapy, medication, or organizational tools — can significantly increase the cost of living. This is something that most of our peers do not have to consider.

Unstable or Inconsistent Income

Neurodivergent burnout cycles, discriminatory hiring practices, and inaccessible workplaces contribute to the 30–40% unemployment rate among neurodivergent adults. For many, income predictability is the exception, not the norm.

Struggles with Traditional Budgeting

Systems like rigid spreadsheets, envelope budgeting, or “just stick to it” approaches often fall apart under fluctuating executive function. It’s extremely difficult to force our brains to adhere to systems that don’t suit the way they function.

Avoidance and Emotional Spending

Procrastinating on bills, panic spending, and using purchases for dopamine regulation are common — and tied to nervous system responses like overwhelm or shutdown. These are not reflections of your morals or willpower.

“These patterns aren’t evidence that you’re irresponsible,” says Jesse. “They’re evidence that the system wasn’t built for your brain.”

Mindset Frameworks for Neurodivergent-Friendly Money Management

Instead of focusing on strict budgeting approaches, Jesse shared mindset models designed to help people understand their patterns and make informed decisions from a regulated place.

The Traffic Light Check

There are 3 mental states that people typically find themselves in regarding finances:

Red Light Mode 

This is also considered “survival mode” and is based on the core belief that a support network and relationships is the foundation for security, not money. People in this mental state believe in prioritizing their networks and connections over financial alignment. 

While there is value in maintaining personal relationships, the fact is this state is not sustainable long term. This often leads to fear-based decisions, which can result in more mistakes made and eventual burnout.

Yellow Light Mode 

This is also referred to as the “middle class” mindset, where money is prioritized and often equated with success and status. The focus for these individuals is to earn, spend, and save their money within a traditional system.

The challenge with this mental state is becoming trapped in a predictable cycle. They often shy away from the necessary risks it takes to build actual wealth. As a result, they may have enough money for their daily expenses, but they sacrifice time and freedom.

Green Light Mode

This is what we refer to as the “wealthy” mindset. For people in this state, they view time as the most valuable asset – money is seen as a tool to purchase back time so they can grow and scale different areas of their lives. 

This can only be achieved once your basic needs are met and you have a certain amount of financial stability. It requires the individual to view money as a resource rather than a source of panic or a symbol of status and success. 

Remember, we don’t want to attach morality to any of these mental states. There’s nothing “wrong” with any of them – it’s simply a reflection of your nervous system and circumstances.

The Shame Detox

This is a fundamental tool for neurodivergent professionals looking to interrupt financial patterns and habits that are not serving them. The idea behind this process is to reframe past financial “failures”.

“Money mistakes are behaviour loops — not identity traits,” says Jesse. By viewing mistakes as behaviour patterns rather than personal failings, it becomes easier to detach your self worth from your financial history and move forward. 

Here are some of the common financial behaviours for neurodivergent folks that stem from this shame:

Avoiding bills until you can no longer ignore them.

This happens because the brain (specifically the amygdala) perceives the bills as a threat, leading to executive dysfunction hijacking the task and resulting in avoidance.

Emotional spending and hyperfocusing on pleasure projects.

This is often a coping mechanism resulting from an unregulated nervous system. Due to issues with dopamine regulation, individuals may hyperfocus on pleasure-seeking spending or projects, neglecting urgent financial responsibilities.

"Renting identity from your panic."

Often, we mistakenly believe that all our problems will vanish once we fix this single financial issue. For example, if you can just get a full-time job, all your issues (outstanding debts, etc.) will be resolved.

Believing your financial past dictates your financial future.

This is a common cognitive distortion that prevents individuals from believing change is possible. Just because you have a low credit score now does not mean you can’t have a better one in the future!

4 Steps to Shame Detox

1. Name it: Identify one specific, repeating money mistake without emotional reaction or judgment. The goal is to see the pattern clearly.

2. Claim it: Acknowledge the pattern as a recurring behavior (a "behavior loop") and firmly separate it from your identity. The mistake is something you did, not who you are.

3. Reframe it: Ask what the behavior was trying to protect you from. For example, was avoiding bills an attempt to protect yourself from feeling overstimulated, overwhelmed, or burnt out? This shifts the focus from fault to function.

4. Replace it: Choose a micro-action that is immediately within your "spoons" (energy and capacity) to replace the old pattern. This could be checking your bank balance for 30 seconds without trying to fix anything, or pre-deciding one small spending rule for the day.

The Antenna Theory

This metaphor is a great tool to help us understand the difference between how neurodivergent brains process information as opposed to their neurotypical peers. 

Imagine, a neurotypical brain that has one stable antenna that consistently picks up a single, clear frequency. Very straightforward and easy to process the incoming signals. 

Now, picture a neurodivergent brain with several antennas, pointed in different directions and picking up multiple frequencies at once. In other words, this brain is absorbing a massive amount of information and stimuli at once. 

Now, neurodivergent folks can’t change how many antennas they have to work with. It’s not like we can pluck off the extra ones. But what we can do is align and focus them in a single direction. This process takes us from a scattered, chaotic state to a strong, focused state.

Now what does this have to do with finances? Jesse says that wealth and finances are not just a number, but rather, an “aligned signal” where a person’s thoughts, emotions, and actions are all synced up. Alignment is essential for creating momentum, as misalignment is what blocks the “reception” of opportunities.

The Canoe Theory

Jesse uses this lesson to describe the different states of alignment for neurodivergent folks, and the importance of guidance over forceful action. This lesson applies to many areas of life, but it is especially relevant when it comes to managing careers and finances. 

Picture this: you’re paddling a canoe upstream, fighting against the river’s current. You might move incrementally, but the force you’re up against is hindering most of your progress. This represents when people try to force things to happen in their life that were not really meant for them. 

For example, forcing yourself to work in a corporate environment for the money, despite your indifference or dislike of the workplace or the job, is not a sustainable setup. Sooner or later, you will burn out from fighting against the current. 

The second scenario involves letting go of the paddle. You sit in the canoe and stop all effort to drive the canoe forward. In this state, you can conserve energy – however, you will eventually drift in an unplanned direction, causing you to lose your way or get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. 

Think of this like staying at a job you are mentally checked out at. You put in the bare minimum at work, and you don’t make any effort to move forward in any direction. Sooner or later, your situation will change – perhaps your company gets bought out and you don’t like the new management. Maybe you get laid off, and suddenly you’re without a job or any prospects. That is the risk of letting go of your paddle.

In the third scenario, you align the canoe with the river’s current and guide its direction with the paddle. This represents proper alignment; working with “the flow” while making small, deliberate choices to direct where you go. 

In real life, this looks like searching for work opportunities that align as much as possible with your strengths, interests, and motivations. For example, finding a line of work that capitalizes on what you do best. Then, you can steer your way through individual scenarios – for instance, deciding which employers are the best fit for you, whether you should be self-employed or not, etc. 

Of course, we have to consider the white water rapids of adversity. In these situations, if you are aligned with the current, there is no benefit to panicking or fighting the force of the rapids. Instead, it’s best to continue steering through your obstacles with intention. 

Remember, periods of intense struggle are always temporary. If you maintain your course, stability will return.

The Amazon Theory (Wealth Expectation)

The last lesson Jesse shares is a short but impactful look at how we perceive “wealth frequency”. This theory compares the process of building wealth to the act of ordering a package from Amazon. 

Imagine that you just submitted an Amazon order. Immediately after hitting the “purchase” button, you shift into a state of “expectation” – in other words, you’ve accepted that the items you bought now belong to you, and they are on their way. You probably do not panic or worry or doubt that the item will arrive, you just accept that it will take some time to arrive.

This illustrates the neurodivergent tendency to imagine things going wrong. We often make a habit of going through all the worst case scenarios, whether it comes to our work lives or our finances. It’s the equivalent of submitting your Amazon order, and freaking out about the tracking number and planning for if the package doesn’t get delivered. This panic and anxiety prevents you from feeling like wealth is actually happening, or that it’s possible for you to achieve. 

By getting into a state of “expectation”, you are actively making choices to improve your chances of reaching your financial goals. For example, making space for what you ordered – it’s like clearing off a shelf for the item you bought on Amazon. In a financial context, this means creating systems, habits, and emotional stability so you can properly manage wealth building opportunities down the road. 

Emotional Regulation Comes Before Strategy

Perhaps controversially, Jesse states that when it comes to building financial resilience, emotional stability is more important than job stability. 

Many neurodivergent adults assume that earning more money or finding a “better job” will fix everything — but if financial decisions are still being made from survival mode or dysregulation, the same patterns will continue.

To build stability, Jesse recommends starting with predictable and manageable steps, such as:

• Setting up autopay for your bills
• Creating small, repeatable routines
• Making micro-decisions instead of large ones
• Building habits slowly and compassionately, instead of changing everything in one day.

The goal isn’t perfection — it’s slow, sustainable progress. And Jesse says she is proof that this approach works. 

“I have more spoons than I used to,” she says. “Not because life got easier, but because I finally stopped burning them on chaos and guilt.”

Watch the Full Office Hours Recording