The System for Managing Money When Your Brain Won’t Cooperate with Nicole Stanley

Julie: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the System for Everything Podcast. Today’s system tip: every online purchase should sit in your cart for 24 hours, unless it’s after 9:00 PM and you’ve had a hard day, then it counts as self-care. There are very few things that create more shame than money, not because we don’t care about it, but because so many of us feel like we’re constantly failing at it.

And we start budgets, we abandon budgets, we promise ourselves we’re finally gonna get organized to save more, spend less, and somehow become the kind of person who enjoys tracking every dollar. And then when it doesn’t happen, we assume the problem is us. But what if the problem isn’t discipline? What if the system itself was never built for the way your brain works?

Today’s guest is Nicole Stanley, a financial coach and the founder of Arise Financial Coaching and creator of the Momentum Money Method. She helps women and couples build ADHD-friendly money systems that replace [00:01:00] shame, confusion, and constant money spiraling with clarity, automation, and a plan they can actually stick with.

Nicole has helped hundreds of women become confident with their money, and her work has been featured on Good Morning America, Yahoo Finance, Time, CNET, and more. If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t I just get it together?” This episode might completely change the way you think about money. Welcome, Nicole.

Thank you for being here.

Nicole: Thanks so much for having me.

Julie: All right. We’re gonna start as we always do with the system reboot, a quick little reset to start our episode with some humor and humanity. What is a hobby you have started with absolute full confidence and then just quietly abandoned?

Nicole: Oh my God, running.

I started running. I actually think about that. I started running and, um, I even, like, posted about it, like, started… You know, I, I somehow got in the algorithm around, um, like, runners who run long distance, and it’s, like, a guy who runs, like, 30 mile mar- not 30 mile, 300 mile marathons.

Julie: No, gross.

Nicole: I, I mean, [00:02:00] crazy.

And I was so… I was like, “Look at him. He looks happy. I wanna be happy.” And so I, like, started documenting myself running. I quit after like two weeks. Not that I won’t, like, move, but I just, um… Man, that was a big, uh, public, public fall for me.

Julie: All right. What is a task you always underestimate how long it’ll take?

Nicole: Oh, responding to my emails. Just one more email. Just one more, and two hours later. Yeah.

Julie: All right, and what purchase became, uh, what purchase seemed completely unnecessary until it became one of your favorite things?

Nicole: You know, I bought myself some good pens, and that is completely unnecessary because everybody has pens.

Like, I already have pens. They just suck, and I was getting frustrated, frustrated with, like, you know, just, like, finding them and whatever. And so I did some research one day, and I was like, you know what? Here are my two… This is my favorite pen right now.

Julie: Um, also, I’m aware [00:03:00] that this… Wait, what? Is it this pen?

Nicole: No, I like that pen, but this is-

Julie: Oh, okay …

Nicole: the

Julie: good one. I will w- I will post our pens.

Nicole: Post our pens. Link ’em to our Amazon Storefront. No, I’m kidding. I don’t have one.

Julie: On social, guys, as this is no longer a video podcast. And what, what brilliant content that was, Julie. Um, whatever. I liked it. All right, everyone, you’ve met the personality.

Now meet the powerhouse. Nicole spends her days helping women untangle one of the most emotional, frustrating, and misunderstood parts of adulthood: money. What makes her perspective so compelling is that she doesn’t start with spreadsheets. She starts with behavior. Because if a financial system only works when life is perfect, it’s probably not a very good system.

Here’s my conversation with Nicole Stanley on the system for managing money when your brain won’t cooperate. I think one of the reasons money feels so emotional is that we often treat it like a character issue. Like, if someone can’t stick to a budget, the assumption is, oh, [00:04:00] they’re irresponsible. If they overspend, they’re careless.

If they avoid looking at their accounts, they’re immature and lazy. But most of us wouldn’t talk about any other challenge that way, so let’s start with the assumptions we’re carrying. When someone first comes to you for help, what are they blaming themselves for?

Nicole: So what I’ve often found is that people try to ignore any sort of feelings they have about money until it becomes a problem.

Meaning, like, you wouldn’t think that the average high earner carries financial stress, but they do. Like, I’ve had clients who make close to poverty level all the way up to making a million dollars a year, and I have found that, like, people believe that if they just make more money or whatever stress they’re carrying, it’s kind of like this is just the way it is.

Like, this is the way it’s supposed to be, right? And it isn’t until that [00:05:00] stress becomes louder, and that it changes for everybody how it becomes louder, right? It could be a high earner who their life becomes so big that they struggle to keep up with it, and then they forget about taxes, and they forget about how expensive those private school tuitions are, right?

Like, but then at the same time, it can be somebody who makes less money and they’re feeling stressed because they thought they really liked their job, the career path they chose, but they kind of committed to it, and they can’t go anywhere, and they’re, like, doing something that’s a caretaking, right? Like people who are teachers or nurses, right?

Like, and they feel stuck in that path as well. And so I believe that, like, most people ignore their baseline of financial stress because they’re used to it. And what I would love to invite everybody listening today to know is that your money doesn’t actually have to be stressful Like, that isn’t something that ac- that has to be a part of your life, no matter your income.

Julie: It’s, it’s not supposed to be.

Nicole: [00:06:00] Well, I, I would actually say that it is supposed to be because of the United States, right? A little bit.

Julie: Oh, God. Fair.

Nicole: Just for profit. Okay. Fair. Right? So there are a lot of institutions that spend a lot of money to make sure people are stressed about their money, but I would say that most of us just, like, have a way that we grew up with money or a way we observed others interact with money, and they actually have found through studies that the average person decides what they believe about money by age seven.

Julie: Oh.

Nicole: By age seven. And so I don’t know about you, Julie, but there aren’t that many things that I trust my seven-year-old self to be a decision-maker about.

Julie: I don’t know. I was a giant nerd. I, I think I could’ve run a bank. Do

Nicole: you trust yourself?

Julie: I think I could’ve run a bank- Okay … like, better than 40-year-old Julie.

Nicole: Girl, okay. Okay. So maybe you need to get in touch with her. But I think most people would look at their seven-year-old self and say, “Well, clearly that was my parents’ way of [00:07:00] thinking.” Right? ‘Cause that’s-

Julie: Yeah, of course. I mean, where else are you learning it?

Nicole: Right. And so when you talk about how, like, people associate things with, like, a character flaw, I actually think it’s more an identity thing, that the way that they feel about money is the way that they’ve actually always felt about money.

And I just wanna remind everybody that the way you think about money is something that can grow and change over time. Once you decide to notice it and say, “Oh, maybe I’d actually like to not have a stressful relationship with money. What do I need to do to not have a stressful relationship with money?”

That in itself is a growth mindset that many people never feel permission to even entertain because it’s like, well, this is the way it is, and what if it didn’t have to be?

Julie: What are the most common money behaviors that people describe as personal failures that are actually symptoms of executive function challenges?

Nicole: Overwhelm [00:08:00] is one. So, and I would say this is without, with or without executive functioning, um, money is a very, like fluid topic. Like, there’s a lot of details that come into someone’s financial picture. And so most people feel overwhelmed by money management in Amer- I mean, statistically over 70% of Americans say that their biggest stress in life is finances.

So that’s what we know to be true. But if you add executive functioning on top of that, where you struggle with those kind of detail and multi things happening at once, then it’s a nightmare for people with ADHD. Because, you know, when you have that mindset, because of your, let’s say, the way your brain works, which is, man, this is a lot of details, I’m like overwhelmed by this.

Well, the result of that is if you’re overwhelmed by it, then when you have these moments, these pivotal decision moments that can make or break your financial life, [00:09:00] or hurt you or, you know, help you, not make or break, that’s a little too drama. But then you, you lose those opportunities because you’ve already bought into the belief that this is too overwhelming for you, right?

You can’t figure this out. And so then the result of that is usually, like less good financial choices, which then results in More overwhelm, and then results, right? It, it’s kind of this, like, negative cycle. And so the first step, I think, or the first symptom I really see is the symptom of overwhelm, and I believe that overwhelm comes from too much information at once, where you don’t know what to focus on first.

And that’s when I think a system or a framework that you can walk through so that you can get not overwhelmed, whatever the opposite of overwhelmed, in each category, is so beneficial for people with ADHD or without ADHD, right? Because really, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Same thing with your [00:10:00] finances.

Julie: I think a lot of listeners are probably having a realization right now that some of their financial struggles might not be about math at all. Like, they may be about attention or executive function, and just the sheer number of decisions that money requires us to make every single day. Um, which brings us to a phrase I know is gonna resonate with a lot of people, ADHD tax.

Can you explain what that actually means?

Nicole: So the ADHD tax is kind of like a, a very popularized idea of to have ADHD, which is true, right? Like, if you look at the studies, we pay more in interest, we pay more in late fees. We- it costs more for us to do things, ’cause maybe we lose more things. Like, there’s kind of this, like, cost with having this diagnosis that’s hidden, and I think in some ways, though, that reality becomes almost like an [00:11:00] explanation to be able to say, “Well…”

Julie: Yeah, an excuse.

Nicole: And what I believe to be true is that those taxes or those things that we typically forget are the clues for the ways that we need to set up our structure and system and our finances so that we don’t have to pay those, right? ‘Cause I mean, if you think about it, ADHD is really like we are present in the moment, and so When we are paying and, you know, pa- it’s, there’s like a pain associated with that tax.

If we can see that pain for what it is and feel it, I think many of us feel motivated to stop that pain from happening, ’cause we don’t like pain, right? So I think it’s helpful to say, “Well, if I keep paying this late fee,” right? Instead of saying, “Eh, it’s the ADHD tax,” I’d rather say, “Actually, let’s change the system,” because we know we’re not gonna [00:12:00] remember it.

So let’s automate it. Let’s automate that bill so that we’re not worried about it. Oh, that leads me to another fear, which is what if I don’t have enough money in there? Okay. What system do I need to set up to make sure that I always have money for those things, those bills that are coming out? Like, you see what I’m saying?

It’s kind of like a deducing to see when someone with ADHD has a system that works for their brain, I believe the ADHD tax goes down, but I also think that we don’t need to just look at ourselves and say, “Well, it just costs me more. I just get to pay 20% more for everything.” No. You’re working hard. You should be able to keep 20%, you know, or whatever percent of your money, right?

And not feel like that’s something we have to pay.

Julie: Can anyone actually run your business? Like really run it? Access the passwords, find the contracts, contact our clients, locate the invoices, figure out what’s due next. Most businesses are living on one person’s [00:13:00] brain, and that is terrifying. This episode is brought to you by the Entrepreneur’s Death Folder, the system that organizes everything your business literally cannot afford to lose.

So if someone is listening and they are overwhelmed, avoiding looking at their accounts, and just like f- overall feeling behind, what is the first thing you would have them do?

Nicole: The first thing that I would have them do is to tell themselves that they are not going to solve it in one day, so to let that go.

To let it go, for them to know that, like, every person, again, like you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and to break it up into bites. Because what I often see with people with ADHD is they get super hyper-focused, really, really in it, right? Really, really in it for like two weeks, and then they just burn themselves out.

And so instead of banking on that, I want you to hear from me that I’m a financial professional, and I have people break it up into [00:14:00] different sessions so that each session can be a win for themselves. The way that that looks for the average person if they’re not working with a coach or, you know, whatever, is like you first start with my first goal is I’m gonna pull 12 months of transactions in my checking account.

That’s session one. Session two … I mean, that’s not what I do in my sessions, but, like, session one for yourself. Session two, I’m literally gonna highlight my bills, and then I’m gonna know, hey, these are my monthly bills. Then I’m gonna look at those bills and I’m gonna say, “Do I want all these bills?” Maybe I’m gonna cancel a couple that I don’t want, right?

Or I don’t even use that subscription. Then I’m gonna say, “Okay, next up I’m gonna look at my spending and just get to know it.” Right? I’m just gonna, no judgment, and I encourage people to just look at all of the spending and then add it up and divide it by 12, and be like, “This is my average. This is my average.”

When I take my bills and I take my average spending, does my income line up? Am I in the positive or am I in the negative? [00:15:00] Right? If I’m in the positive, dang it, what am I doing with that money? Or, you know, you get what I’m saying? It’s kind of like, like it’s very simple. There is … Personal finance, the math is, like, plus and minus.

So when people say, “Oh, I’m not good at math,” and it’s like I think really it’s an overwhelm with all the data. And so I think that it’s once you can see am I in the positive or am I in the negative, I like to just put the past in the past and say, “With that knowledge, what would I like to do moving forward based on what I know about myself?”

And that stops people from being I don’t wanna say, like, over-optimistic, but many people don’t look at their past, or they look at it with too much of a fine-tooth comb, and they need to know all the different categories. And they say to themselves, “Well, you know what? I’m gonna spend $200 a month on eating out.”

And it’s like, but if you have just looked at your data and you can see that you actually on average spend $600 a month, if you set up a plan you’re gonna fail at, how good are you [00:16:00] gonna feel in 30 days?

Julie: I think, yeah, a lot of people try to design these budgets for their ideal self, that organized self, the, the version of themself who meal preps and never impulse buys anything.

But, like, that person rarely shows up.

Nicole: She’s not here. She’s not in the room with us. And if she is, let us, let her surprise us, okay? But I like to plan out people’s financial life based on two options. You ready? The first option is they’re exactly who they already are. That will happen, and I usually add a little more to that.

So if that was your spending amount, I usually add a little more. Or if we have to make changes, I try to pick the easiest thing. The other one is that you end up showing up as your best self, and then there’s extra money. Both sides, you win.

Julie: That’s really smart. I love that.

Nicole: Right? But most people set it up for the perfect self, and then what they end up doing is they get frustrated because they aren’t perfect.

Surprise. And then what they say to themselves, they say, “Well, I’m just bad at [00:17:00] this.” And I say, “But what if you had a different framework to make those decisions and to set up that system? I bet you you could actually be way more successful.”

Julie: How do you know when a system needs adjusting versus whether you’ve just simply had a really rough month?

Nicole: I don’t think there is such a thing as a rough month.

Julie: Ooh. Okay.

Nicole: Yeah. A lot of people come to me, and they say they did bad. What do you mean you did bad? I’m not quite understand. Like, there is no bad with money. Like-

Julie: You wouldn’t say dumping it all on a credit card?

Nicole: Did you, like, steal it? Did you steal money?

Julie: Oh.

Nicole: You know what I mean? Like-

Julie: Were you involved in a heist?

Nicole: Were you involved in a heist? But, like, uh, so that’s what I think is interesting, is like what does that mean to be bad with money? Did you wanna go and enjoy yourself? Like, was that fun? Why is that bad? Why do we associate that with being bad?

That’s not being bad. That’s actually a great use of your money. Did we not have enough in your budget to plan for that? Why [00:18:00] did we not have enough? What’s wr- what’s the problem? What… Were you stressed at work? Was something going on? Right? Like, there is no bad. There’s only feedback.

Julie: Ooh, that’s good.

Nicole: Yeah.

If you view money in terms of morality, it’s no, anybody, it’s no wonder why you dread managing it, because it’s the judgment. It’s like the big Judge Judys, like, coming in to judge you. What if there’s no judgment? What if it’s just, like, feedback, and we learn that it’s like, “Oh my God, Julie wants more money for this.

How do we get Julie more money for this?”

Julie: Oh, I tried to think of something really frivolous. Pens. I want more money for pens.

Nicole: Do pens make you happy, Julie?

Julie: I mean, yeah, but, like, I have a box of these, so I’m good. I’m set right now.

Nicole: So, but like, that’s the thing is, it’s like, what, did it, does it make you happy?

Do you want more money for that? Do you feel you don’t have enough money for that? Or would you rather it be another way? Someone might say, “You know, I spent it on clothes, but I’ve been wanting to go travel.” And I say, “That’s something worth talking about.” It’s like, how can we get more of that money [00:19:00] towards the thing you want more?

Julie: Yeah, the thing you really want.

Nicole: Yeah, it’s just like how do we connect your money to what you value?

Julie: All right, what’s a surprisingly simple system you’ve seen that’s worked incredibly well?

Nicole: Well, I’m gonna toot my own toot-toot, but my budgeting system, which anybody can steal whenever they want, which is I believe that every person, uh, for clarity’s sake, should have three accounts.

An income account that gathers their income all month long, that’s connected to no expenses. None. No card is even attached, you know, spending card. And then on the 25th of every month, they should have an automation that funds their bills and their spending, and there should be enough in there. Not like a, we hope every bill is perfect, we hope if the, the heat was just fine, but that they can fund their spending in full and their bills in full, and then that there’s money left over.

That’s it. Like, I think that that’s a system that works well because you never have to wait on a paycheck again. You only have to get ahead once. [00:20:00] You get ahead one month, that’s it. Your temperature on all your financial decisions can go down because you’re not waiting for the paycheck. You also never have to swipe your card and wonder, “Will this hurt my bills?

Do I have enough money?” Like, why do, why do we, why do we have the same checking account for our bills and our spending, right? It’s so stressful. And then our income, and we’re like, “Ah,” tracking everything. So that’s, like, a very simple thing anybody can do that they can get more clarity because you just look at an account, and it tells you, “Here’s how much I have left for spending.”

And the rule, the only rule is, try not to run out of money. And then if you run out of money, we need to find a way to put more money in there. Like, if you run out of money consistently, that tells me we just need to find a way for more money. What do we need to do? Cut bills a little bit? What do we n- uh, do we need to change your…

What do we need to do here? But it’s, like, a problem to be solved, not, like, a character flaw that you just need to, like, condemn yourself for.

Julie: I wanna look at the bigger picture ’cause I think most people are actually [00:21:00] chasing money. Like, they’re, they’re not, they’re not chasing the money itself, they’re chasing what money makes possible.

What changes when someone finally feels in control of their money?

Nicole: I believe that what I see happen in my clients over and over again is when they come to me, they feel like their life is not in their control. Money is just a symptom, right? It’s your job. It’s how you spend your time. It’s what you do for fun.

Money is just a symptom. And so when somebody feels financial stress, they really are feeling stress about their life in some way. And so what I love about taking control of your money is that it gives people, it gives you the power back to be the decision maker in your life because you know how to use money as a tool to get there.

And that in itself, I’ve seen it change the complete trajectory of people’s lives, the complete trajectory once they learn those skills, and they were able to break that mindset track that was just telling them, like, “Oh, well, I can’t do that ’cause of money,” right? Like, ev- we have all these [00:22:00] tracks already in our head, and I just, like, always like to verify, like, but, like, are they actually true, though?

Like, I just had a call this morning with a woman who hired me, and just so much stress. Her children have been sick. Her husband works horrible late hours. He works so hard. She hasn’t felt very responsible, in her words, about their money, and she hasn’t known… She’s just been, you know, working hard to be…

She’s, like, a stay-at-home mom, husband working 80 hours a week. She has all this guilt, all this shame that she’s been carrying for a decade. They’ve been married for a decade. She’s me- she’s messaging me before our session about how, you know, like, she’s so nervous about being judged. She’s so nervous about it.

Girlfriend’s a millionaire.

Julie: I did not expect that.

Nicole: And girlfriend had no idea, and she just sobbed at the end because she realized that for 10 years she had been telling herself that she hurt her family, that she was hurting her family because [00:23:00] she didn’t know how to manage money. The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality.

She also has been living in a small, small, small house ’cause she’s told herself they can’t afford another house. They can’t afford to move. She’s been living in, like, a really small house with three children for, like, three years longer than she had to And no idea. No idea. And like, I truly feel like financial education is just the ability to make better decisions quicker in your life, like the right decisions for you.

It’s the fact when we don’t have financial education that we, we have all these other stories about why it’s not po- you know, “Oh, I can’t. No, that’s too complicated. I’m overwhelmed.” What if you weren’t though? Like, what if you weren’t overwhelmed? What, what decisions might you make? And I think that that is like a really powerful question for people that most people aren’t…

They don’t think they’re allowed to ask.

Julie: Well, we’re gonna [00:24:00] give you permission then, everyone. All right, before we wrap, please tell everyone where they can find you online, how they can connect with you, how they can work with you.

Nicole: Oh, if you are somebody listening right now and you want to feel more empowered about your money, you can follow me on Instagram, um, or you can just book a call with me if you wanna talk about your specific situation.

We help a ton of families, small business owners, individuals all over the country take control of their money and put their money towards their goals. So if this resonated with you, you can go to my website at arise.financial and, um, book a free call with me.

Julie: Thank you so much, Nicole. I think one of my favorite things about this conversation is that, that it wa- it isn’t really about the math, you know.

It’s about attention and paying attention, and when you start thinking that way, you realize there’s all sorts of things that we track and monitor and protect and obsess about every single day. So for today’s system shutdown, I am gonna count down five things we budget more carefully than actual money.

Number five, [00:25:00] days we can go without washing our hair. Number four, the final episode of a show we’re binging. Number three, the amount of your toddler’s current favorite fruit left in the fridge. Number two, the amount of socializing we can handle this weekend. And finally, number one, your phone battery percentage.

One of my favorite ideas from today’s conversation is that being good with money isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about building these systems that support the person you already are, because so many of us spend years assuming that we lack discipline or motivation or willpower, when in reality we’re trying to force ourselves into systems that were never designed for us in the first place.

Nicole, thank you so much for joining me and for bringing so much compassion to a topic that often comes with a lot of shame. And to everyone listening, if this episode made you rethink the way you’ve been approaching money, please send it to a friend. Chances are they’re carrying some of the same assumptions.

Don’t [00:26:00] forget to subscribe, leave a review, and come back next week for another conversation about the systems that quietly shape our lives. See you next week