A woman sits at a desk in her living room and uses her laptop to pay her credit card bill.

9 Ways to Manage Your Credit Card When You Have ADHD

5 min read

Published February 19, 2025

Table of contents

Key Takeaways

About 15.5 million U.S. adults are living with a current ADHD diagnosis.
Discover® Card offers free tools that can help manage behaviors like maxing out your card, making late monthly payments, and buying things on impulse.
These Discover® Card features are free to all cardmembers.

Have you ever gone online to buy something, gotten distracted, and bought something totally different from what you actually needed? This happens to everyone now and then but is a more common experience for the estimated 15.5 million U.S. adults the Centers for Disease Control says live with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD.)

If you live with ADHD, you might struggle to manage your money. You wouldn't be alone. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, neurodivergence can show up as distractibility, difficulty prioritizing, trouble keeping track of important items and dates, and impulse spending. This can make it hard to stay on top of your credit cards and finances.

In fact, the impact of ADHD on money management is so common Cambridge University has a term for it: “the ADHD tax”. This could refer to things like credit card late payment fees, overdraft charges, missed purchase return windows, unnecessary or out-of-budget purchases, and other incremental costs that result from common ADHD symptoms.

The good news is that it is possible to improve your credit card habits (whether you’re neurodivergent or not) and avoid the ADHD tax when managing your finances.

Discover^® Card accounts come with nine features and digital based tools you can apply when managing your credit.

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Tools to help manage your credit card when you have ADHD

Discover^® Card has several tools that can be especially helpful for neurodivergent (and neurotypical) cardmembers alike. Payment automation, alerts and reminders, and our Spend Analyzer are among the free tools that any cardmember can use.

1. Mobile app and online account center

The Discover mobile app or online account center helps with organization and time management by keeping all your important account information in one place that you can access whenever the urge hits you. And little things like paperless statements organize your statements in one convenient place, so you don’t have to hunt down where you put your mail.

2. Spend Analyzer

Managing money is hard but can be even harder if you’re impulsive or easily forget what you spent your money on. You can use the Discover^® Spend Analyzer to track your spending¹ because it presents visual information about your spending trends and patterns. You can use that to:

Track your spending
Learn about your spending habits
See your charges for the past one to six months
Compare your spending across categories
See a spending breakdown in a pie chart
Picture your monthly trends in a bar graph
Catch up with your transactions in a list

It might sound scary (did you really order that much fast food?) but remember: knowledge gives you power to help you make positive changes to your spending habits.

3. Text support

Some days you may not have the energy to talk to someone but still need to get things done. If you’re not comfortable speaking to support on the phone, you can talk to a real person from our customer service team any time¹ through our messenger app.

4. Recurring Charges dashboard

We all have recurring bills to pay—bills that keep the lights on and our cell phones working. But what about those free subscription trials you may have forgotten to cancel (that you didn’t realize have been charging you for months) or that membership that sneakily has been raising the price without notice?

The Recurring Charges dashboard can help you view and manage each automatic payment you make with your Discover Credit Card.

5. Alerts

Get a little extra support by using account alerts. They can tell you how much you need to pay that month and when—which can help you avoid late payment fees and interest charges. They can also help you budget by helping you set and keep track of spending limits.

Whether email or texting is your thing, you can turn on alerts for the things most important to you—or turn them off if they’re too much noise.

Some credit card account alerts you can get from Discover:

Your new monthly statement is available tells you what you spent and owe.
Your monthly payment is due reminds you so you can avoid missed payments and late fees.
Transaction exceeds amount helps flag big transactions to reinforce your spending limits.
Balance exceeds amount. Sure, you might have a $5,000 limit on your card, but you can only afford to pay back $1,000 each month. Pre-set your own limit, and stay in the loop—especially if you have multiple users on your account.
Fraud alerts help you stay on top of potential security risks.

Did you know?

With a Discover Card, you get all these features plus rewards on every purchase. Choose the best credit card for you that earns the type of reward that matches your spending habits.

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6. Automate your Discover Card bill payments

If you lose track of deadlines, you can use Discover^® DirectPay to automatically withdraw your credit card payments from your bank account each month. (And if you worry about overdrafting, you can customize whether you pay the bill in full, the minimum amount due, or minimum due plus an additional amount you choose.)

7. View Discover transactions in your digital wallet

If you use a digital wallet on your smart device, you can review Discover Card transactions within the wallet. This works with Apple Wallet^®, Google Pay^™, and other common mobile wallets—but note that some apps might only display the transactions that you made using the digital wallet.

8. 24/7 customer service

Sometimes impulsivity can be an ADHD strength. And because Discover Customer Service is available any time, day or night,² you can talk to them when the impulse strikes you.

9. Freeze it®

Misplaced your card? Freeze it^® lets you prevent new purchases, cash advances, and balance transfers in seconds.³ So you can relax and take the time you need to find it.

The bottom line

If you have ADHD or are neurodivergent, you might have trouble managing your credit card. The free tools from Discover Card can help cardmembers stay within credit limits, prevent late or monthly payments, or refrain from unnecessary spending. Not all tools will be helpful to everyone, so try them at your own pace and see what fits. It’s possible to break your past patterns and use helpful tools to build more stability in your financial life.

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