Money management...how to explain it to an Aspie w/ NO CLUE?

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This just happens to be one of those skills I never had to force myself to learn. I grew up with a very poor but thrifty and money-savvy mum who taught me everything she knew, worked from the time I was 11, and was obsessed with saving money from the time I got my first monetary birthday gift. I've also lived on my own from shortly before my 16th birthday, and have since then been fixated (as in Aspie fixated) on NEVER EVER being poor again.

A friend of mine with Asperger's, however, is in the hole, big time....and I'm trying to help him learn money management. He's gotten a BIT better using what I've suggested, but he still seems to have a problem with the idea that when you're a grown-up with your own LIMITED money, necessities come first, and luxuries only come as you can afford them, when your necessities have been taken care of. For instance, FOOD is a necessity, overpriced concert tickets and random items for sale on Craigslist, are NOT. This person will actually brag about not buying groceries and how much money that saves, but take unpaid time off from work to go out and do unnecessary things that cost more than it'd cost to feed a family of 4 for a week.

I figure his problem partially stems from having too much support from his parents for too long, but I have to admit, that even with all MY problems, I'm sort of baffled as to how a grown adult doesn't know the difference between what NEEDS to be bought and what doesn't. Any suggestions?

The way that I manage my money is by logging into the website of my bank and looking at my bank balance. If I'm dangerously close to the maximum of money that I have in my bank, than I splurge on something. If the amount of money that's in my account is almost lower than I want it to be, than I slow down my spending, and set a $5 a day limit, until I get my next pay cheque. I do this a lot, because I use a debit card.

I think you explained it pretty well. This is probably confusing somewhat, but I personally use financial ledger software (Jabplite on my Blackberry, back it up to Jabp on my computer), then I enter in my anticipated weekly food and travel expenses as "standing orders", then I process them out with the rest of my bills (also processed as standing orders) a few months in advance. When I come to the week which the anticipated food and travel expenses occur, I delete the entries and try to come in at or under my allotted expenses for the week. My wages are entered in in a separate account in my ledger as "wages receivable", and I transfer the receivable wages into my bank account on my ledger only as paychecks are deposited in my bank account, that way my pay and expenses are separated, and it's obvious to any adult that paychecks will vanish before expenses will . Again, probably pretty confusing, but that's because financial management is one of my special interest areas.

For layman's terms though, explain that future expenses are a given, but pay isn't guaranteed, especially in this economy. If he doesn't get that, I'm afraid that he may have to learn a hard lesson. I've learned a few too many myself.

This may be one of the only areas I can help another aspie. That's an area of success that I've used to counterweight equally spectacular failures in other areas.

Most of the problems people experience with money management are pretty common to all people, NT, aspie, and otherwise. However, communicating the problems to an aspie might require a different approach. It would help if you could tell me a little more about your friend so I could have a better sense for what his specific issues are.

The first set of questions most people answer "yes" to:

Does he run out of money at month end (or week end) every month (week)?
Does he run out of money for emergencies or large annual expenditures like auto registration?
Does he have/use credit cards?
Does he get charged frequent fees for insufficient funds?
Does he have a problem with charging too much on credit and then having trouble making the payments afterward?
Does he get bailed out by his family or a friend(s) when he runs out of money?

The last questions most people answer "no" to (or lie ):
Does he have any savings?
Does he reconcile his bank account(s).
Does he have a budget?

There are no right answers to these questions. It just helps to know what the person is like to know where their problems are and how to solve them the easiest way. It only gets particularly complex if they have a large amount of assets (yes that is a problem for some), very large debts, or some obsessive-compuslive disorder that leads to something like gambling, "spending to feel good," etc.

Best,

It may be that your friend will always struggle with this issue. Tough Love (letting people fail) does not always work with Aspies. There is a new advertisement for a co
program called "Automatic Discipline" that i am looking into for myself. I think they automatically take money out for your necessary bills and only give you your truly "disposable" income in your account.