MoodLedger

A money app that asks how you felt.

Emotion-aware personal finance for adults with ADHD. You log what you spent, put a feeling to it, and the app does the arithmetic and the comparing so you do not have to.

Nothing here is a test. There is no red anywhere, no score, no counter that resets when you miss a week, and nothing that tells you what to do with your own money.

The app on opening. A sentence in large type reads “Mostly routine this past week, and a little anxious late on.” Below it, a card headed “Yours to spend before Paycheck” holds the figure, a bar that empties as payday nears, and a line saying $165 of bills is already set aside. Then a short form asks how much, on what, from which account, and how it felt. — The first thing on screen is a sentence about the week, not a total. The figure under it counts to the next pay, with what is due before then already taken off, and the twelve feelings are one tap each. Demo account; the merchants and amounts are generated.

Why feelings, and not another budget

Mainstream budgeting apps assume neurotypical executive function: wide tables, month-long horizons, red over-budget banners, and a payoff that arrives at the end of the month. This one is built the other way round.

The thesis is one finding. In a community sample of 1,292 adults, elevated ADHD symptoms predicted impulse buying and avoidant financial decision styles — but the effect was carried by mood and personality rather than by ADHD symptoms themselves. If feeling is the proximate driver, feeling belongs on the chart.

Bangma et al. 2020, PLOS ONE. A cross-sectional community sample scored for symptoms, not a clinical trial. It motivates the design; it does not measure whether the design works.

What you actually do

Log a spend. An amount and a feeling. Everything else is optional, anything you logged can be changed, and every change can be taken back.
Put a feeling to it. Twelve one-tap words, no intensity slider, no free text.
Bring in a statement. A CSV from your bank. You confirm which column is which before anything lands, and the whole import can be taken back in one tap if it was the wrong file.
Tell it when you are paid. The figure on Today then counts to your next pay instead of to the end of the month, with what is due before then already taken off.
Park something you want. Give it an hour, a day, three days or a week. The wait is drawn as a shrinking bar, never counted down in digits.
Look, when you want to. Six views, each with one sentence saying what it shows, so you never have to work out the comparison yourself.
Shape the categories. Rename one, hide one you never use, or add your own — twelve at most, so each spend is a short list to choose from.

The whole vocabulary:

Excited
Content
Proud
Connected
Routine
Bored
Anxious
Frustrated
Overwhelmed
Lonely
Flat
Ashamed

The tagging card on a phone. One past spend at the top, its amount and where it was, then the twelve feelings as two columns under the headings “Good, or fine” and “Harder”, and two buttons: “That one” and “Skip”. — Tagging something later. One spend at a time, twelve words, and Skip is always there and never asks why.

The research behind each part

Every design decision here traces to a finding. These are the findings, and what each one does and does not say.

Naming a feeling is the intervention, not the paperwork

Choosing an emotion word measurably dampens the amygdala response, and affect labeling regulates emotion about as well as deliberate reappraisal while feeling effortless. So somebody who never opens a chart still gets something from the one-tap log.

Lieberman et al. 2007 · Torre & Lieberman 2018. Neither study is about money, and neither was run in ADHD adults.

The waiting is the thing to target, not the wanting

In 225 clinically diagnosed adults, the link between ADHD and impulsive buying was carried entirely by the capacity to tolerate a delay. Committing in advance is the part with field evidence behind it: a savings RCT raised participation by 81%.

Einarsson et al. 2024 · Ashraf, Karlan & Yin 2006. The savings trial was a general population, not an ADHD one.

The wait is a shape because a number is worse

Duration estimation is the specifically impaired channel across 55 studies, and visual timers lowered anticipatory anxiety and off-task behaviour where a ticking figure raises it.

Marx et al. 2022 · Hallez & Vallier 2025. The timer study is children at higher ADHD risk, not adults.

A parked item: its name, its price, the words “felt excited”, and a horizontal bar part way along underneath, showing how much of the wait is left. — A parked want, part way through its cooling-off window. The bar shrinks; there are no digits counting down.

A line before the figure goes below zero

With “Slow me down” on, a spend that would take the figure past zero says so before it is spent: the line under the button turns amber, says how far above plan it would leave you, and offers to park it instead. In field trials with bank customers, a low-balance alert at the moment it mattered cut unarranged overdraft and unpaid-item charges by 17–19%, while alerts sent days ahead added nothing significant — and reminders about a card bill cut late fees but raised overdraft fees among people who had overdrawn before. So the warning comes at the moment of the spend, never days ahead, and the app never sends a bill reminder on its own: what is due is already taken off the figure.

Grubb et al. 2025 · Medina 2021. Field experiments in general populations of bank and card customers, not ADHD samples.

Distinct words for the harder days

Negative-emotion granularity — using precise words rather than one global "bad" — predicts less binge drinking, less aggression and lower anxiety, and it is trainable. The app counts how many distinct words you used this month against last. It is a count, never a score, and there is nothing to reach.

Kashdan et al. 2015 · Barrett et al. 2001. Those outcomes are not spending outcomes.

A picture on the goal

In a field experiment, earmarking money raised savings; adding a visual reminder of what it was for raised it further still. Goal cards lead with the distance left rather than the distance travelled, because effort rises as the remaining gap shrinks.

Once you have said when you are paid, Today offers once on payday to put a small share toward the goal nearest done — one tap, or walk past it, and it is not offered again until the next pay. Reminders that named a specific goal raised saving in field trials; further reminders added nothing, which is why there is one offer and not a stream.

Soman & Cheema 2011 · Cheema & Bagchi 2011 · Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng 2006 · Karlan et al. 2016. The reminder trials were in general populations, not ADHD ones.

Things that come back

Under the bills, the app lists what your own history shows leaving every month on its own: the same name, about a month apart, at about the same price, at least three times. Each one gets a bar to its next expected date and one question — set the money aside, or mark it to cancel. No verdict, and nothing decided for you. Making fees visible lowered them, cumulatively, partly through people cancelling automatic recurring withdrawals once they could see them.

Stango & Zinman 2014. A quasi-experiment in a general population, and the fees it measured were overdraft charges; nothing has tested a list like this one.

Coming back is the normal case

In a twelve-week study of 73 adults with ADHD using a monitoring app, four sustained consistent logging. A counter that resets does its damage precisely when somebody has already had a hard week, so nothing here resets and gaps cost nothing. A day with nothing to log can still take a feeling, so a quiet week is not a gap either.

Carvalho et al. 2023 · Hupfeld et al. 2019 · Silverman & Barasch 2023 · Beaton et al. 2020.

The interface does the inference

Chart comprehension breaks down at comparison and inference rather than at reading the elements, so every chart ships with a sentence stating what it shows. Working-memory deficits grow when a task requires manipulating held figures, so the app performs every subtraction. Irrelevant visual detail slows high-ADHD-trait readers specifically, which is why there is nothing decorative on this page or in the app.

Wu et al. 2021 · Alderson et al. 2013 · Forster & Lavie 2016 · W3C COGA 2021, whose guidance the app follows. No accessibility audit has been carried out.

A chart headed “When it happens”. A plain sentence above it reads “Thursday evening is the biggest patch, $349.42, mostly anxious.” over a seven-by-six grid of days against parts of the day, each cell tinted by the feeling that dominates it and marked with that feeling’s glyph. Under the grid, a closed disclosure offers to write yourself a plan for Thursday evening. — Every chart carries its own sentence. The colours are feelings, not heat, each cell carries its feeling’s mark as well as its colour, and the grid is in your own local hours. Under it, the offer to write a plan for the brightest patch.

A plan for the moment it is needed

Under that grid, the app offers once to write one line for its brightest patch — if it is Thursday evening and I feel anxious, then … — in your own words. The line is shown back at log time only when the hour and the feeling match, and never otherwise. If-then plans of this shape had a large effect on goal attainment across 28 studies in clinical and analogue samples, and in children with ADHD they improved response inhibition.

Toli, Webb & Hardy 2016 · Gawrilow & Gollwitzer 2008. No trial of if-then plans in adults with ADHD was found.

Two features that are offered rather than recommended

Money as hours can show what something cost in time worked. Framing money as time changes how people value things and also raises stress, with measured effects on cortisol. It is off unless you turn it on, and it stays silent next to any feeling you marked as a hard one. There is no evidence either way about whether it helps ADHD adults spend less.

Working alongside someone shows a count of other people using the app at the same moment — a count and nothing else, no names and no way to make contact. The evidence is a survey of what neurodivergent adults report helps, not a controlled trial.

DeVoe & Pfeffer 2007 · Eagle et al. 2024.

What it will not do

It will not show you red.
It will not keep a consecutive-day counter. What it counts only rises.
It will not compare you to anyone.
It will not email you about a lapse. The only message it sends is about a cooling-off window you set yourself.
It will not tell you what to do with your money.
It will not animate at you, use mascots or decorate.

What it is not

There is no bank sync — spending arrives by typing it or importing a CSV. There are no budgets to set in advance and no advice. The one forward-looking figure is what is left before your next pay, with what is due before then already taken off; it projects no further than that. It is not a clinical tool and it does not diagnose, treat or replace anything.

It has not been trialled. No published randomised trial of an ADHD money app exists, this one included. Every finding above is about a mechanism the app is built on — not a measurement of whether the app helps. It is designed against the research; it is not proof.

Your data

It is self-hosted: whoever runs the instance holds the data, and nobody else does. Everything you have put in downloads as one zip — your data as JSON, your spending as a spreadsheet, and your goal pictures. Deleting the account is yours to do, in Settings; it asks you to type your address, because it is the one thing in the app with no undo, and nothing is kept afterwards. Signing out every other device and changing your password are there too. A bank statement is discarded once it has been imported, and a goal picture loses where it was taken before it is saved.

Getting in

This app is invite-only. Signing in is for people who already have an account, and a new account has to be opened for you by whoever runs this one — so if nobody has invited you, the app will turn the attempt down.

There is no password reset. If you have an account and cannot get in, whoever runs this one can set you a new password; once you are in, you can change it yourself in Settings.