Twenty Quid, No Questions Asked: In Defence of the Sod It Fund

I want to tell you about the twenty pounds in the inside pocket of a coat I never wear.

It has been there since August. It is not for the meter. It is not for a school trip. It is not, under any circumstances, for a scented candle for somebody's teacher.

It is my Sod It Fund, and it is the single most sensible thing I have done with money since I started buying multipacks of socks for myself at Christmas.

What the Sod It Fund actually is

It is a small, deliberate pot of money with exactly one line in the job description: things that keep me upright.

It is not an emergency fund. An emergency fund is a sensible adult concept involving boilers and dental work. The Sod It Fund is not sensible. The Sod It Fund is for a Tuesday.

It is also not a treat jar with a chalkboard label, because I would rather be dead than own a treat jar with a chalkboard label.

Why I started mine

Soft play. 4.15pm. One child had lost a shoe, one child was doing the floppy-body thing by the door, and it had started raining in that sideways way that suggests the weather has personal beef with you.

We had walked there. I had a ten-minute walk home with two children and a bag that was mostly damp coats.

I ordered chips. Not for them — for me. Sat on a plastic stool, ate them out of the paper, and felt, briefly, like a person who could continue.

That was seven pounds well spent and I have never once regretted it. What I did feel was the flicker of guilt afterwards, followed by an entire internal monologue about how I'd just spent money on myself in public with no occasion to justify it.

And I thought: why do I need a reason? I've got a whole drawer of party bags that cost eight quid apiece to show to a child for four seconds.

What it pays for

Genuinely, these are real purchases from real mums I have interviewed in the pub and, in one case, in the car park at Brownies:

• The taxi home from soft play. The walk back was always a lie.
• The second coffee. There was never any question of not having it.
• The chips. See above. Never apologise for the chips.
• The emergency birthday present purchased in a shop that is not a shop you would choose, with a card that is frankly not your best work.
• The parking fine you got because the machine only took coins in 2026 for some reason known only to a small council.
• The costume for World Book Day, bought on the morning of World Book Day.
• The thing that makes a 3pm reachable: a magazine, an ice lolly, forty minutes of something on the telly.

The guilt problem

Here's the bit nobody says out loud. We will happily spend an entire afternoon and a significant sum assembling a party bag that will be discarded in a hedge by 5pm. We will buy a washable pen set in three shades of grey. We will pay for the good butter.

And then we will feel genuinely, physically weird about spending three pounds on ourselves without a reason.

The Sod It Fund isn't a financial instrument. It's a permission slip. That's all it is, and that's why it works.

The rules. There are only four.

One: nobody audits it. Not your partner, not your mum, not the part of your brain that has opinions at 2am.

Two: it is not for bills. Bills are bills. Keep your dignity and your direct debits separate.

Three: it is not a family fund. You are not allowed to top it up all year and then spend it on a school trip. That is how the fund dies. It dies quietly, and then it's a drawer again, full of receipts.

Four: topping it up is optional, and there is no shame in an empty week. Some months it's a twenty. Some months it's a fiver and a voucher you forgot you had. Some months it's the coin in the bottom of the bag and honestly, that still counts.

Where to hide it

Somewhere unglamorous. The inside pocket of a coat you never wear. The tin behind the gravy granules. An old purse at the back of a drawer. A separate account with a card you don't keep in your main wallet, if you're fancy and organised.

The trick is out of sight and out of the family rotation. If it's visible, it gets spent on a school trip and a packet of felt tips.

If twenty pounds isn't realistic right now

I'm not going to pretend everybody has a spare twenty. Some weeks the arithmetic simply does not work, and that is not a personal failing, it's an economy.

So here is the friendlier version, and I mean this genuinely: the fund can be smaller than the headline. Two pounds. The price of one coffee a week. A round-up. A coin jar. And the fund doesn't have to be cash at all — sometimes the thing that saves you is a twenty-minute walk, a phone call to the friend who gets it, or sitting in the car for five minutes outside the house before you go in.

Permission is free. Start with that.

The actual point

We talk endlessly about the mental load as though it's a personality trait, like being a bit disorganised. It isn't. It's a job. And the Sod It Fund is the smallest possible act of self-employment — a tiny budget line for the person running the operation.

So put a twenty somewhere. Forget about it. And next time the day goes sideways at four in the afternoon, don't do the sum in your head and don't ring anyone to explain.

Just spend it. That's what it's for.