Do you have secret savings? My husband of 30 years doesn’t know about my ‘running away’ fund – you’ll never guess how big it is

We come over every few months, my secret little ‘arrangement’ and I. I’d like to see how it goes, whether it’s plump, healthy and fit for purpose.

Seeing it gives me enormous satisfaction and relief. I feel hugged, soothed and reassured, as if an invisible hand has stroked my back and told me everything will be okay.

Because everything will be fine if we keep this agreement. The gods or whatever forces, divine or physical, are responsible for my fate, can throw whatever they want at me, and I will not perish.

I’m talking about my ‘runaway fund’ – a stash of money that I have socked away and that my husband knows nothing about.

And it’s not an insignificant amount. When you take into account shares, ISAs and savings, I have over £200,000 in my name – and my name alone – that only I have access to.

That’s money to cover rent if I have to leave our family home for any reason; or a significant down payment on another property; or even a small maintenance ‘comfort blanket’ if I was unable to work for a while, meaning I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else for my basic needs.

You’re probably assuming at this point that my marriage is unhappy, that I’m biding my time to escape an abusive relationship. But nothing could be further from the truth.

I am married to a generous, gentle – and healthily solvent – ​​man who has made me very happy for more than thirty years. My “walkaway fund,” as it is called by some, is something that, in my opinion, has strengthened our relationship.

The runaway fund is nothing new. Various studies by financial institutions over the years have shown that one in five of us has a secret stash

While some may see it as deceptive and pessimistic, I see it as a great compliment to my husband: I am with him because I choose to, not because I have to – and isn’t that commendable after so many years together?

The runaway fund is nothing new. Various studies by financial institutions over the years have shown that one in five of us has a secret stash.

Bake Off winner and celebrity chef Nadiya Hussain admitted to having one when she recently appeared on Loose Women.

Even before she became a wealthy woman herself – she is said to have earned around £5million since winning GBBO in 2015 – she said she had always ‘had a little something on the side’ that was just hers. Like Nadiya, mother of three, my pot of money is not exactly a ‘secret’. As she explained, “Even though everyone knew about it, no one had access to it.”

My husband does know that I have savings in my own personal account, but crucially, he doesn’t know how much. We have a joint account, into which we have always paid the same amount of our income, and from which all household expenses are paid, but what remains of my work as a writer is my business and mine alone.

He knows I had a small stroke of luck a few years ago when my aunt and godmother died. She was childless and owned a modest house in Sussex, which grew my personal account – after tax and shared equally with my sister – by £120,000.

I wasn’t very careful with it. I paid for us a nice, wonderful vacation in California and some renovation work on the house (the mortgage of which was paid off years ago), but my husband doesn’t know how much is in it now and hasn’t asked.

My attitude, like Nadiya, stems from the fact that I grew up relatively poor. She described her childhood home as a “house of red letters”, where the latest demands were always coming in and it felt like her mother – a traditional, stay-at-home British woman from Bangladesh – was holding her fingernails.

I spent the early part of my childhood in a council house before my parents were able to buy a two-bedroom prefab in the late 1970s. My father was a mechanic, my mother worked as a caregiver in a retirement home and money was tight.

Thursday night dinners, before Dad’s pay packet arrived on Friday evening, were always a matter of scraping things together. Fried egg bread – made with the center of a moldy white loaf and one egg, between four people – was not an unusual meal. I remember my mother crying over an electric bill and seeing a ladder in her last good pair of tights.

My mother belonged to a generation of trapped women. She couldn’t survive on her own: she was completely dependent on my father, who did his best but who, again, was trapped within the constraints of our still-rigid class system, long before social mobility became a viable reality.

My parents had a happy marriage, I think, but there must have been millions of people who suffered intolerable poverty and were financially dependent on a man they couldn’t stand. As a sensible, risk-averse, big-thinking adolescent in Thatcher’s Britain, I learned early on that the key to women’s economic empowerment and equality lay in their financial independence.

I vowed then that I would always have something put away so I could “run away” if I needed to.

When I met my husband in 1992, we were earning right away and working for a local newspaper. The idea of ​​a shared pot was suggested by him a few times, but rejected by me. It was too much hassle, I said. Plus, I would feel awkward if I felt like splurging on an expensive new coat or a pair of boots, and really couldn’t bear the thought of “asking permission.”

That’s why we kept things separate. Of course, there have been times in our lives when the kids were still babies (we have two, both now in our 20s) when my husband did a lot of the heavy lifting financially, but I always had a little cushion set aside. especially for me’, to get me through my maternity leave.

Gradually my secret stash has grown over the years. I sought financial advice, made some smart investments and saved every month. In the 30 years I’ve been married, I’d say I’ve thought about using it once. It was a few years ago, in the throes of empty nest syndrome, when we didn’t make enough time for each other and argued quite a lot.

After a particularly miserable Sunday afternoon, during which we had a huge argument at Habitat over a new dining room table, I came home and looked on RightMove. I spent what I could afford, and where did I have to decide to spend the last quarter of my life on my own – with the dining room table I so desperately wanted.

I even looked at payments for a new car – a frivolous and sporty amount that I knew would irritate him. Being able to afford it all immediately made me feel better, and I realized that I was actually quite happy where I was.

We made up, spent the Habitat money on a nice weekend getaway, and the argument was forgotten.

We are now getting older and are aware of our mortality. We had ‘that’ conversation recently, when we were updating our will and had a ‘show and tell’ about paperwork and passwords etc, one of us was allowed to step under the proverbial bus.

Judging from how vague he was about some of the details, I suspect my husband has a small runaway fund of his own. And I’m absolutely fine with that.

Details have changed. Joanna Richards is a pseudonym.