A budget where every dollar is perfectly allocated is stifling and counter-productive. Instead, set aside ‘blow money’ — money you can spend on whatever you want, that you don’t have to track. Blow money is the productive mess necessary in personal finance, it’s a release valve that lets you vent a little steam.

Without allocating blow money, every little purchase that is outside your budget will make you feel guilty. If you buy a can of coke on a hot summer day, the guilt will come. You will start to resent your budget and eventually give it up.

The purpose of the blow money is to constrain that guilt — to have some leeway before it kicks in. (We don’t, however, want to eliminate all the guilt because it does have its uses. If you unthinkingly buy a daily latte then you should feel guilty.) Inside your budget, you should leave yourself X amount of cash to spend capriciously before you start to feel guilty.

For me, that value is £150 a month for blow money. £100 is for general miscellanea and £50 is dedicated for coffee. Regardless of value, I like going to coffee houses to work. Rather than feel guilty about the money I spend, I pick an amount that works for my income and budget it.

A small tip for managing blow money is to keep it in cash. This both makes it accessible and helps you resist spending it all. By having the money in cash it encourages you to spend less. With my coffee money, I see it dwindle every time I order something. This puts a little useful pressure on me to get the small for £2.05 rather than the large for £2.40. After all, if I’m careful with the money it means more trips to coffee places.

So go make some space in your budget for blow money, feel less guilty, and then stick with your budget for longer.

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Header photograph by spatulated