The Great British Treasure Hunt (And How to Avoid It)

Most of us keep our money in the bank. It is sensible, digital, and tucked away behind a PIN we can never quite remember. But many of us also have those little pockets of cash or precious items hidden away for a rainy day.

The problem with a rainy day is that sometimes, we aren’t the ones holding the umbrella.

Take my lovely Auntie Minnie. She lived to the grand age of 96, and when she died, my parents inherited her house. It fell to them to clear it out and pack up a century of living. They knew Auntie Minnie had been frugal, but the big question was: where was the money? She hadn’t left a map.

The first clue arrived when my dad pulled a book from a shelf. As he flicked through the pages, a £10 note fluttered to the carpet. Then another. They ended up having to go through her entire library, page by dusty page.

It didn’t stop at the books. When they took down the dining room curtains, they noticed the bottom hems felt strangely stiff. A quick snip revealed the fabric was literally weighed down with cash, both notes and coins. Even the sofa had a secret; they found a section of the base that had been hand-stitched. When they unpicked it, they found yet more bank notes.

Then there was my father-in-law. Years before he developed dementia, he bought a car from us. He paid in weekly instalments, and every time we visited, he would head upstairs to fetch the cash. We would sit in the lounge listening to various bangs, thumps, and scrapings from above. We were convinced he was prying up the floorboards.

When he died, after years of him not being able to answer the sensitive question about where he kept his money (even if we’d had the nerve to ask him – he was a very private man), we became amateur detectives. We had the carpets up and checked every loose board upstairs in the house. In the end, we didn’t find a hidden vault, but if we hadn’t sold him that car, we wouldn’t have even known to look. It makes you wonder what else was sitting in the dark corners of his home and was accidentally sent to the charity shop.

You might not have thousands of pounds stuffed into your soft furnishings, but most of us have something hidden. Perhaps it is a piece of jewellery at the back of a wardrobe or an emergency £50 tucked inside a vase.

The question is: who knows about it?

None of us knows when we might become non-communicative or when our time will be up. If your rainy-day fund is so well-hidden that your family ends up throwing it in a skip, it isn’t a gift; it is a lost opportunity.

Part of “living lightly” is ensuring that we don’t leave a stressful scavenger hunt for the people we love. Simplifying our lives isn’t just about throwing away old instruction manuals for kettles we binned in 2012. It is about transparency.

I am currently working on a checklist and a workbook to help navigate these exact scenarios. It is designed to help you document the essentials, from the bank accounts to the “emergency” cash in the biscuit tin, so your loved ones can grieve in peace rather than tearing up the floorboards. I’ll let you know when it’s available!