Considering money is a topic that preoccupies most of us during our waking hours, it's a little surprising that dreams about money aren't very common. In fact, according to this chart listing the top 50 dream topics in the United States, money is on very few of our mental radars once we turn off the lights. Statistically, we're more likely to dream of cats, the color blue, or high school than we are to have a money nightmare about our 401(k) crashing (or even a money-related wish-fulfillment dream about an ATM going haywire and shooting $100 bills into our faces).
But since our dreams are often where our subconscious minds sort through our worries, concerns, and experiences, the times when we do dream about money can carry significant meaning about our lives — and not just the financial parts. And we do often dream about our financial situations — we just might not realize it, because our money worries are wrapped in some deep dream symbology.
Want to decode your own dream about swimming through coins, Scrooge McDuck-style? Need to figure out if your dream about drowning had to do with your student loans from grad school, or was just about your actual fear of drowning? Then read on as, with a little help from "definitive" dream interpretation site Dream Moods, we unravel nine common money dreams.
Dreams That Involve Actual Money
Winning Money
Dreams of scoring big at a slot machine or game show, or finding $10,000 extra dollars in your wallet, can symbolize self-confidence, and a belief in your goals. Your subconscious is ready for you to win big in your real life, too.
Losing Money
Similarly, dreams where you accidentally misplace $10,000, or lose your life savings at the blackjack table, can point to a lack of self-confidence and ambition. It can also symbolize being frustrated by a real-life setback that occurred during your waking hours, especially a financial one.
Giving Away Money
In dreams, money can often symbolize love — for yourself or others. A dream where you're, say, making it rain on your fellow commuters on the subway connotes that you have a lot of love to give, and may be seeking a new lovah to give it to.
Of course, that's only if dream-you feels good about giving the money away — if you feel like you have to give your money away in your dream, but don't dig it, it could point to a fear of losing your own cash, or making bad financial decisions.
Seeing Someone Else Give Away Money
Likewise, seeing someone giving out fistfuls of dollars to everyone but you can mean that you're feeling emotionally frozen out or neglected by someone, or just in need of some extra love. Awwww. Group hug!
Hoarding Money
Dreams of burying gold bars in your backyard can point to feelings of insecurity in your waking life — or just your deeply held belief that the dollar is going to collapse and that hoarding gold will make you the queen of our new post-apocalyptic society (hey, no judgments here!).
Stealing Money
Interpreting a dream about stealing money hinges on the context. If it's a nightmare, it can mean that you need to exercise more caution in some or all areas of your waking life. But if it's a triumphant dream where you pull off an awesome Ocean's 11-style caper, it may mean that you are seriously chasing your dreams — in which case, steal away!
Dreams That Symbolize Money
Bleeding
A dream of a cut that won't stop bleeding can suggest a loss of self-esteem — but it can also symbolize the loss of your savings (the two may be intertwined, of course — it's never exactly confidence-boosting to lose your savings).
Falling
Dreams of falling can convey the fear that you're about to lose your footing in life — and that can sometimes refer to the specific fear that you're about to lose your financial security.
Drowning
Though sometimes dreams about drowning can just be generally tied to overall life stresses (or a fear of actual drowning), dreams about drowning can also specifically symbolize worry about debt.
Images: 401(K) 2012/ Flickr, Giphy (11)
