reve : Money

I use lists of words to identify content in dreams. My original list for the category was tailored to matching the typical dream theme of finding money. It was a very low matching category. Most of my own money dreams were of finding money on the ground and picking it up with my hand. Other dreams were just about making change for a subway fare, awkwardly fumbling with coins in my pocket and difficulties counting the correct change.

I wanted to see how much people think about money how true to waking experience dreams of money were.

I started listing money-related words...

cost buy dollar sell debt expensive cheap luxurious tax rent bank account check book pay payment ATM credit card costly price valuable worth toll fee fare bribe reward reimburse wages free fiscal finance budget prize tarriff spend loan borrow earn wealth bargain investment wages coin dime nickel penny [0-9]+ bucks $ account salary rich poor savings cent retail sale dues cash retirement IRA IRS debit allowance bitcoin winnings

These all go into a regular expression which I test on some large sets of dreams. Context of the matches reveals a few problems.

"pay" mostly matches in context with 'attention'. Using a negative look-ahead removes most of these:
pay(?!( no| any| attention| much))

or only match pay (for|her|him|his|the)

bank is mostly used as in 'river bank', so I only match it with "account" and "book".

spend seems like a good money word, but it is mostly used like 'spend some time'.

My personal preference for the present tense means I forget to include bought, "sold" and -ed forms of money verbs.

$ is a non-word character and has a special meaning in regular expressions, so it has to be backslash escaped and preceded by a space in order to match.

\s\$([0-9\.,]+)?

And, of course, I forgot to include the word money in the initial list!

The final expression:

Money matches about 0.2% of words in most sets of dreams that I have tested. This is actually a fairly high occurrence. About the same frequency as the name of a close friend or family member. This underlies the importance of money in everyday experience.

Money is so pervasive it would seem to be a poor candidate for a dream-like theme. We might expect that it would be appear in dreams as a reflection of waking experience. It does, to a large extent, confirming the continuity hypothesis, but many appearances of money in dreams have a typically dream-like quality.

Three dream-like scenarios of money

Finding money: first a little, then more, gathering it in your hands till it becomes difficult to pick up any more.
Sometimes the found money is noticeably wrong, counterfeit, or of unknown nationality.
Found money often starts at low denominations, increases in value, changes to counterfeit.
Built in disappointment or rationalization with tacit realization of dreaming - you can't take it into waking life.
Trouble making change.
Anxiety about getting the right amount together when buying something.

Some example matches

From, now defunct, Sawlogs.net

724: "I have lived a long time and have had one dream three times over, a pleasant experience each time. I was a child of about 8 the first time I had the dream of walking through a forest and seeing pennies on the ground. I picked them up and continued to stroll. Soon I saw nickle, dimes and quarters, stooped down and scooped them up. I saw other people also finding money, picking it up in the same leisurely fashion, no rush, no feeling that someone else might get it all. It was a pleasant, happy dream, where I found a few dollars the first time, more the second time, and still more the third, which may have happened in my 50's. It is colorful, it is pretty, everyone is happy, no one is jealous; there is plenty for all."

2502: "As the dream began I found myself walking down a street that resembled that of Wall Street in New York City. My clothes were torn and shabby and I resembled a typical bum. I was asking the men (very wealthy looking) for a handout when they walked out the door of this one building which I was standing in front of. When finally one man came out who resembled my father and threw me a coin which I missed, it rolled down the sidewalk and into a little stairway that led to the basement of one of the buildings. When I walked down the steps where the coin had rolled I saw the entire stairway was filled with coins and bills of all denominations. I then leaped into the huge pile of money at the foot of the stairs and began to let the coins and bills run through my hands. I seemed to enjoy the feeling of having the money cover my entire body. I then began to stack the bills and coins very neatly in one corner when my dream ended."

From DreamJournal.net

100: This is the first time I was ever a shark in a dream, but that is a change from being a bat all the time. In this dream I was exploring a world. I was a shark, or a shark-like being. I still had hands, but we were all sharks in this place. There were shark malls, and restaurants, and the most interesting thing I remember about this world was the currency we had. There were two kinds of currencies, gold and red. Both were paper money, or something like paper, the gold currency being yellow, really. The red currency was printed on slightly smaller pieces of paper. I was in a restaurant and a shark couple sat with me. The male shark had just robbed a bank, but I'm not sure if the female had a part in it too, but I know the male did. Anyway I was pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary. The couple were ordering breakfast, and I was reading a paper, or pretending to, I was actually just curious about what was going on. I remember picking up a piece of the red currency, a $54 dollar bill. This was a large sum of money here, worth about as much as 50 dollars is to us in waking life. I know that the male shark dropped it accidently, but I knew he wouldn't miss it, so I kept it. The couple did not seem worried; they acted normal. I never saw any police sharks after them anyway.

510: This is part two to the dream "Bottle of Mice" I got to the bank. I was having trouble wth my clothes. They seemed not to fit me. It would seem that during the time I was walking to the bank my clothes changed all by themsleves. At one point I was wearing a skirt that narrowe too much at the bottom so I couldn't walk right, but that corrected itself after a while and I wore normal clothes. I got to the bank front counter and the lady behidn the counter asks if she can help me. I say I want to get some two dollar bills for this twenty. She says I need to fill out some forms first because it's illegal for anyone to carry the gold standard. I was puzzled, I said, "No, I don't want any gold, I want two dollar bills." She said two dollar bills were the gold standard. I decided not to argue with her, even though I had never heard of such rubbish in my life. She comes back with three two dollar bills. I know that this was not right, that I should get ten two dollar bills, but for some reason I was afraid to bring it up. So I accepted my three bills. The counter had a display where beneath it I could see some three dollar bills, which I thought was really weird. I had only seen them as a joke. I was supposed to fill in the reason why I wanted the two dollar bills. I was feeling embarrassed that I would have to explain that we were going to put them in our shoes for good luck. I hoped no one would actually read it.

Barb Sanders 1 set from DreamBank

1535: I am taking the wet clothes off a baby. She is lying on a bed and is a mess. I look for a clean shirt and find several. I choose one that's lacy and pretty, but hard to get on her. We struggle getting her hand in the arm and finally succeed. Then I take off her messy diaper and clean her up. She shits when I don't have a diaper on her. I clean that up, shuddering. Now my mother says, "Give the baby to me and you count all this money on my bed." I see piles and piles of coins (change). Most of them are foreign currency. What a tiring task. I say, "I'd rather hold the baby. I haven't had a chance to." She says, "Later, you can do it later." I sigh and start working on the money. Then I'm helping a woman pack. There are lots of snap shots laid out on the bed, some of Willie, some of her lover. I am concerned that her husband will come in and find out! I try to gather them up. Then I must hurry and I choose the shoes to pack, discarding several "Baby Jane" shoes for little girls.

Barb Sanders 2 set from DreamBank

409: ["Calling a friend for help."] I am trying to call Ernie to find out if his wife is at the University to help me Xerox my manuscripts. I can't find her. I am at a public pay phone. I am putting in coins, dimes, and they won't work. They keep coming back in the coin return slot. It is very frustrating. By now, I am sitting on the ledge the phone is on. I finally reach him. When I do, a large Mars bar pops into the coin return box as a reward. I get his answering machine. It goes for a long time and I patiently wait. Finally he comes on and I say About time!! We chat.

428: ["Scary dream conference."] I am at some university at a dream conference, seated at a table. I am working on my lap top computer. I call up some program and now can reach into the screen and pull out real money. Mostly pennies and some square coins, some Canadian coins, and a few dollar coins. As I do this, a man comes by, behind me and is showing some people some aura images on the wall behind me he can see. He says he has some evidence of the murders that happened here sometime ago. I feel a bit skeptical. Then I look and see the image of a woman on the wall and feel a bit frightened. Maybe that is the murderer's spirit. Ellie is somewhere in the background throughout the entire dream.

3268: It's time to downsize the Goodwill factory I'm in charge of. I see the crew of sewers threading their needles. They each choose a piece of used clothing to repair. They stand in a line before a big rectangular clothing bin, then they take them to the resale clothing store. I am going to the front door to open it. I have the key. As usual, several people are waiting to get in first. I open the door and hang up the key and notice I need the key to open the cash register. I have trouble getting the key string off the corner hook and then decide to wear it on my left wrist, even though it will be heavy and cumbersome. I get the bottom drawer open and I see fake 50 cent pennies stuck together. An older woman brings her purchases to me and I calculate it on the calculator because I can't get the cash register to work. It comes to $3.00 and some cents. She puts a pile of coins on the counter and I start counting. It's not enough because she's also put rectangular saint liberty (sweet liberty?) dollars there and they don't count as real money. One is a faded stained glass. A young woman is waiting, holding her crying baby! I say, "Let me hold her." I put her carefully on my shoulder, on a burp rag and pat her! It feels wonderful to hold a sweet baby. She quiets down. She's a newborn.

Kenneth set from dreambank

120: I am next to a building that I later recognize to be Mason, the Brimson college cafeteria. There is a kid there on rollerblades. I go over by a car. I find a ten-dollar bill. It is counterfeit. One side of the bill isn't printed. Then I find more bills, including 20's, 5's, and 1's, and I check the bottom sides to make sure they're real. The guys around me start scrambling to pick up the other bills. I shove a bunch in my pocket. One of the guys takes a $20 bill out of my pocket. I catch him and take it back. There are a few little kids trying to take photographs of me as I leave, as if I have done something wrong. I go into Carter School and a kid follows me in. I am careful not to let him get a photograph of my face. I go up the south stairs in the school. Teachers are there, some of whom I recognize. Finally I let the kid take my photograph, but I make him/her promise something before taking it.

499: I am in Mason Cafeteria at Brimson. My friend Brittany Johnson is sitting at a table trying to raise money for someone's grandma named Karla, who has died. I am picking up change on the floor (pennies, dimes,nickels, and quarters) and putting them in my pocket. A person I work with at the Brimson Library, name Don, is there. I say that it too bad about grandma Karla. I am upstairs in the cafeteria now.

644: We are on an island/mountain area. I go and explore. I find a crack in the side of a rock that leads to a cave. There is a lake or river right near the cave. The cave is on the edge of an island, like on Jap Lake. There is a white dock and a white airplane across from the island on the shore. The plane might be taking off. The dock seems to break in half, and form a "v". There are coins in and around the crack and cave. There are a lot of old pennies from the 1900's. I find a 1920D penny. There are others that are very old, and that I think are valuable.

820: There is a nicely cut area of green lawn with cement sidewalk and buildings, like a courtyard. There are pop machines there. A person on roller blades goes by. There is a skateboard in the corner by the pop machine. A boy comes to get the skateboard: it is his. I find three pennies, a $2 coin, and a $3 coin. A psychology professor I know from Brimson named Kari Cutting comes to me dressed in black and on crutches, to ask for directions.

Maya set from DreamBank

839: I'm not walking (or riding my bike?) along a road at nighttime. John is in front of me. I see him drop a huge wad of cash. I almost reach it when the wind snags it away from me in two different directions. I run after it, trying to catch it for John, angry that he let it drop. It is a lot of money, and it looks like more and more the longer I chase it along the ground. I see small bills, as well as large-amount bills ($50s). I finally catch up to some of the money and pick it up.

856: The women across the street (3rd St., in Ashland) are doing a yardsale. They have a simple display of a little table with a big sign that says "3 cents" (using the cent sign). I go look. There are little things for cheap. I see that the coins the women are using are special. The pennies, nickles and dimes are textured, with dents and scratches, since the women cannot see very well.

Alta set from DreamBank

988: and thank her, and ask for one of her cards - we only had her phone number, not an address, and don't know how far she had to come. Would be nice if she was local in case we need her again. She's very nice. I allow as how I need some stamps, so if we're not going to the party how about we go out and get some at the post office? We do that. Outside the building is a stamp dispenser that's a sit-down console where you put in your money and punch buttons. Rolly and I are talking away while I feed a dollar bill into the machine. It starts to work, and then the change starts to come out - but a whole lot of change comes out! I don't even realize it at first because I'm distracted talking to Rolly, then I see this shitload of change. Not small stuff, either, lots of quarters. Must be $30-$50 in here. I poke at it a bit, wondering how I'm going to pick it all up, and thinking maybe I should count it out by type, but a car pulls up and a couple of other people arrive - they're here for stamps too, and they'll be wanting to use the machine. O dear. How do I pick all this up without making a lot of noise and letting them see? They'll probably want to share - or maybe they'll expect me to turn it in - maybe I should - really I should, of course - but geez, you know, I really don't have to, no one would ever know. There's a piece of paper here, and while I'm dawdling (hoping they'll get impatient and go away)

Dorothea from DreamBank

314: I found in a volume of mother's 4 vol. Bible a wad of bills and two lots of stamps one of them purple 3 cents but I do not recognize the design. Believe it must be an old one. Wonder if it would be all right for me to use this money.

651: After we had climbed up to the green grassy level hilltop, I saw a shiny object. I called to him, "I've found a dollar." But then I bent it between my fingers and remembered father's thus bending counterfeit Mexican dollars in China. Then I hunted for a suitable spot to urinate. (and awoke)

Lawrence set from SDDb

65: I'm having tea and sandwiches in a cafe garden in Sri Lanka with Juan. It's my treat. This place feels more like my country than Sri Lanka in terms of the countryside. I ask for the bill. It comes to something ridiculous - far too expensive for Sri Lanka - about four times what it should be. I get very angry with the waiter and refuse to pay that much. He insists that is the price and ends up getting very upset, because he says his boss will take it out of his wages if we don't pay. So I give him all my money but I'm still slightly short, so I start scrabbling around on the ground under the table for dropped coins. I do find some, but one of them is fake - it's a very soft metal. So I finally leave owing the waiter the rest. I intend to return to pay him. Juan doesn't have anything to contribute.

Phil set from DreamBank

190: My wife Bonita and I were traveling in Russia, by train. We were at the train station, which was much like a subway station, fiddling with a Falk-type map to see where we wanted to go (a bridge across some river to some island in the river -- I couldn't find it on the map), and another Falk map to figure out which train to take to get there. It was really a mess. I thought I had time to study it a while, but while I was looking at it, a train pulled in. In the meantime, I had to exchange some money. I had American coins in my left pocket, Russian in my right, and I was afraid of mixing them together. I was standing at the exchange window while I was studying the maps, so I frantically began to try to figure out the exchange system, thinking it would be better, if possible, to exchange on a coin-for-coin basis. There were several types of Russian coins on display there, but some were in kopecks and some were something else, besides being in different amounts. There were also a lot of coins, including American ones, lying on the floor in front of the counter where people had evidently dropped them, and I couldn't resist wasting my precious time by picking some up. We finally decided we had better get on the train before it left, even if we weren't sure it was the right one. After we got on, I began trying to think of how to ask someone how to get where we wanted to go. But I couldn't think of the word for "station," nor the word and correct aspect for "go" in this case. Norman was suddenly there, and he said "station" was "some Russian word." I knew that meant "man," but thought it might also mean "station." I asked him whether it took the preposition and what he said didn't sound right to me.
48: I was going somewhere by taxi. It was to be a rather long trip, and I was already concerned about the cost. At some point, either on the way or after not finding our destination and heading back, either my daughter Christina or my son Burt, who was with me, spotted the Ferris wheel of an amusement park on a street at a higher level than we were on, and back the way we had come, and he/she wanted to stop. So I told the taxi driver to turn around, but he had to go a ways before he could do so, and then we didn't find any amusement park. I was anxious that the fare was going to cost even more. When we finally stopped, I was relieved that the fare was less than $5.00. The driver was Indian. For some reason, he gave me $5.00 and showed me his ID, and I was trying to figure out how to allow for the fact that he gave me $5 in trying to get the right amount out of my wallet to pay him and tip him generously. I finally decided just to give him back his $5.00 and give him $6 or $7 more-but my wallet was stuffed with big bills, and I couldn't find a $5. I decided to take everything out so that I could go through them more easily. In the process, a lot of checks fell out, and some of them had been shredded. So there was paper everywhere, and my checks were scattered, and it was a big mess. Sue Bailey and Frances Reed were there, and one of them commented to the other in my hearing that it was amazing that I was really very professional in other contexts. I felt really embarrassed to look so foolish.

200: I wanted to limber up my arm and practice throwing for distance. Two female friends went with me to a park to catch my throws, but we realized that we didn't have anything to throw. We discussed what would work in lieu of a baseball or softball. One of them suggested a grapefruit, and I said that it would be too soft and too large. But it reminded me of how perfect lemons and limes had felt to me in the past for throwing, and I was willing to entertain the possibility of that. In the end, though, I left the women in the park to go and get a couple of baseballs, either from my house or from a store. It ended up being a wild goose chase; I had to take a bus, and then wasn't sure where to get off. I was downtown, and it was pretty far between stops, so I would have to walk a lot if I got off at the wrong stop. I was sweaty, and the bus was crowded; I felt uncomfortable for the people close to me. There was a little girl standing next to me; she was friendly and talked to me a lot. When I finally got off the bus, I had walked into something like a video arcade at the bus stop when I realized I hadn't paid my fare. This was a Japanese-style system where you pay when you leave. I rushed back and found the bus hadn't left yet. When the last passenger had gotten off, I got on and dug a whole lot of change out of my pocket and started giving some of it to the bus driver. I had the impression that the fare was 60 cents, but I couldn't distinguish one coin from another very well (even though it was American money)

Tehuti set

2591: This dream is confusing. It seemed I was upstairs in my brother Eric's room and I was digging through a chest, looking for something. But I couldn't seem to remember what I was looking for. I kept finding different sci-fi books like the magazine Analog or Asimov's Science Fiction. I pulled them out and dropped them beside me because I thought maybe I'd like to read them later on. I was kind of afraid of digging further because I thought there might be bug crap and dead things and crawling bugs down there. That doesn't appeal to me very much. :P I kept finding silver coins all over the floor--all kinds of coins, but I only picked up the silver ones for some reason. Some had angels on them and I knew that they were like tokens; not meant to be spent, but I liked them. So I picked up only those coins. There were pennies and such too, but I wasn't interested in them.
4957: I had a bit of trouble with my money, as usual. I believe I started to seek out thirteen cents, but then reconsidered. What about tax? What if that was only a sale price and it in fact cost more now? Well, then I would have a little more money on hand. But it still could not cost an incredible lot. I think I decided on having like fifty cents or a dollar ready. I started looking for quarters; all I seemed to have was a handful of change. I remember perhaps a few dimes and nickels and maybe a penny or two, but I put those back and the quarters were what I focused on. I tried counting out four of them, I think; I planned on going up to the counter with several quarters, handing them over, and then receiving appropriate change. Better to have too much money than not enough ready! I might have changed my mind about how much I should have on hand, as I remember sorting through my change and picking out the quarters at least a few times over. I was being very compulsive about this; I wanted to be perfectly ready to pay.

5076: Then I thought over the last time something had been disconnected for nonpayment, how I might have saved the day if I had only summoned up the courage to go to the door and pay the bill myself. Maybe I could do that now? Did I have enough money? I suspected the overdue bill would be around $100. I think I had about that much. But I had to hurry. So I ran to my room and started rifling through the various bills I had lying on my little stand where I keep my money in real life, and started picking them all up. A wad here, a bill there, they were all scattered rather than in one big wad, but I kept scooping them all up, hoping I had enough.

I gathered what surely must have been around $100, but then saw more money sitting there, and started picking that up as well. And picking more up. And picking MORE up. I was surprised by now-- how much money DID I have here, after all? Surely more than $100! Maybe even as much as $300! I was impressed by my unexpected wealth--certainly I could pay that outstanding bill, and we would not be shut off. In real life I'm very phobic of answering the door or paying bills, but that fear was nowhere near as great as my annoyance at no cable would be in the dream, so I finally got all my scattered money in my hands and went running back out to the utility room...

Madeline from DreamBank

1460: I was in a parking lot. There was some sort of outdoor shopping spree. The first people to buy $200 worth of clothes would get them for $100. There was another guy (one of my online friends?) who I felt particular competition with. I went and picked out some clothes to try on, though I didn't know exactly why, since I didn't need new clothes or have extra money to spend. Then I was on a top floor of a building. The room was tan. I found two bills sitting in the corner- a $125 bill and a $150 bill. I was surprised and happy. Then a guy approached me- it was his money. I gave it back to him. I was sad to be left empty-handed. The guy said he was Peterson- I recognized him as my online friend Marilyn's love interest. I mentioned my disappointment and financial need, but he seemed not to care. I found another few pieces of paper on the floor and picked them up. Most of them were fake bills but there were two real ones in it, so I found about 6 dollars. I ended up in the elevator with him. Somehow he realized who I was, a friend of Marilyn's. He apologized for his curt behavior and told me his first name was Alan.

1500: My maternal Grandma Jane was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. She parallel parked in a bad neighborhood, in front of a bar or something. The parking brake was far over on the passenger side, and I had to pull it for her. I did so, but the car still rocked back and forth. We got out and in front of the joint was black plastic container with coins in it. I considered taking money out of it to buy a newspaper, and took a handful of coins. Then a person was leaving the place and I decided it was wrong. I turned and dropped all but one of the coins back in, counting as I dropped. 75 cents. I held on to one silver coin with permanent ink that said 3- 60 on it, indicating it's value of 60 cents. I decided it was okay to keep this one though as it was a foreign coin and unusable to the person anyhow. I dropped the coins in the bucket and the person leaving thanked me, thinking I was giving them money rather than simply putting it back. Then my mother got there. She asked me about the car parking and handed me the keys, asking me to move it. Where it was was apparently not acceptable and the 'correct' place to park it required a 3-point turn, which Grandma Jane couldn't do.

Money's typical dream-like characteristics

Money is ubiquitous in waking experience so it should be (and is) common in dreams. There's at least some evidence that mathematical thinking is impaired in dreaming. This may account for some of the characteristics of money dreams. An inability or difficulty to form a stable image of an object which incorporates both numbers and text may account for some cases where the dreamer reports dreamed money that changes from real to fake. Or it could be that we are taught to carefully scrutinize money for signs of forgery. When this degree of attention is applied to an unstable dream image metamorphosis results.

Tacit awareness of dreaming could also account for instances where the dreamer recognizes that the money is fake, counterfeit, or of unfamiliar origin. In a few examples the dreamer has to put the money back or give it to its rightful owner.

Also note that money is often found on the ground, on a floor on a bed. Flat surfaces with little context. One of my earliest hypnagogic visions was of a single Eisenhour dime, floating without context in a black void. As a seed to a fuller dream but not too fully developed. Runaway visions of money versus more life-like "math performance anxiety" caused by being in a brain/mind state where calcalations are difficult.

reve

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Money

Some example matches

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