Hi @WoWsers16, I'm going to try a 5 card reading for you called, aptly enough, 'The Money Spread'
It can identify your beliefs about abundance and where that belief system might need reviewing. It might also suggest steps to take to bring more prosperity into your life:
Your first card concerns your current financial situation and relationship to money. Either you're currently celebrating a windfall or boost to your finances, or you're spending too much of what you have on one or more joyous events! Is there a new addition to the family that's proving costly? Alternatively, you might be TTC or pregnant and having a few wobbles about how you'll manage with another mouth to feed. If you are overspending it's likely to be - in part at least - unnecessary, in which case you know deep down (or not so deep down) that you need to show some restraint if you want to stabilise your financial picture. Whatever your current spending needs and habits are, they're partly emotional. Are there wedding expenses, or costs relating to another sort of function or gathering? If so, congratulations (and likewise for a new baby) but you – or your partner - are probably questioning your relationship to money and wondering how to address it. Some sort of happy event deserves to be rejoiced over, but when the party ends the everyday financial demands must be attended to. I get the feeling there might be a significant difference of opinion over financial priorities. Someone might not be impressed with how money is being spent, seeing it as wastefulness. Which it may well be, unfortunately.
You, or your partner, have core beliefs about money, or ideas and feelings about money, which might be at odds with how joint finances are currently being managed. Does one of you perhaps see money as a means to an end, to be invested and tended but rarely enjoyed? Are savings to be built up but only ever minimally spent, so that life can feel quite frugal when in fact it doesn't have to be? Or is one of you more committed to conserving money and resources for financing family and home life than the other is, and that’s causing friction? The emphasis in your second card is on identifying and then challenging beliefs about money that don't serve your happiness. Do you believe money is a quantity rich in potential that needs to be carefully nurtured, or do you feel it is an area which forces you to make very selective choices when you would really prefer to feel much freer to spend it in other ways? I know it’s a cliche, but does one of you behave as though money grows on trees? If so, it's likely to be an area of your life that involves unrealistic choices or attitudes that rarely withstand reality testing. Your relationship and/or family might be suffering or in peril as a result.
The third card looks at past influences on your relationship with money, and how your past may have shaped your ideas and feelings about money. I'm seeing a ‘whoosh’ of air here, as though money were a "now you see it, now you don't" entity. Perhaps it came in short bursts that meant a lot of the time you didn't have much, but when you did it felt quite intense and disorienting. It might've been gambled, or otherwise irresponsibly mishandled, leaving you with an understandably insecure shape to your ideas and feelings about money. Money in the past may even have largely been earmarked for educational purposes, so that you scrimped a lot to afford a decent standard of living and now feel entitled to enjoy it more despite it being earmarked for family security. Was money a fairly turbulent energy in the past for you? Perhaps for a time it was a divisive influence which has shaped your ambivalent feelings about it now. It's likely that you argue or disagree about finances with your partner or family, and this might be partly because you have difficulty with it as an essentially finite energy which requires you to have a grounded relationship with it.
Card no 4 is in the position of your spiritual relationship to money, also reflecting important lessons to learn about finances. Here you have an image of home and family, with the stability and security which that set-up can both require and represent. I wonder if there's a concern that money these days needs to be prioritised in ways that support and sustain your family, and you're learning about the necessity for ensuring that it's spent and saved (and earned) first and foremost as a shared resource which gives your family a firm foundation. It's no longer just your money, or just your partner's money, it belongs to your relationship and to your dependents. That might feel almost depriving to one of you sometimes, but it's the outcome of life choices that now demand a responsibility to something bigger than individual preferences for how money is spent. You may already be comfortable with this arrangement, or one of you might be struggling to adapt to it, encountering challenges that cause discomfort or feelings of insecurity. If so, reflect on the beliefs that shaped your relationship to money in the past and try to understand how they might've made it difficult for you to adapt to your present circumstances. Another reading of this card is about recognising indicators of prosperity across your whole situation, not just financial, and letting those other sources of abundance inspire and sustain you whenever money matters are troubling.
Your final card suggests steps to take to improve your financial situation, which could include emotional changes which need to be made. First off I have to tell you that I see a solitary figure looking over at the happy family picture in your previous card, holding up a lantern to shed light on the scene. I’m sensing that there’s a need for distance and some serious reflection. Withdrawal, solitude, and the patience to go within and explore one’s inner world with its deep knowing and personal truth are all indicated here, as are attitudes of caution and control. It may even be necessary to take a fairly forensic approach to finances for a while, in order to keep track of spending. You or your partner may need to face yourself honestly, coming to terms with where you are in your life and what that realistically means for your attitude to family finances. Look at ways to bring disruptive or self-destructive impulses under tighter control somehow.
I’m sorry if that sounds gloomy or melodramatic, but I must say what I see in the hope that it will be helpful to you. It seems there are some hard choices to make, realistically, which might entail one of you working away, or one of you taking some time out of the relationship to reflect on and address difficulties in your shared finances. Overall, I found it difficult to pinpoint which of you has the questionable attitude and behaviours around finances, but one of you seems to. Or it may well be that you have a difficult time with money because of conflicting or inconsistent impulses within yourself.
I’d be so grateful if you’d take a moment to let me know if your reading lands at all accurately with you, @WoWsers6 