Weird dreams and your wealth: stories from a spider-mummy

Money dreams can be as crazy as you like, but should be written down and shared with others to help pressure yourself into reaching financial goals.

Last week I had one of the weirdest dreams I’ve ever experienced: I gave birth to a huge, hairy huntsman-like spider.

My arachnophobia made it more of a nightmare than a dream, and while my 13-year-old questioned my sanity for having the dream I wondered why this spider was a live birth rather than an egg and how I was pushing it out.

But it did get me thinking about money (as dreams about being a spider-mummy often do).

• Turn debt into a tax deduction

• The amount of superannuation you should have right now

Weird dreams and wealth should go hand-in-hand, because we all should be a little crazy when working out how to spend our future riches.

It’s too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day financial drag, where every spare dollar goes to paying bills and debts, without looking to the future and the real reward of having money — rich life experiences.

Finding images for this article was traumatic for the writer. This is the scariest he could stomach.

Want to fly in space for a few hundred thousand bucks, spend a year sailing around the globe, start a charity to help your favourite species or bathe in a tub full of expensive champagne? No worries.

Write down your wackiest dreams and stick them somewhere you can see them, as a regular reminder.

If they’re not offensive, talk about them with family or friends to add some peer pressure to your planning.

Once dreams become written goals, the next job is to produce a plan to reach them.

• Calculate how much money you think you’ll need to achieve the goal. Don’t be scared by big numbers or if it may take one, 10 or 20 years to reach it. Big dreams require patience.

• Resolve to start putting away some money each payday toward achieving the goal. Start from this week, otherwise you may never start. It could be cash into a secret jar, money diverted from your wage to a separate account or extra funds going into your superannuation.

Crazy dreams can be profound, said Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

• Regularly check on your progress — do it monthly for shorter-term goals and quarterly or annually for longer-term ones.

• Don’t be afraid to tweak your plans if circumstances change. You might get a pay rise or pay cut, or financial markets may plunge. Flexibility is vital in financial goal-setting.

• Ignore the naysayers who call you or your dreams crazy. Use their comments to fuel a desire to prove them wrong.

Famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud once said dreams were often the most profound when they seemed the most crazy.

I’m still trying to work out what my spider dream means, and my research discovered that spiders in dreams could represent manipulation, alienation, evil or fear — yikes — or also creativity, tenacity and patience.

So no concrete answers there. But I also discovered an entertaining source of others’ wacky dreams on Twitter. At #weirddreams you’ll find dream reports of heavy metal rock band Metallica babysitting, a girl arguing with her pet cat about socks, and my favourite — Donald Trump launching a missile using his Apple watch and being unable to stop it because his battery went flat.

That makes spider birthing or bathing in a tub of champagne look pretty normal after all.

@keanemoney