How I Started Treating Tarot Like a Financial Planner (And Why)
Look, I’m not some woo-woo crystal guy. I deal with real-world problems. For a few months last year, I was stuck in this absolute cash flow nightmare. I had finished a massive contract—six weeks of intense, non-stop work—and the client, bless their hearts, just kept pushing the payment date. “Next week, definitely next week,” they’d say. I was running on fumes and I just needed to know if I needed to panic and liquidate some long-term savings or if I could afford to wait it out.
My usual methods—calling the accounts department, sending politely-worded but increasingly frantic emails—were useless. So, I grabbed the deck. I didn’t want deep spiritual insight; I wanted an ETA on the money transfer. I needed a clear message: Is the check in the mail or not?
The standard interpretation for the Jack (or Page) of Diamonds is usually a message about money, or a young person bringing financial news. But that’s too vague. A message could be junk mail. I needed actionable intelligence. That’s when I decided to stop reading the cards like poetry and start treating them like a highly specific, personalized financial tracker. I committed myself to a week of specific, daily pulls, logging the card and then logging any related financial event, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
The Messy Logbook and the Three-Card Rule
I started this practice because I needed to bridge the gap between “this card means news” and “this card means $5,000 hits my account today.” For the first three days, the readings were a disaster. I kept pulling Cups, which is great for feelings but useless for rent. I pulled the Tower once, which made me immediately check my bank balance to make sure I hadn’t been hacked. The whole thing felt like a colossal waste of time, confirming my long-held belief that if it wasn’t a spreadsheet, it wasn’t real.
But I stuck with it. My structure was simple, ditching the complicated Celtic Cross nonsense. I used a simple three-card pull, which I called the “Cash Flow Clarity” spread:
- Card 1: The Status Quo (The Problem I Can’t See)
- Card 2: The Action/Messenger (What I Need to Do/Hear)
- Card 3: The Tangible Outcome (The Immediate Result)
I logged everything in a physical notebook, not on my phone. Why? Because when you physically write “Ace of Swords, great idea, zero dollars,” it makes the absurdity of waiting for magic feel more real, which somehow made the occasional hits more impactful.
When the Jack Finally Showed Up, It Wasn’t the Big Win
Day five. I pulled the cards right after pouring my second cup of coffee. I was tired of the process. I was ready to throw the whole deck in the bin.
Card 1 (Status Quo): Five of Swords, reversed. Great. Conflict resolution, maybe. Or lingering resentment. Definitely felt that.
Card 2 (Action/Messenger): The Upright Jack of Diamonds.
Card 3 (Outcome): Two of Pentacles, reversed. Ah, imbalance, struggle to juggle finances. Not great, but specific.
My immediate thought was: “Okay, the big client is going to email me. The transfer is coming.” I spent the next three hours compulsively refreshing my email. Nothing. No big money news. No email from the client. Just spam and a calendar reminder.
I was furious. I walked away from the desk, thinking I’d wasted five mornings on this crap. Then, I remembered something I had been putting off for weeks: a refund application for a subscription service I’d canceled months ago but was still being billed for—about $150 total. It was annoying, low-priority admin work, but still money.
I sat down and finally finished the damn refund form. It took maybe 15 minutes. It was irritating and small, nothing like the massive contract payment I was expecting.
The Real Meaning of the Jack: Small Action, Immediate Impact
The next morning, the financial news didn’t come from the big client. It came from the subscription service: “Refund processed. $150 deposited.”
Then, later that afternoon, the big client finally messaged. But it wasn’t the payment confirmation. It was their finance guy saying, “We just need one more piece of paperwork from you before we can initiate the transfer on Monday.”
That was the lightbulb moment that slammed me over the head. The Upright Jack of Diamonds wasn’t predicting the arrival of the massive payment I wanted; it was predicting the message or action I needed to take, or that someone else needed to take, to start the movement of money. It was the catalyst.
My logbook entry for that day wasn’t “Received $10k.” It was: “Jack of Diamonds means stop waiting for the whale. Handle the minnows, because that action clears the mental space and the physical paper trail required for the whale to swim in.”
Every single time I’ve pulled the Upright Jack of Diamonds since then, it has coincided with one of three things, never the actual payout:
- A job interview invitation (the potential for money).
- An annoying, necessary financial admin task (like filing old receipts or disputing a charge).
- The exact paperwork required to release funds I had forgotten about.
If you pull that card and you are waiting for a serious chunk of change, don’t just stare at your bank app. Stop procrastinating on that small financial chore you’ve been avoiding. That tiny action is the messenger. Go do it. Because in my experience, that Jack is demanding you clean up the mess so the big dollars can find their way in.
It’s not magic; it’s practical accountability disguised in 78 sheets of paper.
