Upright the Five of Coins is read as hardship, financial loss and a felt isolation, often with help nearby that has not yet been noticed or accepted; reversed, as recovery, support finally received, and the end of a lean spell.
Pre-Golden-Dawn cartomancers, including Etteilla's eighteenth-century system, read a bare five of coins from number and suit, a disruption of the material stability the four had settled into, without the specifically social exclusion Smith's picture adds; the church window unseen by the two figures is her own invention, and it is this detail, more than the older number-based tradition, that gives the card its now-standard emphasis on isolation rather than simple loss.
Waite's own printed meaning stresses material and emotional deprivation together, loss, poverty and a certain destitution of spirit as much as of purse, a reading the current practice of pairing this card with isolation and unnoticed support has largely kept faith with rather than revised.
The Golden Dawn's title, Material Trouble, and Crowley's blunter Worry both frame the card more narrowly around finances than Smith's picture strictly requires, since the figures' trouble in the image reads as physical and social as much as monetary; most contemporary readers use the broader picture rather than either occult title as their primary guide, reserving the reversed card's recovery for whichever kind of support the query concerns, financial or otherwise.