Shouldn’t ‘tengo’ be ‘tenga’, in the subjunctive?

Question

Shouldn’t ‘tengo’ in the first line be ‘tenga’ in the subjunctive? Why isn’t it?

Answer

"I love to imagine that..." is saying that the person likes to do it and does it. Having a que in the sentence does not always mean the clause will be in the subjunctive.

There are loads of lessons on the subjunctive which are will show you when we do or do not use the tense.

Answer

Hi Maree, As Marsha says there are many interesting lessons on the subjunctive.

In this case tengo is in the indicative because the subject and object are the same i.e. "I love to imagine that I have a lot of money......" If the sentence was "I love to imagine that my favourite aunt has a lot of money" you would have two different subjects, and thus the subjunctive. Saludos. John

Answer

I confess to finding it somewhat d⁭ifficult to see why tener has to be in the indicative here, because it is not factual. I know that 'pienso que ...' takes the indicative, but this situation seems even more nebulous.

My grammar book implies that imaginarse [almost?] always takes the indicative [even when it is negative] - so we should just accept that as a guideline.

Answer

Hola Maree
This is a tricky one, the verb imaginar is indeed difficult.
I agree with David and his grammar book when saying that imaginar nearly always takes the indicative. I have gone through different sentences using imaginar que in my head and it only sounds natural to use the subjunctive when you use imaginar in the imperative, for example:
Imagina que tus padres ganaran la lotería mañana.
Imagine that your parents won the lottery tomorrow.
This could be using the indicative as well and it would sound equally correct: 
Imagina que tus padres ganan la lotería mañana.
When we use the subjunctive "que ganaran" we see this as something more "hypothetical, impossible, far from reality". 
In this particular sentence from the writing challenge saying:
Me encanta imaginar que tengo mucho dinero.
I would justify that indicative "tengo" (it is definitely not correct with "tenga") by saying that "what you imagine" is seen as something possible in your head, so you imagine something that does happen (while you imagine it) if that makes sense. As this is seen pretty much like a fact, the use of indicative is appropriate.
For me, the verb imaginar works semantically pretty much the same way that "Pienso que..." which takes the indicative: "me gusta pensar que tengo mucho dinero".
Saludos
Inma