Growing up with a Dad who preached the value of compounding the moment I became a teenager, I took a liking (even if forced) to finances pretty early. But it wasn’t until I had my first internships which paid me more than enough to cover my expenses that I actually took a deepened interest in investing; the timing lined up well with the pandemic which afforded me plenty of time to research the things I was interested in. One of the foundational books I read at the time was Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money which, despite being short in length, left a meaningful impact on me. So, several months ago, when I searched Housel’s name online and saw he had released another book, I was thrilled.

I can’t tell if my expectations were anchored too high, or if The Art of Spending Money was truly lacking, but my experience fell pretty flat while reading this book. Instead of writing the usual essay-style review, I decided to organize my scattered thoughts as bullet points:

  • The book was really, really short. It feels like Housel poked at the surface from a few different angels, but never with enough specificity.
  • The more I reflect on the brevity of the book, the more I wonder if this should have even been a book. With the range of content covered, I almost feel as though a long article would have conveyed the vast majority of the themes.
  • While I appreciated the writing style being similar to The Psychology of Money, it felt like the content wasn’t too fundamentally different between the books; there just wasn’t enough new stuff.
  • Perhaps many of the themes in this book are novel for those just beginning to analyze their spending habits, but many of the themes felt blatantly obvious to me. Of course spending too much on material possessions is problematic just as hoarding all your money at the expense of happiness is.
  • Certain concepts were interesting, such as the Hedonic Treadmill which I’ve seen mentioned several times recently, but I wish they had gotten more attention. Particularly at the start of the book, but not limited to the earlier stages, there were many remarkably quotable lines.

Despite the perceived lack of originality, this book was an easy read that poked me to think about my spending from a new angle. I didn’t love this nearly as much as my last Housel read, but I’d still consider myself likely to buy his next book.

Rating: 2/5