The Art of Spending Money {Review}

In The Art of Spending Money, Morgan Housel provides guidance on how to harness the power of money to live a happier life. He delves into aspects about money that most finance books miss, namely individuality, greed, jealousy, status, and regret. His practical approach to managing wealth and finding deeper meaning and contentment in life will transform your relationship with money.

I loved this book. It’s so brilliant, easy to read and highly taggable. If I could type out each tag I placed, I’d be reproducing most of this book.

Stripped down, there aren’t many ideas or insights I would call groundbreaking, some may be things you have heard or thought about before, albeit in a fleeting non-concrete way – but the profound way Housel puts it all together and brings it to life will blow your mind and spark inspiration for how you want to view and spend money.

The most immediately usable idea that I took away from this book is an idea he extrapolated on from Daniel Kahneman who once said that “an important part of becoming good with money is having a well-calibrated sense of your future regret.” If you can (accurately) figure out how your future self will feel about your decisions, it will change how you spend your money. It immediately changed mine. 

That wasn’t the only idea that stuck with me. There were so many nuggets that gave me chills and inspired me. I can’t share them all, so simply put this book is an absolute must read, and if you’re still on the fence here’s a taster of what you can expect.

When actual experiences create less joy than you anticipated, it’s often because the moment you acquire something new you immediately jump to desiring whatever else you don’t have.

Good memories are the closest thing to living for today while compounding for tomorrow.

The trick is viewing every bit of savings as having actively purchased something, even if it doesn’t come with a receipt: You have purchased the ability to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want. And it is priceless.

Trading money for time, rather than trading it for stuff is probably the most overlooked aspect of spending money.

There’s no way to learn the value of money without feeling the power of its scarcity.

You want to spend money more wisely and are looking for a brilliant set of mantras to live your financial life by.

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