The Art of Spending Money: Why nobody spends their money right

 “The Art of Spending Money” by Morgan Housel claims to present a new approach to spending and managing your money that goes beyond numbers.

This book is an unofficial sequel to his bestseller “The Psychology of Money”, which has sold more than 10 million copies since its release in 2020. 

(We’ve also reviewed that if you’re interested)

As I write this review, “The Art of Spending Money” is still quite recent, released on October 2025. However, it has seen quite a bit of traction and a large readership. It’s been critically acclaimed for its lucid explanations and a perspective on wealth management that is quite overlooked. 

On the other hand, many call it another thin and shallow self-help book that’s repetitive and daresay- possibly even a “rip-off” of his previous book “The Psychology of Money”.  

Let’s dive into “The Art of Spending Money” by Morgan Housel and REALLY see what this book’s about, why it’s so famous, and if it’s the next book on your reading list. (With no spoilers!) 

Spoiler-Free Summary

“The Art of Spending Money” is a book concerned with how you manage and spend your money- not through numbers but how your decisions are linked to deeper human psychology, sociology and other factors that can’t be numerically quantified.  

Housel mainly explains the non-numerical side of financial choices which largely discusses how you spend your money and why you make certain financial decisions. This is because your past experience, your childhood, your ambitions, your social circle, what others expect of you and what you expect of yourself actually dictate how you spend your money more than rational decisions. 

It’s a short book standing around 250 pages, revolving around topics of money obsession, greed, poor and good financial decision making, and most importantly the what it really means to live a happy life.  

So, is this book for you?

“The Art of Spending Money” is overall quite a concise book, standing at around 250 pages in most editions, and it’s not a very demanding read either; which means that you can finish it in one or two days.

However, there are a few important things to know about the book before you decide to read it.

Repetitive

You might have wondered why the summary for this book is barely three paragraphs long- well, that’s because there isn’t really a lot of actual content to discuss.

The main idea of the book, as mentioned earlier, is how human psychology and social thinking influence personal financial decisions and a lot of the book is quite frankly just 2-3 core ideas that have already been well-established in the first 30-40 pages. Across the rest of the book, it’s the exact same thing with certain subtle differences and smaller ideas and situations that are just spread across the contents. 

This is also why I felt that it was rather disorganised and just picked up different related and unrelated topics in completely random order during the middle section of the book especially. 

For those who have read “The Psychology of Money”

A large proportion of readers who are planning to read this book have already read Housel’s previous title. This section is for them.

If you have read the latter book, then you definitely don’t need to read this one, as it’s legitimately the exact same book with a smaller length, lesser context exploration and lesser payoff. 

If you have not read “The Psychology of Money”, you may read this if you’re on a time constraint, as “The Art of Spending Money” is nearly the same book with lesser length, however I definitely recommend the former if you’re ready to read another hundred pages for an objectively better reading experience.

Conclusion

Similar to its predecessor, “The Art of Spending Money” is a more mindset-oriented rather than action-oriented book, and as a beginner book, that really is its only purpose. However, in my opinion it was a very in-comprehensive, messy, overstretched book that tries too hard accomplish what its predecessor did, but failed to do so. Even considering it as a standalone, the previous criticisms still stand. As a reader, I’m giving this book a rating of:

2/10