My New Book: The Art of Spending Money
My new book, The Art of Spending Money, comes out next month.
Investor Chris Davis – who serves on the board of Berkshire Hathaway and Coca-Cola – says, it’s “not so much a sequel as the masterful, Oscar-worthy completion of” my first book, The Psychology of Money.
I wrote this book because I found there to be too much advice on building wealth but almost none on what to do with it.
This book is not called The Science of Spending Money because I don’t think such a thing exists. I’m more interested in the art of spending money. Art can’t be distilled into a one-size-fits all formula. Art is complicated, often contradictory, and covers things like individuality, greed, jealousy, status, and regret.
That’s what this book is about.
Now, I think you can use money to build a better life.
I think buying nice stuff can bring you joy.
I love ambition, hard work, and – most of all – independence.
But after writing about money for two decades, I am constantly amazed at how bad most of us are at knowing what we want out of money, or how to use it as anything more than a benchmark of status and success.
I try to tackle the art of spending money from several angles. But you’ll find a few common denominators in this book:
1. There are two ways to use money. One is as a tool to live a better life. The other is as a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others. Many people aspire for the former but spend their life chasing the latter.
2. Money is a tool you can use. But if you’re not careful, it will use you. It will use you without mercy, and often without you even knowing it. For many people, money is a financial asset but a psychological liability. Blind lust for more can hijack your identity, control your personality, and wedge out parts of your life that bring greater happiness.
3. Spending money can buy happiness, but it’s often an indirect path. Money itself doesn’t buy happiness, but it can help you find independence and purpose – both key ingredients for a happier life if you cultivate them. A big, nice house might make you happier, but mostly because it makes it easier to have friends and family over, and the friends and family are actually what are making you happy.
4. Enduring happiness is found in contentment, so those happiest with money tend to be those who have found a way to stop thinking about it. You can value it, appreciate it, even marvel at it. But if money never leaves your mind it’s likely you’ve found yourself with an obsession, where it controls you. The best use of money is as a tool to leverage who you are, but never to define who you are.
5. If you’re confused about what a better life would look like, “one with more money” is an easy assumption. But that can sometimes mask deeper problems. Money is so tangible that it’s an easy goal to strive for, and pursuing it can become the path of least resistance for those who haven’t discovered what truly feeds their soul.
6. Everyone can spend money in a way that will make them happier. But there is no universal formula on how to do it. The nice stuff that makes me happy might seem crazy to you, and vice versa. Debates over what kind of lifestyle you should live are often just people with different personalities talking over each other. Author Luke Burgis puts it another way: “After meeting our basic needs as creatures, we enter into the human universe of desire. And knowing what to want is much harder than knowing what to need.”
The book comes out October 7th. I hope you enjoy reading it.