Two corrections before the review. First, an earlier version of this page presented The Spender’s Guide to Debt-Free Living as a faith based book that challenges idolatrous views of money and includes family discussion guides. It does not. Anna Newell Jones wrote a secular personal finance book. There is no Scripture in it and no Christian framework.
Second, the listing this page links to is the audiobook, published by HarperAudio and narrated by Carly Robins. The print edition is from HarperOne. If you want a physical copy to write in, make sure you are on the right listing before you check out.
What the book actually is
Jones was a photographer in Denver carrying a serious pile of consumer debt. She started a blog called And Then We Saved and documented what she named a Spending Fast: for one year, she bought nothing beyond genuine necessities. No restaurants, no clothes, no coffee out, nothing discretionary at all. She got out of debt and the blog took off. This book is the method written up properly.
The core idea is deliberately blunt. Most budgeting advice fails because it asks you to moderate, and moderation requires a decision every single day. A total fast removes the decision. Everything is off the table for a fixed period, which is easier to hold than a hundred small judgment calls a week.
She follows the fast with what she calls a Spending Diet, a looser ongoing version, because nobody lives at fast intensity forever. That second half is what keeps the book from being a stunt.
Where a Christian reader lands
There is nothing here that contradicts Scripture. It just does not engage it. Jones is not making a case about greed or contentment or generosity; she is solving a math problem with behavioral tricks.
That said, a fast is a very old idea and Christians should recognize it. Deliberately going without in order to see clearly what has a hold on you is a spiritual discipline before it is a budgeting technique. Jones arrives at it from the other direction, but a man who has watched money quietly become the thing he thinks about most will find the practice familiar for reasons she does not name.
Bring your own theology on giving, because the book has none. Generosity is not in the plan.
Readability and usefulness
Conversational, personal, and honest about how hard the first months were. Jones is not a finance professional and does not pretend to be, which is part of the appeal: the plan came from someone in the hole rather than someone looking down into it.
The method suits a specific problem. If your issue is consumer debt driven by discretionary spending, this is aimed right at you. If your issue is that you do not earn enough, a spending fast will not fix it and the book will feel beside the point.
Who should read it
The man who knows the money leaks and cannot seem to stop it. Couples who have tried budgeting apps and abandoned them. Anyone who responds better to a clean rule than to a nuanced plan.
Bottom line
A useful, honest secular book about one specific and effective tactic. Do not buy it expecting a Christian treatment of money, because there is not one in here.
Find The Spender’s Guide to Debt-Free Living on Amazon.