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Taking Inspiration from an Investing Book

Customer Rating:
In many ways I feel that this book is underserved by labeling it an investment or personal finance book. Yes, it does offer some solid and original thinking on both topics. But is even better in its wisdom about what matters in life -- i.e. finding and cultivating your Soul Purpose.

Gunderson notes, rightly, that the best investment anyone can make is in herself. Education. Health. Friends. Family. These are what really count in life's balance sheet.

I have struggled with expenses since graduating college and taking on a ton of debt. Gunderson and Killing Sacred Cows helped me realize that my education is one of the best investments I could have made, and well worth the interest payments.

If you are struggling with making ends meet and want to avoid the "cut, cut, cut" advice of most financial advisors, then pick up a copy of this book.

So Full of Sacred Cows It Nearly Moos!

Customer Rating:
Gunderson and Palmer need to look to their own barnyards before branding the presumably wayward cattle of other farmers. This book is so saturated with New Age sacred tenets that it nearly mooed when I cracked the spine. A mix of the prosperity gospel, New Age exhortations to "be all you can be", with some highflown Victorian sentimental belief in absolutes thrown in; this work is not a book on personal finance, but itself a promoter of various sacred cows masquerading as principles around which to organize your life. Here are a few of the bovine beliefs.

1) You create you own reality.
I do not create reality. I engage in it. If a bird poops on my head, I can smile or I can frown, but I still have guano on my head. I didn't create that reality. Something outside of me did. The belief that I am the instigator of everything good and bad in my life is annoying at best, and callously mean at worst. I am thinking of victims of real abuse, such as assault, rape, murder, and genocide. Did they create their own reality? Is this not the ultimate in blame disguising itself as empowerment?

2) Do what you love and the money will follow.
Some wonderful engaging pursuits are simply not going to make you a living wage and are best pursued outside of the world of work. And this theory doesn't take into account the number of folks who love watching bad TV all day. If they do what they love, will the money follow? There are too many situations where this belief can be refuted for me to take it seriously.

3)Your "Soul Purpose", (read your sole purpose,) will lead you to the perfect vocation that will give your great joy and accomplishment.
If you are going to invoke the word soul and it accordant religiosity, then for the Christian, the sole purpose of your life is to glorify God. But God does not give you only one activity in life to focus on. God wants you to be a good parent, a good friend, a good worker, a good citizen, the list goes on. To think that only one facet of your life is going to fulfill you is not realistic and counter to the multi-faceted wonderful nature of human beings.

4) That you should pursue this "Soul Purpose", vocation, no matter what.
Not everyone is so proficiently selfish as to create a reality that allows them to focus on their needs as primary all of the time. Sometimes conditions in an individual's life makes pursuing one's self-interests unrealistic. Such language in the context of this book implies that this person is a sellout, not that this person has nobly sacrificed for a higher good, such as their family.

If you create your own reality then the above tenets are true and you are a sellout, a chump, a member of the unenlightened masses if you are not 100% of the time, "living the dream," whatever that is for you. But if these principles are not true, and I do not think they are, these are some of the most judgmental unkind attacks we can levy at one another. This work was so uncritical of its own sacred cows that I distrust the advice offered and the credentials of its authors. What little advice was good could have been summed up in a chapter. Instead I was treated to 256 pages of chummy exhortations and shallow examples when I would have preferred the more prosaic, "scarcity mindset" strictures of specific advice.

Killing Sacred Cows is New, Refreshing, and Counter Intuitive

Customer Rating:
I can summarize the reasons to buy this book:

(1) Financial Institutions, the media, family, friends, and financial advisors hype myths for their own benefit and personal satisfaction.
(2) You can't recognize a myth (a Sacred Cow) when you are in it until it's too late.
(3) The book covers 9 broad-based myths with useful anecdotes, historical examples with repetition of important, useful concepts.
(4) You can destroy the Sacred Cows of financial terrorism, or be destroyed because you don't question them. You'll learn how.

Garrett Gunderson lays out precise principles in this book. He gives you the knowledge to avoid costly mistakes and the reasons why they happen over and over again throughout history. (Does Enron, WorldCom, now Lehman, AIG, Merrill, WAMU, Fannie & Freddie sound familiar?).

The hidden danger of a Sacred Cow is that you don't know it's a myth until it's too late. Like high blood pressure, you don't necessarily know you have it until you get tested.

Please read this book slowly to digest it. I suggest reading it with a high-lighter, and re-reading it at a later date. Why? Dead Cows have "ghosts" that constantly haunt us, being reinforced through toxic "sales hype" and conventional "wisdom".

Crap

Customer Rating:
I like to look at many finance books at my local Barnes and Noble and sure enough this was one of them. This book stands out for saying something different than 90% of finance books, and it should be applauded for that effort. Unfortunately, the reason why 90% of finance books generally tend to give the same advice is that, that advice reflects reality for a random member of the great masses.
Myth 1: The "Finite Pie." Basically don't be jealous of other people and think in ways that help everyone. No one is disputing this. However, thinking win-lose is not the accept as accepting the reality of scarcity (which is not the same as Malthusian thinking). A limited supply of labor and material resources is the basis for all economic activity, otherwise we would not have to work and pluck what we wanted from trees! The author is confusing his terms, probably deliberately.
Myth 2: You're "In it for the Long Haul." But this is also true. Stock market and other investment returns are much riskier in the short run than the long run. The author says rather than invest long term, utilize your money to order to get better returns in the present. What the author doesn't realize is that most people did not become millionaires in their twenties and thus need a nest egg to save for retirement and other unexpected events. Buying a dream mobile home today with your life savings will not give you a greater rate of return than investing it.

And on and on and on. The author pooh-poohs his own achievement in becoming wealthy at a young age, and that money is not everything, but the back cover of this book mentions first thing that he was a "millionaire by 26... owns several companies, etc. etc." and his profession is helping people plan their finances. So clearly, his whole life is revolved around money, and money was the objective for him selling this book. Money may be a store of value and not the source of value, but it is still the incentive that most people have to create that value.

If achieving your "Soul Purpose" is all you need, why isn't the author giving his book away?

The reality is,
1.) most people work in boring 9-to-5 jobs that are not their "soul purpose" although they may be something interesting.
2.) Most people do not have time to manage their money and utilize it to generate higher returns, and that is why they rely on someone else.
3.) Most people do not make enough to skip saving for retirement.
4.) Money IS power.
5.) Most financial advice is similar, boring, and will only give you low returns. But it is the best generalized advice out there that is available to the public.
6.) You are better off skimming this book in Barnes & Noble than buying it.

Personal Responsibility & Your Finances!

Customer Rating:
This is a fabulous book, not only for understanding how money works, but also getting you to set goals for yourself. If you were raised with a Depression-era mentality and you think money in the bank will make you feel safe, this is the book for you.

Setting a goal of where you'd like to be financially and making it happen shouldn't be a number. It should be a life choice. I have been wealthy, I have been poor, but you can't truly be wealthy without knowing what that means to you. I am doing what I love everyday, I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, I own my new car outright. And I don't live in fear. What's that worth to you?