Customer Reviews

Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I've read so many good books on business and finance - but this isn't one of them. There really is no substance, and the few pieces of value that you find could have been presented in a 20 page PDF file. I too found myself skipping over many paragraphs because the author kept repeating the same vague information over and over and over and over. I kept grinding through, hoping for the big payoff at the end but it never came.

I don't usually review books on Amazon, but this one irritated me enough to make the effort.

This book is a new age self-help motivational screed in the guise of financial planning advice. There are a few interesting points made, a lot of questionable ones, and some potentially harmful suggestions.

I found myself skipping whole paragraphs of the author repeating himself and his vague platitudes for the umpteenth time. I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for him to get to the meat of the financial advice... all the way to the end.

Guess what I found at the end? Several sales pitches for his and his friends seminars, websites and books.

As another reviewer said, the 'meat' of this book would only fill a single chapter. The rest is fluff.

Don't follow the (possibly fradulent) positive-reviewing sheep, and don't waste your money on this book - if you really want to take a look, get it from the library (like I did).

I agree with the majority of the advice in this book. I've always thought the stock market was just a legalized pyramid scheme. It makes a lot of sense to focus on how to increase your personal productivity and income. BUT there were two overwhelming thoughts I had while reading this book:

1. Wait - didn't I just read this same sentence 5 times? It felt like the author kept repeating the IDENTICAL phrases over and over again. Like he was just trying to fill enough pages to be able to publish a book.

2. Is this a book or just a 271 page advertisement to take the author's financial seminars?

So, while it is good advice, be prepared to skim alot of pages because it is extremely repetitive. And I would say that this is a book to borrow from the library because once you've read it, there's no need to reference it again.

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.

Book is nothing but long-winded fluff.

Ultimately is an upsell to his "other products and services".. of which, his coaching programs--which will make you tons of money, and which range from low 5-figure to 6 figure prices.

Caveat Emptor.

I bought this book assuming by it's title that it would be a financial how to book. That is not what this book teaches, although the author makes some good points about knowing what your are putting your money into instead of blindly following the crowd I would have liked more practical information. I do believe the soul purpose theory is a good one, and that most people are the most successful when they do what they are truly passionate about but again it's presented in such a way that you expected more concrete advice.
I feel like the book was a hook to purchase the rest of his products online, I never like to read a book and feel like it is part infomercial.
So overall I did get something out of it but would have liked more.

As a long time CFP (Certified Financial Planner) I was shocked & disbelieving with the sort of information that Garrett Gunderson lays out so well in his book, "Killing Sacred Cows". When you have spent over twenty years in the financial services world and a different or supposedly better approach to financial planning comes out I was and most advisor's are naturally very skeptical. The claims of the approach that Garrett advocates just seemed to me to be "too good to be true".

After a great deal of rigorous research I have had to acknowledge that what Garrett says is actually very solid.

The most upsetting thing for me as a CFP was the realization that so many of my clients have been misled by me using the standard financial planning approaches that most all of my fellow professionals also use or misuse.

Garrett Gunderson has put this bigger picture (holistic) economics based approach into such a well written and totally solid book that is easy to read and more importantly it is easy for normal people to begin to see beyond the standard financial planning BS that is being taught to everyone.

You can not help but be a much more wise and aware steward of your precious life resources (money, time, attention, energy...etc) by picking up a copy of Garrett's excellent book "Killing Sacred Cows" as soon as you can.

What a complete waste of time. Thank goodness I checked it out at the Library and didn't buy this crap!

Garrett Gunderson is an insurance agent in Utah who from what I can gather created his wealth selling insurance, seminars, books, dvds, coaching, etc on how to create wealth. Does anyone else think thats wrong? The book repeats the same things over and over again with no real substance but to be different by challenging some widely held beliefs. I'm writing a book challenging the belief that the sky is blue, ohh look at me, read my book I'm different!

It's interesting how he postulates that net worth is not a true measure of wealth but on the back jacket the first sentence states he was a "multimillionaire" by age 26. On every blurb he's written about himself he gives us his net worth. His examples use people who have accumulated in a 401(k)(very bad) and then turned that accumulation into cash flow. Where are the examples without accumulation. He's a con-artist at best, dangerous at worst.

His kind of teachings hurt the people who religiously follow his instruction. Kind of like "The Secret" there's a bunch of people out there searching for their "Soul Purpose" and visualizing wealth so they can receive a check in the mailbox. Meanwhile they aren't doing anything productive so they should buy more dvds and books from this guy so they can "get to the next level".

His "Soul Purpose" and goal is to SELL YOU THINGS, to achieve his SOUL PURPOSE goal he'll give you feel good terms like Soul Purpose, and Human Life Value. He's just regurgitating a bunch of stuff from other authors and repeating it over and over. His knocks on banks and the financial services industry are tired and very generalized, somehow he thinks that the insurance industry that he works in is better? Can anyone say AIG?

Wake up people don't worship false gods, gurus, books on becoming rich, dvds on beating the stock market, computer programs on options, debt cures by con artists, or infomercials. T he only person getting rich on this crap is the person selling it to you! There is a multi billion dollar business telling you how to be "truly" wealthy, when in fact you can't get it from a book, website, dvd or infomercial.

Figure it out yourself! Have some balls to take some risks, have some faith in yourself and your fellow man, work hard, education yourself and maybe you'll live a happy and satisfied life, maybe you won't, nothing is guaranteed. But don't waste your money on this junk!

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.

Quickest way to riches would be a buck for every time you hear the term "soul purpose" in this book. Interesting viewpoints concerning money and investing, but not much meat.