Investment Book Review: Killing Sacred Cows

Today I read a book called Killing Sacred Cows, written by Garrett B. Gunderson and contributions by Stephen Palmer.

In the books introduction Mr. Gunderson says that that a "sacred cow" is defined as an individual, organization, institution, teaching, or belief often considered exempt from criticism or questioning. Then thought the book he gives examples financial myths and traditions that shape our thoughts about money, wealth, success, and prosperity.

In this book he asks us very poignant questions, like:

If only a minority of people are wealthy, why don’t we copy what they do, instead of what the copying what the majority of people do, who are not wealthy? And quite honestly it’s one of those wake up calls type questions.

He then lists things that the majority of people do, that the wealthy don’t do, like putting their money in 401(k)s, putting it in a CD or some high yield savings account. While I don’t know if what he is saying is true, but it made me pause and think about the bigger picture. The bigger picture being if I want to be wealthy I need to find out what those strategies are and do those.

This book is littered with great quotes, but one of my favorites was one from John F. Kennedy saying,

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the risks and costs of inaction.

A recurring thematic element is the author challenging the reader to find our Soul Purpose, which is our way of adding value to the world and I quote him:

"if our new goal is to create value in the world, not simply build our net worth, then how we go about becoming prosperous changes forever."

Another great quote from the book is:

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value." - Albert Einstein

The chapters of the book are labeled and one sentence summaries from the book include:

How the scarcity paradigm, which is at the root of so much common financial advice, limits our financial success
How the "accumulation theory" of wealth that most of us subscribe to destroys our potential
Why "investing" in the stock market for most people is little better than buying lottery tickets - and how you can create real wealth instead
How most people are in a security dilemma caused by avoiding things they fear, which actually decreases their security - and how to find true security yourself
Why money doesn't equal power
Why the most lucrative investments are by nature the lowest risk
Why the best way to reduce the cost of insurance is to buy the most you possibly can
How false beliefs about "getting out of debt" may keep you from financial freedom
Why value is infinitely more important than price.
His underlying questions for all of us, as he asks in the beginning of his Introduction, are "What if everything you thought to be true about money and finances was actually completely false? How soon would you want to find out, and what would you do about it?"

Conclusion
The book is about Financial Rules that the author believes are considered Sacred Vows as in everyone believes them to be best practices, but the author believes them to be myths. In fact he believes that you must:

Overcome the Financial Myths that are Destroying your Prosperity.

The book is 282 pages long and is divided into separate chapters for each myth. The author gives the myth, identifies why he feels it is a myth, explains why it’s a bad move for you financially and offers some evidence.
I was excited to read what he had to say, so I finished the book in a few days. I found that I agreed with many of his picks and although I thought the book could have been much shorter, I still thought it was a good read.

✍️ written by Shortsegments.

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