Killing Sacred Cows Blog

Helen Huntley, the personal finance editor for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, recently gave a great review of Killing Sacred Cows that gives us an excellent opportunity to clarify the message of the book.

While she admits only reading parts of the book—and the review must therefore be understood in that context—she does make some good points that we’d like to respond to in the next series of blog posts.

The following is her review of the parts of the book that she read. Following this post, we will provide our responses.

Want some bad advice? Read this book

By Helen Huntley

"I don't ordinarily do book reviews, but I often read portions of the books that publishers send me. Sadly, quite a few of them are little more than thinly-veiled sales pitches for the author's business.

"One of the worst of these promotional books just came across my desk, "Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying your Prosperity" by Garrett B. Gunderson. It makes some good points. I agree that you need to take responsibility for your own financial success and you should invest in yourself and your money-making potential. However, the main purpose of the book seems to be to convince you to cash out your 401(k) -- he doesn't mind that you have to pay income tax and possibly a 10% penalty -- and pay Gunderson to show you how to manage your money. If you 'apply' for his program and you have enough money, you just might be accepted!

"The only investments he endorses in the book, at least in the parts I read, are real estate and permanent life insurance. He recommends buying as much insurance as possible. (Hmmm...I wonder who benefits if you buy more than you really need?) No tips here about ways to save on premiums. Instead, he trashes term insurance because it gets expensive if you keep it until you're in your 70s. Of course there is the small problem that term insurance is the only affordable way for most young families to get the amount of insurance they need. Any of them that try to follow his advice and buy permanent life insurance are highly likely to end up seriously underinsured. And I won't even bring up what happened to all those smart people who had bad timing investing in Florida real estate. Instead of losing part of your investment to the stock market downturn, you could have lost it all to the real estate market."

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