In January 2011, Ron Lieber posted “Gordon Murray, Former Investment Banker, Dies at 60” on a blog for The New York Times. Gordon Murray, the investment banker whose conversion to passive investing was the subject of my Your Money column last Nov. 26, died on Saturday at his home in Burlingame, Calif. He was 60 years old and had suffered from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. I first met Gordon when a close friend of his, a financial planner named Dan Goldie, got in touch with me to tell Mr. Murray’s story. Mr. Murray had spent decades at the highest levels of Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, selling bonds. Many of his clients were managers of active mutual funds or other investors who seek to outperform various market indexes.
“It was six months ago that I was told I had six months to live. One of the good things about having one of these malignant glioblastomas is that you do get some time to get closure, to plan and to spend so much great time with your family and friends.”
“When I entered the business, illegal and unethical were the same. Now there’s a huge difference. Wall Street got much more skilled about crossing the line of illegality.”
In January 2011, Elizabeth MacBride wrote “Reflecting On A Talk With Gordon Murray, Investors’ Advocate and Publishing Phenom” for Forbes Magazine. Gordon Murray died on Saturday in his Burlingame home after a two-year battle with brain cancer. His passing came after years of advocacy of sensible investing, culminating in a book that has become a publishing phenomenon. The 60-year-old began writing, The Investment Answer in earnest this summer after he was given six months to live, in the wake of a scan that revealed his glioblastoma had advanced. He was prodded along with help from his friend and financial advisor, Dan Goldie, 47, who helped organize the project and write the book. See: Two DFA advisors win big book contract after ‘Dying banker’ article in NYTimes.
“You go through an initial period of sadness, but then you realize, ‘Okay, I can't do anything about it, so let's just make the most of what we have.’ I could have a great, quality six months, or I could take the risk with the chemo, the radiation, and all these other drugs they throw in you, but it might actually make things worse.”
In November, 2010, The New York Times wrote this about the book and author:
[When] Mr. Murray, a former bond salesman for Goldman Sachs who rose to the managing director level at both Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston, decided to cease all treatment five months ago for his glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, his first impulse was not to mourn what he couldn’t do anymore or to buy an island or to move to Paris. Instead, he hunkered down in his tiny home office here and channeled whatever remaining energy he could muster into a slim paperback. It’s called “The Investment Answer,” and he wrote it with his friend and financial adviser Daniel Goldie to explain investing in a handful of simple steps. Why a book? And why this subject? Nine years ago, after retiring from 25 years of pushing bonds on pension and mutual fund managers trying to beat the market averages over long periods of time, Mr. Murray had an epiphany about the futility of his former customers’ pursuits. He eventually went to work as a consultant for Dimensional Fund Advisors, a mutual fund company that rails against active money management. So when his death sentence arrived, Mr. Murray knew he had to work quickly and resolved to get the word out to as many everyday investors as he could.
Read the rest of that NYT piece here. The Associated Press had this to say about the book and author: A self-published best-seller co-authored by a terminally ill financial executive has a book deal. "The Investment Answer," written by former Lehman Brothers managing director Gordon Murray and financial adviser Dan Goldie, has been acquired by Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The publisher said Thursday it will have a new edition out by Jan. 25. The "Investment Answer" became an instant hit after an article appeared last week in The New York Times. Murray has been diagnosed with brain cancer. Financial terms were not disclosed, but two publishing executives with knowledge of negotiations said bidding had reached at least $1 million. Find that syndicated AP piece here. The book and author were also featured on NPR's All Things Considered:
"In fact, I tell my kids now, 'If you start to feel sorry for yourself, do something for someone else.' If this had happened to me 10 or 20 years ago, I would have been wallowing in self-pity and 'life is unfair,'" he says. "I was 58 when I was diagnosed. But the thing is, I had a chance to get some perspective, the chance to give something back. And that I've lived this long, and experienced so much closure, planning, love and friends and family. Boy, everybody should be so lucky as to have a phase like this. "The fact is, we're all going to die. I'm going to beat you across the finish line, most likely. But in the whole scheme of things, it's not by that much. And when you realize you're not your body, it doesn't really matter that much whether you live short or long."
