Is it worth it to become an Accountant?

[TREP]

To clarify - I'm NOT pursuing accounting career. The work hours (60 - 90 hours per week of YOUR time) are a major turnoff and the actual work is not something I'd find myself passionate about.

Yesterday, I attended a CA Information Session (for my Co-Op program). Out of curiousity, I attended just to see what the hype behind the CA path is all about. The common goal for everybody in that room is a simple one: become a CA and make tons of money. Needless to say, the room was filled with young and ambitious future accountants, proclaiming that CA is the path to go. After the session, I was in discussion with some of the attendees. It was difficult for me to argue my reasoning why CA surely isn't the path to go. Of course, when you're debating against a whole bunch of young and ambitious future accountants, the odds aren't in your favour. One of the their main points was that accountants will be in high demand in the near future because baby boomer accountants are going to retire and there is going to be an unfilled space of accountants.

So, that's why I posted up this thread. TREP

 

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[Cloaked_Isotope]

I chose against accounting and went with Finance for many reasons. A lot of my friends went the accounting route and many already regret it. Accountants are now commodities right out of school making roughly the same as every other accountant (50k - 55k at big 4), and much lower than they should given the amount of hours put in. Worse than that, they all have defined career paths...associate for a few years, senior, manager and partner if you are lucky at year 10-15. Very hard to differentiate yourself from others. It is not a glorious job unless you eat that stuff up. Now, that is not to say it that it would not be beneficial to take accounting courses. Many other majors require accounting classes - and that was very beneficial. Glad to see you decided against it.

 

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[Phones]

I chose against accounting and went with Finance for many reasons. A lot of my friends went the accounting route and many already regret it. Accountants are now commodities right out of school making roughly the same as every other accountant (50k - 55k at big 4), and much lower than they should given the amount of hours put in. Worse than that, they all have defined career paths...associate for a few years, senior, manager and partner if you are lucky at year 10-15. Very hard to differentiate yourself from others. It is not a glorious job unless you eat that stuff up. Now, that is not to say it that it would not be beneficial to take accounting courses. Many other majors require accounting classes - and that was very beneficial. Glad to see you decided against it.

Can you elaborate more on why you choose finance?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[campbellronald7]

Yes off course, as every company has requirement for Accountants whether private or public the need for financial services from CA’s is always there and required .So good luck with your career!!!

 

[TREP]

My brother-in-law got a "good job" with one of the world's big 3 firms. Yeah, he brings home a good salary for a 26 year old, he gets e-mails from recruiters every other day, but at the end of the day, he works his a$$ off. He doesn't come home until 8 or 9 o clock sometimes, and that's NOT during the busy season.

Edit: I forgot to say that he lives in Canada and sometimes has to go 10 hours NORTH to do audits, etc, for weeks at a time. That blows. It's cold up there!

Sorry, but if I'm clocking 12-14 hour days, it's in my own business - I'm not lining anyone else's pockets with my eternal soul, thank you very much. Thank god my BIL and my sister don't have any kids, so he's only neglecting his dog and cat...lol.

That said, not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur. I believe that for the foreseeable future, being a (GOOD) accountant is a great way to stay employed, if that's what you want. There are a few other careers like this (programming, etc... you'll always be employed, if you want to be, for the time being).

As long as we have governments (and the regulations that come along with them) and taxes, we'll need accountants to make sure we're following the law.

To the OP, I don't fault your curiosity for wondering what all the fuss is about. It could possibly show that you are just a smart person who wants to know a lot of stuff, which is a good quality in an entrepreneur. We should be learning all the time. But I hope that, if you really do believe that you want to be an entrepreneur, you realize that there are better and quicker ways to get to where those other students want to go.

Very interesting. I actually live in Canada myself and everybody is trying to go work for one of the Big Four - KPMG, Deloitte, E&Y, and PWC.

Any business major in a University (finance, marketing, accounting, logistics, management, etc.) is all well and good, but those majors are NOT going to teach you what you ACTUALLY need to know to be successful in the real world as an entrepreneur. Colleges train you to be an EMPLOYEE, not an EMPLOYER.

The purpose of college: to mass-manufacture office drones that will trade 5 days of slavery for 2 days of freedom while the only person getting wealthy is their employer.

Wealth is a dream, and will remain just that - a DREAM - for the rest of your life if you are an employee...

With all that being said, I can slightly relate to you, as I am currently a senior in college studying Accounting. It's most definitely not the easiest business major, and it takes a lot of time to be successful in. I chose to study Accounting because (a) I go to college for free (probably the biggest thing) (b) It's a beneficial thing to have knowledge of when pursuing my FastLane ventures (c) I can use the degree to make some income IF I HAD TO while pursuing my FastLane ventures.

People above have said that Accounting is a commodity; it is. People above said working in the Accounting field is terrible with long hours and hard work; that is absolutely true... A regular Accounting job violates all of the FastLane Commandments: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, Time.

The reply I think you should focus most on here is MJ's:



This is the most important piece of information in this thread in my opinion.

When I'm not studying accounting, I'm voraciously consuming marketing, advertising, copywriting, and sales books (these are things that you can learn on your own and don't need a college degree for). Yes I'm in college getting a degree, yes I'm in a SlowLane major, and yes I have to spend some of my valuable time studying to succeed in college. BUT, I am not getting into debt paying for a worthless college degree, and I'm building PROCESS for my FastLane ventures every spare moment I get outside of class, which leaves me with nothing but FREEDOM to do what I want when I graduate.

One more thing....a required-reading for you: read The Millionaire Fastlane : Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime

Great post man. Thanks for sharing your insight.

Can somebody elaborate a bit about how accounting is a commodity? Does it mean that accounting is basically a skill that's readily available? For example, you could hire an accountant with ease, etc.

 

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[Cloaked_Isotope]

Can you elaborate more on why you choose finance?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

I chose finance because it seemed to be the most marketable to employers, and aligned best with my interests. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do going in to school. I know many finance majors who work in operations, marketing, accounting, sales, HR..etc roles right after graduation. Most recruiters and career counselors I spoke with had the opinion that Finance was a catch-all major.

I also added and Entrepreneurial Management Major. More so for my personal interests, but it ended up giving me an edge over a lot of other candidates as well. Sure, there were some mechanical classes on how to write a business plan, but the program did a good job of bringing in real world experience in the form of speakers and providing seed money for in class start-ups. It will not teach you what you need to know to be a successful entrepreneur, but it teaches a lot of good mechanics and was motivating none-the-less.

 

[MooreMillions]

OP, only you can answer that question.

I say, accounting will work for you if it is your passion!

True story.

I have a mentor in the Northern Virginia area. He was a classmate of my aunt's and a friend of my mom, so that puts him in his late sixties present day.

He majored in accounting and began working as an, wait for it...an accountant, on an army base once he graduated.

He moved to northern Virginia in the late 70's working for, of all places, NASA. He was in charge of their entire accounting department.

He then moved on to IBM, finally the Pentagon, and then he "franchised" his own accounting practice.

I say all that to say this: he had a TRADE/SKILL that he loved. He bought at least one new piece of real estate a year, since he married his wife, turned his trade and passion (slow lane) into a passive business venture (fast lane), and was worth a little over 5 million in 2006 and he carries little to no debt.

Now, you ask yourself, was it worth him becoming an accountant?

 

[Lagron]

Holy shit, wish I read this 2 years ago...
Well..actually I think I am still okay.

I am an entreprenuer. Have started online businesses since 9th grade, and been managing people since 6-7th grade for a construction firm.

I am pursueing a degree in accounting. And these posts are quite intuitive.

I see the degree in accounting not as my slowlane job, but as an education towards something greater. I like creating sites/online based automated services. Accounting is a fundamental to what I want to accomplish when I can fund a startup I have wanted to fund in ages. Instead of hiring accountants to tell the developers how to create the site, I tell the developers how to create it.

Someone mentioned above for entreprenuers the best degrees are that of management/marketing and perhaps finance.

I am now starting to regret pursuing a degree in accounting.

 

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[dknise]

I see the degree in accounting not as my slowlane job, but as an education towards something greater. I like creating sites/online based automated services. Accounting is a fundamental to what I want to accomplish when I can fund a startup I have wanted to fund in ages. Instead of hiring accountants to tell the developers how to create the site, I tell the developers how to create it.

Someone mentioned above for entreprenuers the best degrees are that of management/marketing and perhaps finance.

And you're paying to learn from... people who aren't accountants, in management, marketers, or wealthy? The ultimate irony of finance professors is that most of them are poor, making less than $60k a year with little in savings.


I know I'm a few weeks late on this... but I'm a pro at killing accounting jobs. 90% of accounting is worthless transaction work that should be automated.

 

[RogueInnovation]

I know I'm a few weeks late on this... but I'm a pro at killing accounting jobs. 90% of accounting is worthless transaction work that should be automated.

My bet is that your college guys were all duped into the same idea, and if they can't tell you WHY its such a great bargain or the shit they are up against (guys with code), then it is likely it is a better job in their eyes in comparisson to other uni degrees that their parents will approve.

MJ is red hot on the pulse when he says die hards chew up lies and spit them back out.

...

Now having spoken support for the anti accounting stuff here, lemme speak about something I found fascinating.
Something you might not expect.

I've been doing planning for a few businesses full time for a good while now, tons of brain storming, constantly pushing the limit, and discovering and rediscovering things about biz that top level guys talk about.

In my plans, I developed certain graphs and ideas, and later on something truly unexpected happened.
I saw some microeconomics on youtube, and it was the SAME stuff I was doing in my biz!

I was graphing (in a crude way) stuff like indifference curves, price elasticity, and that straight line graph thing that shows what you give up of certain stuff to buy other stuff.

I watched some lectures on economics and I scribbled it all down madly, and implemented it immediately into my biz, like it was a gem!


I knew exactly how it applied, what I was going to use it for and I appreciated gaining the knowledge so much!


If I had sat in a classroom, I would not have seen the significance, but as an entrepenuer realising its relevance, I was thunderstruck by its brilliance!

Accounting is not useless!

But it will not give you the passion you need, to take advantage of those skills. You have to develop that stuff yourself.


[video=youtube;j4M-90nlReY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4M-90nlReY[/video]

Just check out how badass this is.
Typical people looking at it, or guys familiar with it might not care, but when I looked at this, I was like "thank god someone said it, organised it, and made it measurable".
Its badass because it shows you how to project beyond the private demand, into the social benefit, and as an entrepenuer looking to help people, its fantastic.

Getting stuff like this down, can make designing your business take FAR LESS TIME!!! Because you get this stuff out of the way before it starts nagging at you in the design planning phases as insecurity and uncertainty.

I have to say though, if I had just force fed myself this stuff I would see it as a ceiling rather than as a way to strengthen my floor.

Be careful of that. You have to use this stuff right and not let it box you in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRN6V1rl6v8

Stuff like this is just like, drinking tea to me. Relaxing and thought provoking.
I really enjoy economics, because I don't look at it as "what should be" but as "a way to reduce BS initially".
I mean, the above video just smashes through all kinds of uncertainties an entrepenuer like me has.

Mileage may vary for other people but when you truly understand this stuff, it is such a relief to have on your side.

Accounting and economics is something I wouldn't go to school for, cuz it would take too much of my time.
But combine that learning with software skills, and entrepenuerial skills like sales and marketting and getting out there and pushing yourself in a startup, and that is some good stuff.

 

[royemunson]

I am an accountant and work for a CPA firm in Ohio. I took on that major with finance (while learning sales/marketing on the side) b/c I thought it would be a great way to make connections, learn entrepreneurship, learn the inner workings of a business, etc.

It has done all that. It has also made me work a lot of hours leaving little time and energy (after being a father as well) to focus on fast lane ventures. It has also taught me that just b/c you know a lot of something doesn't give you the balls to go out and do it for yourself. Some of our clients are dumber than football bats in most respects, but when it comes to their business matters they kill it - making us accountants look like we don't know what we're doing.

I will say the partners of the firm who still work more hours than could be imagined have built up so much excess cash they have invested in private equity companies that we get the ability to work on. That has made them very wealthy. They work now b/c they love what they've built and they love the people and so forth.

But they had very cushy management jobs at senior levels with one of the big 4 firms, left that and started this company out of the basement of one of their homes. They had the balls to leave that to fill a NEED they saw in the marketplace they could fill better.

With that said yes we lose a lot of employees and clients to turnover. We are not cheap and it is sometimes hard to show value but the clients that do value us pay us a lot of money - b/c they do they make a lot of money in return - 10-100x more than we do!

Is it a great way to go? Depends on your goals. I still feel that I'm on the outside looking in - I'm on the wrong side of the desk sometimes and even though I'm pursuing my own ventures I'm still the guy looking in from the outside - its' nice to be a fly on the wall with some of the stuff i work on and have oppty's to see needs in areas that others don't get the chance to see.

I agree with the above that if it is your passion go for it to learn while you earn and build your own fastlane ventures (just know it has been hard to focus on a challenging job like cpa work while learning and building another venture) - I don't love my job. It is not my passion and yes tax time sucks! It's not fun to prepare tax returns working til the wee hours of the night for fastlane entrepreneurs who make 5-50x what I do at my slowlane job!

Good luck on your decisions.

Joe

 

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[Lagron]

And you're paying to learn from... people who aren't accountants, in management, marketers, or wealthy? The ultimate irony of finance professors is that most of them are poor, making less than $60k a year with little in savings.

I know I'm a few weeks late on this... but I'm a pro at killing accounting jobs. 90% of accounting is worthless transaction work that should be automated.

I would like to know how you are "killing accounting jobs," I ask not because I want to rebut it, but because my time can be better spent doing what you do...and perhaps with an accounting background, I can kill even more accounting jobs and in turn, collect on what they would have had to pay.

So, PLEASE do message me with some information, heck, I'm willing to give you a share of what I make if you "mentor" or "guide" me.

 

[TheFinBin]

Friend, passed the CPA- opened his own firm, his second year he made 3 Million dollars gross so far (this current year)...outsourced work overseas- has 15 employees (including the ones overseas), and spends his time at the park with his fiance, and his laptop. Where he directs his employees in the Philippines and India.

iAmTrade -- Thanks for sharing this. I'm working on my CPA at the moment. My goal would be to do something along the lines of what your friend is doing once I pass. I would love to learn more about how he did it if you don't mind. What you shared about your friend is very encouraging.

 

[TonyStark]