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Is it worth it to become an Accountant?

CommonCents

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A solid understanding of managerial accounting and finance are very important. How you obtain that knowledge is up to you.
 
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D

DeletedUser2

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a true trep, would hear all those young kids chirping with excitement

and figure out a way to sell them something that will make them even happier!


:)

Z
 

MooreMillions

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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

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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

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Lagron said:
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

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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

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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

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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.
 

iAmTrade

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Just so I can shut the mouths of a number of people posting here...

But FIRST, I do agree accounting is not "fastlane"...it is just a "skill?" perhaps?

I have an accounting degree... a friend of mine has an accounting degree...I'm in an entire group of "accountants"...

And we're probably more of "entrepreneurs" than 90% of this forum...where as only 10% are "doing it" and 90% are faking it.

But I would call a few group of accountants, aspirational- they don't want the 9-5 grind....(and then the group I am presuming you are all mentioning is the non-aspirational-non-entrepreneurial minded accountants, the 90% of them all)...

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.

That's an accountant.

How about another guy...
Tom Proulx...he founded Intuit...a software firm developing something in particular that COUNTLESS businesses use...

He has a computer programming degree...aside from that- his "go to" guy...was...... drum roll... an accountant. Both wealthy individuals- now.

Say hello to wealth by using your skills to create and offer value on a wide scale.

Is it worth it to become an accountant? DEPENDS. Accountants, just like doctors, and lawyers, and other esteemed careers- require your individual "time" to offer such service.

Fastlane = removing your time from revenue, and scaling it?....

So... become an accountant (now you know what value to offer)...and scale (the part that no one does...the part only 1-10% of the population in the world does) = WEALTH = Fastlane?

----------
To sum it up...be mediocre as an accountant and you will receive mediocre results. Be, exceptional, by scaling...and you will make money and live comfortably, if not very comfortably.

Those above are just 2 cases, the first I saw happen first hand. The 2nd, you can just google as to how Intuit became the billion dollar company it did become.

And it only started with 2 people, of whom either had an accounting or programming degree? Sheesh! I have to use my brain, to figure out a new angle, to make a certain knowledge set I have fastlane?

Start from somewhere...some skill or knowledge, once leveraged correctly can make you wealthy.
 

exclusives88

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I didn't read through this thread but here are my thoughts on being an accountant/CPA. I am a CPA and started my career at the Big 4.

Pros
- It is easy to get a job at the Big 4 as long as you have the grades (3.2 GPA+) to back it up.
- Starting salary depending on where you live is decent. In Virginia, it was close to $60k. This was pretty good when you are only 22 years old. If you are decent, you can quickly make $100k in 6 years. At 28, making $100k isn't too shabby.
- My average raise was 8%. Do the math and you can get to a $100k salary pretty quickly.
- You are marketable and can easy find another job. If you were to quit today to focus on your fastlane business, you would be able to go back to working at a job very easily if you choose to.

Cons
- Hours are crazy high so it may be difficult to run a fastlane business
- It is not fastlane
- No matter what type of service you open up (CPA firm), you just created your own job. However, I can see creating some type of accounting or tax e-book, or running a software related to accounting can be fastlane.
 
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Hassen

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Everyone I know who's studying accounting goes into it for the job security. It is relatively secure because it'll be in high demand. Accountants make lots of money? It's honestly the first time I've ever heard of that.

My grandmother was an accountant until retirement & her advice to me was to "be anything you want, ANYTHING, except an accountant; it's so motherf@%king boring."
 

TheFinBin

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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.
 

johnp

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Say hello to wealth by using your skills to create and offer value on a wide scale.

Is it worth it to become an accountant? DEPENDS. Accountants, just like doctors, and lawyers, and other esteemed careers- require your individual "time" to offer such service.

Fastlane = removing your time from revenue, and scaling it?....

This is the best post that I have read on this forum in awhile.
 
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TonyStark

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