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Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Accounting/Finance People.
I'm thinking about going back to school to get my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration focusing on accounting/finance. I'm not sure exactly what career path I want to take, but from reading some posts in here there seem to be a multitude of career paths available with this degree. I love doing our family budget and making the financial choices and decisions (discussed with my H, of course) so I thought this may be a good career field.
I would like to hear from people in this field, which career path you're currently in, and what you like and/or dislike about it.
Re: Accounting/Finance People.
I`m an accountant in public practice, nearing the end of my training for the designation.
Likes about the job: flexible hours, every day/week is different, can manage my workload (within reason), difficulty increases with experience, occasional travel
Dislikes: overtime requirements during the busy season, auditing (certain # of audit hours required for designation), training new students
With an education in finance, you would be looking at more of a career in banking.
I have a BS in Accounting and an MBA.
I'm an accountant within a corporation. I chose not to go the auditing route(public accounting as most people refer to it) because i knew it wouldn't suit me well. I love what I do- which entails month end closes, explaining variances from month to month, balance sheet reconciliations, working on the year end audit with outside auditors. I currently work for a small private company so I am also dealing with account collections, invoices and preparing collection reports for managment.
As for hours- my current job is a typical 9-5, rarely stay late unless its year end. This can vary from company to company depending if they are publically traded and what their deadlines are. The place I worked at before now was publically traded and had extremely tight deadlines, including working some weekends and later nights during the year end.
You'll have to see what works best for you and your lifestyle.
My husband has his accounting BS and is now working on his MBA.
When he graduated college he went into public audit and worked at a big 4 firm. His hours were INSANE and although paid well for just being out of college, he was insanely underpaid for the hours he worked.
After 3 years he transitioned to an analyst position at a manufacturing company. He worked there for 2 years and just recently accepted a position as a cost analyst- manager- at another manufacturing company.
He's great w/numbers and analysis but sort of hates the field. He still worked crazy hours but now gets paid 2x as much as I make (I'm a teacher). He's said that he wished he had studied engineering in college but was just a bit lost during college so he went with accounting.
Typically, he works from 8 to 7... but last night he came home at 10:30.
Accounting and Finance can vary. Finance you will be more geered toward Banking or if you want to be like a Financial Consultant. I would get an Accounting degree but most of those positions you can get with an Accounting degree also. I worked in public accounting while in college. I realized really fast I did not want to be a CPA or work in public. Most people either hate it or love it.
I had a bookkeeping job for a construction company for a few years while finishing school too. I loved that but it is mainly transaction/data entry stuff. I am someone that cannot do the same thing everyday so could never work in like just AP or Payroll. I currently work for a family office and don't really like it so job hunting and hoping to get into an Analyst position because I am ready for something more challenging.
Overall I love Accounting. There is so much you can do with the degree, you can make great money, and can have a variety of schedules depending on what you like.
I'm an accountant, and got my CPA after 2 years in public practice.
I transitioned into corporate accounting and ended up in External/SEC reporting. I've been at 2 companies as they've become publicly traded. Our groups also did any out of the ordinary transaction accounting (debt deals, mergers, revenue deals, etc.)
The thing I like about my area of accounting is that it's a good combo of regular reporting (quarterly and annual SEC reports) and more long-term project oriented stuff. I enjoy working with all areas of the company (legal, manufacturing,etc.)
I agree that it's a very flexible field, which is why I went into it. However, I've also worked a lot of long hours on and off which can be tough initially. I've been fortunate that employers have generally recognized this so our group is always tops in line for bonuses and other perks,etc. which does help somewhat.
During non-busy periods I also have a lot of flexibility with time off, work from home,etc.
I have a BS in Finance and for ten years I worked in corporate and investment banking as an analyst and then a business development manager. I really enjoyed it, though in 2009, I was transferred to my bank's real estate foreclosure department. That part really soured me in banking - it was hard talking to business owners to foreclose on their property or to homeowners who couldn't make the payments on their homes. It was REALLY hard.
So last year, I took a project coordinator position at an airline and it was a good experience in that it helped open my eyes to a lot of other areas outside of banking. I worked a lot with the company's treasury department (the group that handles the cash, credit and basic money in-/outflows of the company) and the accounts payable departments. I got a lot of ancillary experience to complement my banking knowledge. So it's been a little easier to apply for non-banking finance jobs now that I'm in the market (long story short, I didn't see eye to eye with my manager and we decided that it was just best that we part ways).
But with finance, you can do a lot - you can work in the finance department of an organization, large or small (or profit/non-profit). You can go into consulting. I would suggest that you think about what you want to do with finance - do you want to be behind the scenes? Then maybe something in accounting or being an analyst would be good. Do you want to work more with people and helping them make decision? Then think about being a financial adviser or retail banking.
Thanks for the feedback. I am a more behind the scenes type person, so that helps narrow it down a bit.
I'm going to do more research on this field and figure out how we're going to pay for it, keep my part time job, and raise a kid.
I finished that degree while working for a tiny CPA office doing public accounting and business payroll... moved on to work for nonprofit animal shelter as the Accounting Manager for a few years... and a year ago I landed my current job as an accountant for a large nonprofit hospital system.
I hated the hours in public accounting, and it made it difficult to start a family (though we did anyways), but the experience was so necessary. The animal shelter job introduced me into the nonprofit world, and also just forced me to jump in and use everything I had learned up to that point. It was nice to have the whole department to myself, but it was also tough to not have a mentor or anyone from which to learn and grow.
My current job is my career position, and I really like the corporate world, though it's not right for everyone. I am constantly learning from my bosses and peers, and hope to move up in the organization eventually.
I work in Finance, but not in an accounting or audit type position. I'm employed at a Fortune 100 company and we do a lot with client contracts. We will go through the contract looking for any type of financial obligations we have to the client. Then enter the information into our software program and periodically will review and make payments to the client.
We do not often interact directly with out clients, since the Account Team usually works with them.
I have a BBA in Accounting and a CPA. I spent about three years in public accounting, doing audit and now I've been in SOX Compliance (so, still audit) for about another three years. I prefer working in industry to public practice because my hours are much more manageable and I like the routine of coming to the same place every day, doing (basically) the same thing every day.
I enjoy what I do and there's a lot of other things out there too that you can do with the degree.
.: Diary of a Recovering Runner :.
Thanks everyone!
This is probably going to sound insanely dumb, but, how math intensive were the classes? I mean, obviously you have to DO math, but, is it a ridiculous type of math?
So far, it sounds like working in industry will theoretically fit me better with more normal hours and what not.
The hopes are that I can hurry up and finish my degree while working part time, raising our new baby, and my husband working full time (although he currently works swing shift. Ugh. Finding affordable daycare is not going to be easy. I think we may talk about him finding a comparable day job.), and then when I finish up and find a decent paying job, then he can either quit his job or find a part time job and go to school full time to get his degree. We both have Associate's degrees right now so we should be able to get our BS in 2-3 years each. My thoughts are that we both need to have some sort of 4 year degree to land better paying jobs and in case something happened to one of us. That way we would still be able to provide for our child.
I think I'm going to set up an appointment with an adviser and see what my school path looks like.
No amount of education could convince Betty to be nice to possums
I lurk MM daily
I really enjoy reading and discussing money related topics.
accountants live on calculators
I had to take statisitcs and some pre-calc type math, it wasn't impossible or over the top. I thought Corporate finance was more difficult than the actual math classes, LOL
My fear of math is why I haven't went back to school yet. How awful is that? I was just trying to decipher the classes that are required and it looks like I'll only have to take a few math classes, thankfully. Although during those semesters my H will probably want to stay far away from me lol.
I know it sounds scary , but dont be afraid to ask for the extra help from other students, the professor or something they set up study groups and such.
I certainly will!