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[What am I doing with my life?] Economonics v. Accounting (aka. Death OR Taxes)
Evander
Disappointed FatherRegistered User regular
Disappointed FatherRegistered User regular
Not that I would EVER be a tax accountant, mind you.
But yeah, as much fun as I make of H/A I don't think this post would really fit anywhere else, so I have "deemed to grace you with my presence." (read: come mcrawling on my stomach hoping you will forget all of the mean things that I have said.)
Currently I see myself coming to a fork in the woods, not immediately, but within the next couple of years, and each path seems equally less traveled. I am currently a Financial Economics major (as well as a Judaic Studies minor. Go ahead and laugh, I do too.) and I find that I am feeling torn between the field of Economics, which holds more opportunity for creativity, and the field of accounting, which seems to come to me like breathing, and which I enjoy working out.
My father is a CPA. He is a former DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) Auditor. He is currently the Director of Federal Contract Compliance for the same company that I happen to work at, for which I am an intern in the Economics office (he didn't get me the job, he merely introduced me to the right people, and I impressed them on my own.)
I previously worked at another company where my father was doing government compliance (that time he DID get me the job) where my job was to read the DCAM (DCAA Contractor Audit Manual), which is possibly one of the worst reads ever, and help to make sure that the Indirect-ODC business system was prepared to pass a DCAA audit which the company had previously failed.
For some reason, I seem to enjoy accounting, but I wonder how much of that is merelya boy wanting to become his father (in an admiration sense, not an Oedipal sense.) and how much of that is genuine interest. This is especially because, within accounting, I seem to merelygravitate towards the fields that my father deals with. I also fear that accounting might eventually feel limiting to me. For the record, I NEVER intended to go into economics or accounting. I wanted to be a writer, and to merely find a field that would allow me to get a salary to live off of, because you can't depend on writing to pay the bills, especially when you are awful with deadlines. Then, after working a bit of retail, and findingthat I enjoyed selling people on things, I decided to return to school majoring in Sociology, and to take that towards a field in marketing. My father talked me into taking Econ 101, though, and the rest, as they say, is history.
My interest in economics is that it is so broad and beautiful of a field. I was once, many moons ago, a physics major, and I like to tell people that I started my college career as a physics major because I wanted to study how the world works. I later switch to economics because I wanted to study how the world works. Yeah, I know, from my bad jokes alone you are already thinking I should bean accountant.
Economics, though, is beautiful to me. Understanding the ebb and flow of not just money, but of reality, really. Everything has a value, and I don't mean dollars, I mean pure value. Human life is worth something, and as awful as that fact seems to some people, the harsh objective truth and aceptance of this within the so-called "Dismal Science" makes it appeal to me. It is a field that acepts reality for what it is. It can be used, as it often is, to help the rich get richer, and to deal with increasing profit margins, etc. That is the side of the field known as efficiency. But it can also be used to spread out as much value to as many people as possible. To make sure that the common man has a fair lot in life, and to empower the manywho are meak to have just as much say as the few who are strong. This is the side of the field known as equity. The insight that economics gives is eye-opening, and allows one to understand the workings of the human world in a way that physicists might understand the workings of celestial orbits and the spining of electrons. As far as practical applications, of course, there is no shortage of ways to apply economics in the world, especially living in DC, as I do, where I could easily find a way to get myself into one or another department of the government (this applies for Accounting as well, though).
There is no accounting department at my school, all accounting classes are within the economics department. I chose a major in Financial Econ specifically not because the regular Econ major didn't satisfy me, but, honestly, because Econ is a BA, but Financial Econ is a BS. The only real difference is a couple of math classes, and while lots of places don't care, the few places that do hold a BS superior to a BA. As far as becoming an accountant goes, a degree in accounting is not actually required. You just have to have a certain number of credits (and certain specific classes within that) in order to sit for the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exam, after passing which you are certified for life (unless you have your certification specifically removed.) I believe that the CMA (Certified Managerial Accountant) exam works similarly, but in all honesty I really can't see myself becoming a CMA.
I didn't make this thread to ask for help or advice with this decision, it is nothing thatis suddenly going to be solved because some one comes up to me and says something (if that were the case it would have been solved long ago.) I merely made this thread in order to discuss the two fields, as the discussion itself might help me to develope my own conclusions.
If the mods don't want this here, send it wherever you think it belongs, or lock it, or delete it, or edit all of my posts to pictures of goatse and then ban me for it, or whatever else you might like to do. I hope that I put the thread in the right place, though.
But yeah, as much fun as I make of H/A I don't think this post would really fit anywhere else, so I have "deemed to grace you with my presence." (read: come mcrawling on my stomach hoping you will forget all of the mean things that I have said.)
Currently I see myself coming to a fork in the woods, not immediately, but within the next couple of years, and each path seems equally less traveled. I am currently a Financial Economics major (as well as a Judaic Studies minor. Go ahead and laugh, I do too.) and I find that I am feeling torn between the field of Economics, which holds more opportunity for creativity, and the field of accounting, which seems to come to me like breathing, and which I enjoy working out.
My father is a CPA. He is a former DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) Auditor. He is currently the Director of Federal Contract Compliance for the same company that I happen to work at, for which I am an intern in the Economics office (he didn't get me the job, he merely introduced me to the right people, and I impressed them on my own.)
I previously worked at another company where my father was doing government compliance (that time he DID get me the job) where my job was to read the DCAM (DCAA Contractor Audit Manual), which is possibly one of the worst reads ever, and help to make sure that the Indirect-ODC business system was prepared to pass a DCAA audit which the company had previously failed.
For some reason, I seem to enjoy accounting, but I wonder how much of that is merelya boy wanting to become his father (in an admiration sense, not an Oedipal sense.) and how much of that is genuine interest. This is especially because, within accounting, I seem to merelygravitate towards the fields that my father deals with. I also fear that accounting might eventually feel limiting to me. For the record, I NEVER intended to go into economics or accounting. I wanted to be a writer, and to merely find a field that would allow me to get a salary to live off of, because you can't depend on writing to pay the bills, especially when you are awful with deadlines. Then, after working a bit of retail, and findingthat I enjoyed selling people on things, I decided to return to school majoring in Sociology, and to take that towards a field in marketing. My father talked me into taking Econ 101, though, and the rest, as they say, is history.
My interest in economics is that it is so broad and beautiful of a field. I was once, many moons ago, a physics major, and I like to tell people that I started my college career as a physics major because I wanted to study how the world works. I later switch to economics because I wanted to study how the world works. Yeah, I know, from my bad jokes alone you are already thinking I should bean accountant.
Economics, though, is beautiful to me. Understanding the ebb and flow of not just money, but of reality, really. Everything has a value, and I don't mean dollars, I mean pure value. Human life is worth something, and as awful as that fact seems to some people, the harsh objective truth and aceptance of this within the so-called "Dismal Science" makes it appeal to me. It is a field that acepts reality for what it is. It can be used, as it often is, to help the rich get richer, and to deal with increasing profit margins, etc. That is the side of the field known as efficiency. But it can also be used to spread out as much value to as many people as possible. To make sure that the common man has a fair lot in life, and to empower the manywho are meak to have just as much say as the few who are strong. This is the side of the field known as equity. The insight that economics gives is eye-opening, and allows one to understand the workings of the human world in a way that physicists might understand the workings of celestial orbits and the spining of electrons. As far as practical applications, of course, there is no shortage of ways to apply economics in the world, especially living in DC, as I do, where I could easily find a way to get myself into one or another department of the government (this applies for Accounting as well, though).
There is no accounting department at my school, all accounting classes are within the economics department. I chose a major in Financial Econ specifically not because the regular Econ major didn't satisfy me, but, honestly, because Econ is a BA, but Financial Econ is a BS. The only real difference is a couple of math classes, and while lots of places don't care, the few places that do hold a BS superior to a BA. As far as becoming an accountant goes, a degree in accounting is not actually required. You just have to have a certain number of credits (and certain specific classes within that) in order to sit for the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exam, after passing which you are certified for life (unless you have your certification specifically removed.) I believe that the CMA (Certified Managerial Accountant) exam works similarly, but in all honesty I really can't see myself becoming a CMA.
I didn't make this thread to ask for help or advice with this decision, it is nothing thatis suddenly going to be solved because some one comes up to me and says something (if that were the case it would have been solved long ago.) I merely made this thread in order to discuss the two fields, as the discussion itself might help me to develope my own conclusions.
If the mods don't want this here, send it wherever you think it belongs, or lock it, or delete it, or edit all of my posts to pictures of goatse and then ban me for it, or whatever else you might like to do. I hope that I put the thread in the right place, though.
Evander on
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I'm in an MBA program, and macroeconomics is definitely very interesting stuff. However, it's not the sort of thing you can get into if you have very strong opinions on things. The likelihood of getting a job that doesn't require you to do something you're opposed to (or changing your opinion depending on the current political climate) is relatively low, since economics are usually used to justify policy.
Finance and microeconomics would be a good way to tie your math skills in with economics, even if price theory isn't exactly as interesting as macroeconomics. And the advantage of accounting is that it's a universally useful skill for any business, the pay is pretty much always good, and if you have strong opinions on things or a sense of morality, it's easier to stay true to those feelings.
Accounting is pretty straightforward for the most part, at least if you stick to GAAP, and that can make it pretty dry. I also dig the general knowledge and understanding that economics imparts, but it is definitely based entirely on the kind of job you can get. My economics professor has been a lobbyist for a few industries and has numerous stories about the frustration of flying around to schmooze with one group, only to get pulled off of a project because suddenly a large company buys some influence and wants the MACRS for [industry] adjusted differently than what you were pushing for in your last 2 weeks of schmoozing. Or you get put on a project to analyze changing the tax rate or tariff pricing for [industry], only for your results to contradict what [committee] was looking for, and your last 3 months of work gets put in a filing cabinet never to see the light of day. Those are common things for economists, especially in DC, and if that would frustrate you in a job, it's not really worth it.
I think most people who have an interest in economics and accounting, but don't want to actually be an economist or an accountant end up in finance.
Economics beyond the undergraduate level seems to be just a layering of unrealistic assumptions on top of some mathematical models that don't really reflect reality. You become more and more divorced from the world around you the further you go into the theory of the field. It's my educated opinion that believing economics really allows you to see all there is to know about reality is a very naive and dangerous position to take. Really, what can one expect from a field who's most basic assumption is that people behave rationally? On the other hand, if you just want to do applied economics all you'll be doing is statistics and actuarial type work, easily as dry as accounting.
I blame most of the problems in the field on the unwillingness of most economists to take enough maths to truly understand and appreciate just what the theorems and models they are using really represent. Very little seems to be created from the ground up, you simply take someone else's work, change a variable, and call it research. Alternately you just try to force your data to fit some well known PDE so you don't have to actually know how to solve any problems. The type of people I've known who've made it in the field are more the sycophantic types, most people I've known in the field who could have made a difference and done some actual constructive work have left as they felt they were stagnating working within the very limited confines modern economics presents.
All things considered I really wish I'd have gotten an Accounting BA and been done with it all. Its a nice well paying secure field and you can find a job anywhere you'd choose to work.
As for the "beauty" of economics, and the complications as you get farther into the field, I've already started to see a little bit of that, and maybe that is what is pushing me more towards accounting, somewhat. The "beauty" that I saw, though, and that I still would stand by, is the basics of microeconomics, and its applications. Things like supply and demand curves, or indifference curves, or opportunity costs, these are the things that really made so much or the world make sense to me, and things that I think so many other people need to have a better sense of. My brother is a mechanical engineer who refuses to take any accounting or economics, and I keep telling him that he'll be in for a rude awakening when every set of plans he comes up with gets shot down based on feasibility.
All the economics work I've done so far has been pretty much data entry, except I'm coming up with the data too. Either finding values in documents, or taking various values in documents and deriving other values from them. Comparatively, the accounting work that I've seen myfather do all my life consists, mostly, of telling people whether or not what they are doing is okay, how they can change things to make it okay, and defending to the government that what was done was indeed okay. For the record (not that anyone was going to toss out the accussation) my father has impeccible ethical behavior. He was once a consultant for a companythat had turned out to have some VERY shady things going on, but they had hidden all records related to that from him, so he had no way of knowing. He WAS investigated afterwards, and found to have no involvement. He always stressed ethical behavior to my brothers and I, so when I talk about finding ways to make things within the rules, I don't mean any sort of deciet, or even pushing things just behind the letter of the law, I mean making things right, and then, when a government employee gets a little nitpicky, and starts trying to label things as violations which clearly aren't, THAT is when he defends the company against the government.
I'm still afraid, though, that it's admiration for my father that is really drawing me towards Accounting. I don't want to take up a field only to learn later that I have zero interest in it. I don't think that's why I'm interestedin it, but I've fooled myself before, so I'm cautious.
I wouldn't worry so much about doing what your dad does, though. One thing I find interesting about families that tend to stick to the same jobs is that the parents usually do a good job of showing their kids what's actually involved in their jobs. My dad never really has nice things to say about his job, and I've only ever had a vague idea of what he actually does. I know he likes it enough to stay in the same field, but I don't really know what he likes about it. Subsequently, I've never felt compelled to even look into going into the same field.
Yet my wife's sister is an actuary. Talk about an incredibly dry and boring field, a real "dismal science." But she digs it because her parents encouraged her to learn what she was into and didn't push her away from more dry fields. Their dad is an oldschool computer science guy, and they're all in more technical, mathematically inclined fields. It's not so much genetics or following in their dad's footsteps as it is having parents that are supportive of those kinds of fields. Kind of like having parents who go to college and insist that their own kids go, cos they know what a big deal it is.
I'd be more worried if you were getting into it only because your dad encouraged it and you weren't becoming attracted to it. But you're diggin' it, and that's cool. It's far better to get into a field that you at least enjoy, even if it's not "sexy."
I'm fresh out of college and so haven't gone back to get the rest of my hours required to sit for the CPA exam, and haven't decided on graduate school or not. Thing is, when I do go back for my hours to sit for the CPA exam they aren't required to be graduate but if I'm going back I almost might as well go into an MBA program. I've really toyed with getting my masters in finance.
Anyways if your true passion is writing literature but you enjoy certain aspects of both accounting and economics as far as stable careers then, to me, it would make sense to pursue accounting. Being a CPA will all but guarantee you a job anywhere in the country and at a good rate. Your true passion is writing so your main concern with your business career should be job security, job availability, and pay rate.
Perhaps do a BA in one and a MBA in the other and sit for the CPA, with that kind of education you have room to play.
Accounting is a safer bet with better hours (more regular but still icky - i think big 4 accounting firms will start people off at around $60k for 60 hours/wk.) Consulting is worse and probably not the route for you if you have math ability, but you might still take a peek at it.
Econ academia is frustrating and arcane unless you're like jeremy sachs and happen to be able to influence policy makers, in which case you will most often either be a) wrong, b) ignored, or c) both.
Gov't work is stable but nowhere near as lucrative as private quant stuff for wall street. that's what i'd do in your shoes.