Accountant by Day

‘Tis the season to be traveling all over the country to prelim audits! Traveling for prelim is much nicer than traveling during busy season, because we don’t have to work as long hours, so I get to spend more time just chilling out in the hotel room than usual. I get a break from feeling like I have to do something with my free time - like walk the dogs, tidy up the house, run to the grocery store.

Photo by guitargoa via sxc.hu June was a good month for blogging statistics for AccountantByDay! I am close to getting under 1,000,000 on Alexa again, my traffic is up about 25% from last month. In addition, after reading this Yakezie.com article that mentions that Google updated page ranks, I went and checked the page rank for AccountantByDay, and as of now the page rank is 4!! (MozRank is 3.84 according to OpenSiteExplorer.

Earlier this week, I announced my plan to pay down ALL of my student loan debt in the next year. My plan is to pay off $1,000 each month for 12 months, starting in December. I had been on the fence about whether I should invest more, or pay off my student loans faster. My student loan debt has an interest rate of 6.5% - high enough that I can’t be sure that stock market gains will be higher, but still low enough that buying stocks could eventually pay off a higher amount.

I just spent some time applying for EINs for a new client - now I have the IRS hold music stuck in my head. Argh! Dum dum dum DUM DUM dum dum dum dum DUM DUM

I have a “pledge reminder” taped to my wall reminding me of the $1,500 I pledged to donate to my school over by first few years in the workforce. I pledged $100 the first year, probably something like $500 the second year, and the remained the third year. And yet, it seems like a lot more money to fork out now. I obviously thought when I signed this that these would be small amounts to pay once I was working full time.

If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’m facing a hefty bill to get the water line from the street to my house fixed this week. Yesterday, I was feeling more upbeat about the situation, and figuring out how I could scrounge some extra money out of Prosper (about $600), and a reimbursement check I’m expecting from work ($450), plus about $100 from Google Adsense since I finally qualify for my first payout (yay!

Is the desire for positive feedback unique to younger generations? The older people around me seem to dismiss this as useless fluff, and, intellectually, I would agree with them. However, without positive feedback, all you’re left with is negative feedback. If your work is 99% free of changes/errors, the only feedback is the 1% they would like you to do differently. Of course, we are all striving to hand in work that is 100% free of changes from the reviewer, but I don’t see that happen much.

I’m flying out to my first client of the season tomorrow. Having last minute panic moments where I think “wait, do I know what to do when I get to the airport still??” No idea what the work hours will be like this week. May have time to write some posts in the evenings, maybe not. Sit tight accountants of the world.

I spent about 3.5 years (4 busy seasons) working in public accounting. I was good at it. I worked a ton of hours, and stressed about meeting the ever increasing workload and expectations. They loved me. So, when I quit and let them know I was taking a job at a private industry company, small enough for me to be the only accountant, a few of my colleagues expressed surprise at my choice of exit plan.

The company I work for is in the process of improving our review process. The intent of the review process is not so much to provide feedback to employees as it is to encourage us to set career goals, and then keep track of whether we have met them. For example, the short-term goals I set myself at my last review were: Attend a Young CPA's breakfast Review some work of junior staff (to "