Accountant by Day

In Part I of this post, I talked about my family’s background, and my Sibling who is currently reinventing themself financially, with my help. (I hope!) This part is about my plan for helping Sibling get on track. This is just a plan though–I can help with advice and personal finance tools, but I can’t actually BE WILLPOWER in another human being. I hope the advice and tools will make it easier for Sibling to exercise willpower and make progress.

In January I posted about an upcoming talk I was going to have with my sibling about money matters. Our mother got in a mood, and did the math before I had a chance to. It turned out that with the amount of time sibling was spending commuting, and an estimate of car costs, sibling was making very little money per hour (under $5), or in some cases negative, if the mileage costs were more than the amount earned that day.

Happy Superbowl Monday! Big happenings in the land of AccountantByDay! (Although this is the time of year where I am mostly an accountant by night too.) I decided to get back into the housing market, and today I made an offer on a home and it was accepted!! Now I have the inspection, appraisal, and a whole lot of paper work to get through. I’ve checked out of the world of blogging recently - mainly reading Clarissa, the Grumpies, and Mutant Supermodel.

I am now a “home owner” although of course, the bank really owns the home. I’m resenting having to go to work now, since I just want to stay home and get everything cleaned up and orderly! Of course, having a mortgage payment means that work is more important than ever. The first few weekends resulted in a ton of extra purchases (garden hoses, shovels, rakes, washer and dryer, new fence in the yard).

I saw this fun idea for a post over at E-Musings - a brief history on where I’ve lived. She covered her history as a renter, and I will start with since moving out of the parents’ house to go to college too, although I’m not renting NOW, and this place definitely needs to be on the list, so it’s not specifically a “rental” history. Freshman High Rise My first dorm was as stereotypical as you can get - a freshman high rise, with the added feature of being an all-girls building.

Not all accounting jobs are alike. Employers in large companies or not-for-profit organizations have different types of requirements and the job opportunity might be for:  Accounts receivable supervisor  Accounts payable supervisor Payroll person Cost analyst Junior accountant Senior accountant Accounting supervisor/manager Controller Each of these positions has specific work experience and academic requirements. The above openings usually require that the candidate have experience in large financial software packages such as Oracle Financials, SAP, Great Plains or other ERP systems.

Part of what attracted me to the company I currently work for is our access to international clients. I have a fairly international family, worked with a lot of international student programs in college, and I just find myself attracted to international-related people. Of course, a lot of the clients we have are staffed entirely by American employees, but within my company, I get a lot of contact with people from all over the world.

I was lucky enough to have an hour-long drive last night at the same time that an American RadioWorks segment about teaching methods aired on NPR. The segment discussed how the traditional lecture-style classrooms don’t really teach anyone much at all. The students that do learn in this format are the ones who are motivated to learn, and would be able to learn it on their own from a book without the lectures anyway.

I’ve heard mentioned on the news several times recently that Warren Buffet has declared that he has a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, who only makes $60,000/year. Now, this is a bit of a touchy subject, since it is a method of politicking to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. This post from Consumerism Commentary discusses how, while Warren Buffet might have a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, this is typically not the case.

Accounting is a popular choice among those who want to study something that will provide them with a steady, well-paid job in the future. (We love steadiness, us accountants!) In my head, I picture it as one of those professions, like being a doctor or a lawyer, that parents push their kids into because of the job stability - with the caveat that it is not assumed to be as highly paid as a doctor or a lawyer, but also not as difficult a degree to achieve.