I am 37. Is it too late in the game to pursue Accounting degree and CFA later on?

Discussion in 'Business and MBA degrees' started by sung1contrarian, Dec 20, 2014.

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Regardless of post Accounting degree path, how long did it take to earn 100K+/yr?

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  1. sung1contrarian

    sung1contrarian New Member

    I was sure this type of concern might be common and thought I might find some relatable posts but either due to bad searches or what, but didn’t find any good information so ended up creating this thread.

    I entered college back in 1994 and it was a total disaster from an academic standpoint. Long story short, after 5 years of being lost, I was dismissed from my school without being anywhere close to getting a degree. Serendipitously around that time, the startup I was interning for offered me a fulltime position. I started working as a web developer and was able to make a nice living for myself without a degree. I still do the same line of work and after a recent pay cut, make about 90K/yr.

    From my personal experience and my colleagues, I feel the life span of a web developer is relatively short lived. So here I am at 37 years old, married and with a 6 months old baby, and I feel like my career train is nearing the final stop. So I am faced with the option of trying to stay relevant with the never ending new technologies and try to look more appealing than recent college grads or transitioning into a different career.

    After weighing my options, I am leaning a bit towards a new career, and pursing an Accounting degree was top on the list. Not only because it opens things up to so many different career options, I am also looking for a career that has longevity, where experience and age doesn’t negatively impact employment chances. Plus I always liked finance and don’t mind the proverbial number crunching. If I do go down this path, then I intend to get the CFA charter. Main reason being that it would cost a whole lot more for graduate school compared to the fees to take the CFA exams.

    Needless to say I am a totally different person from my first stint at college and am laser focused. Regardless of my drive, I am 37 and will be almost 20 years older than the typical 1st year college student. Do you think it makes sense for me to pursue this option? What other career moves could I be looking at?

    Thank you!
     
  2. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Yes, that's a good career path where there's demand. Don't expect, however, to be competitive for the typical position in large public accounting, where they tend to target high GPA twenty-somethings without the ties that would typically prevent the grinding 60+ hour work weeks. That said, there are avenues that could be utilized to seek a second career.
     
  3. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    +1 to this.

    About an hour from me a public ivy cranks out accounting graduates into some of the top accounting firms. These firms scoop up as many twenty somethings as it can. Some will stick, some won't. Some will leave the company for a less rigorous environment. Some will remain with the company and eventually rise through the ranks. Some will leave accounting altogether and work in a variety of other business areas. It's a numbers game. Companies like this typically don't hire individual applicants for individual jobs. They hire an entire class of people assuming that a certain percentage just won't work out.

    Many of these individuals, with these top firms on their resumes, will be able to work in a variety of firms (be they peers of those large, top firms, or smaller boutique firms) once they move on.

    Why am I rambling on about this? Because you can hire a bunch of "faceless" twenty somethings for jobs like this without nearly as much care as when you hire individuals. It's dirty. Some argue it's wrong. Many would argue that it can lead to sexist, racist or otherwise discriminatory hiring practices. For HR people, it's the equivalent of "meatball surgery" from M*A*S*H. You aren't hiring gifted individuals. You are trying to skim the top layer of a specific business program (usually programs, actually). You are hiring degrees and grade point averages, for the most part.

    That's a world that exists in accounting, law, engineering, publishing, finance and I'm sure in many other areas. It's the race to the top and if you don't graduate from the right school at the right age, it's unlikely you even get to compete.

    Separate from that world is another world entirely. This is a world of individuals being hired on their own merits by employers who respect them for what they can bring to the organization. There are some decent sized players on the employer side of things, it isn't a choice between "big companies" and "mom and pop shops." That's the place where, I believe, second career seekers (and many, many others) find their place.

    I've over-simplified a lot of the hiring world, I acknowledge that. The reality is that many people who study finance might aspire to working at a place like GoldmanSachs. Very few actually make it there. Does that mean finance degrees are useless? Hardly, it just means you have to accept a different path.

    For an accountant, there are a few pathways to this goal. You might find a smaller accounting firm is willing to take you on. Perhaps even more likely is that a non-accounting firm with an in-house accounting department is a nice bet. My company manufactures heavy equipment. We have a very large accounting division. We have hired people straight out of school. We have hired people after a few years of working at some top firms. While we hire recent grads, we don't recruit on campus and hire them en masse.

    Can you do it? Sure you can. The question becomes if you should. Only you know the true answer to that question.

    Why accounting? Why earn a CFA? (By the way, it's worth noting here that "Finance" and "Accounting" are two different disciplines. You periodically find someone with a finance degree working in an accounting department and vice versa. There are areas where the two cross over, but still distinct areas of the business world.)

    What I will say is that it is unlikely (again, this is my opinion) that you are going to be able to transition into finance or accounting and immediately make at least $90k. There are a lot of variables that come into play, mind you. You are going to be starting out as an absolute beginner. Your prior work experience is interesting. You may even be able to leverage your experience to help you land a job. But, at the end of the day, you would be someone trying to find accounting work with no accounting experience.

    Also, don't underestimate the difficulty in earning a CFA. You are going to need a bachelors (please forgive me if I've misread, but you seem to indicate that you don't have one at this point) to stay current. Your CFA will likely be a few years beyond that. And while the fees for the CFA and the CPA are low, the test prep costs can be very high. My company pays for test prep materials for accountants to earn their CPA (we would pay for CFA prep, but none of our analysts have pursued it). While certainly not as high as graduate tuition, CPA Prep costs a few thousand dollars.

    You could look into doing more software development. You could look into other jobs within the IT world that wouldn't be as drastic a shift away from your current role.

    I don't want to turn you off of your potential career shift. However, if you are making $90k now and have a small child, paying for an accounting degree and then taking a pay cut may not be your objective.
     
  4. kered

    kered New Member

    To the OP...
    As someone who stumbled upon this website a couple years back and is on the verge of finally completing my Bachelors, I will offer up a different point. I am almost the same age as you and understand your situation well. I am established and earning well in a particular profession for which I am less than fond of. I work 50 - 70 hours a week, but this site was a major conduit for the life change that will come to fruition over the next couple years.
    If you have some college done, why not complete your BSBA (or something similar) from one of the big 3? Seems like you could bang that out in less than a year and you would be able to check a major box relatively quick. From that point, you could do an Online MBA or Masters in Accounting and be up in running within a couple years.
    I have chosen to complete my BA in Social Science from TESC. I am starting my capstone now and I am going to do a Certificate in Strategic Management from Cornell (or something similar) to get my mind around starting the MBA program at WGU this fall.
    There are many people who have completed MBA or MA programs form WGU in 18 months or less! And since 40 is the new 30, you would be out in front in no time flat!
    Either way, search around this site and look over previous posts, as there is a wealth of knowledge here. The success stories here were all of the inspiration I needed to jump back on the horse and get it done!
     
  5. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    37? Dude, you are like way old.
     
  6. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Here's the way I think about it. At 37 you probably have 25-30 years of earning ahead of you. Your most productive years are still in your future. Anything that you do now to set yourself up to maximize your earning during those peak earning years will be to your benefit. Also, you might actually like it.
     
  7. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Let me also throw out the possibility of what I call "partial career transitions."

    I have a former colleague who really, really, really wanted to get out of HR. He decided he wanted to become a programmer. He went out and learned to code. He went to a few coding boot camps. He earned a certificate or two. He really went to town. During the course of his coding education he came to a stunning revelation; if he had to code 40+ hours per week he was likely going to drive off of a bridge. He liked coding as a hobby. He liked to tinker. But he wasn't exactly feeling the full time code love.

    Today, he works at a company that produces HR software. He sells it. Because he used to be in H.R., he speaks the lingo. He knows how HR departments tend to be structured. He can talk to HR professionals as colleagues. But, he also needs to be able to interact with the developers who are working on these systems. Because he has a foot in each world, he gets along very well. Customer wants a customization? If they just hired a sales guy he might say "Yeah, sure" just to close the deal. This guy sat down with developers initially to learn what was under the hood so when he says something is possible, he says it with a bit more authority than your typical sales person.

    Now, he didn't set out to sell stuff. If he wanted to sell stuff, he could have just transitioned into that role within our company. But he doesn't really view himself as being in the "sales" business. He just happens to be an experienced HR person with a solid tech background who can bridge the gap between developers and customers (who happen to be HR people as well). He makes more than he did in HR at this point. Most importantly, he's happy.

    What do you want to actually do in accounting/finance? Do you want to crunch numbers? Do you want to sell securities? Maybe, and this is some "out there" thinking, you could combine your present skills with some finance training to make something really cool. Maybe you develop web apps for financial professionals. Your current background plus a business degree plus a small portfolio that you've made could really be interesting. It's just a thought. You know your skills best.

    But whenever a person tells me they want to transition into a new career, I always encourage them to look at ways to use your past experience to your advantage. You may not need to throw decades of web development experience away. Just build on it and use it to do something else. That way you aren't starting from scratch you're just evolving as a professional.
     
  8. prloko

    prloko New Member

    I agree with Neuhaus on the transition aspect. I was once also researching accounting degrees until I after I took two courses and decided this is not what i want to do with my life. During my research, there were big demands for people who could develop accounting information systems. There were even a few schools to crank out specific Accounting IS programs. With your programming background and an accounting degree, you could break into one of these jobs and probably start out with a higher than average starting salary. How long, if ever to get back to $100K is beyond me.
     
  9. st22345

    st22345 Member

    Well, I'm 47, but I was born at a very young age.
     

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