You will love accounting after reading this.
Why Do Some Accountants Like And Enjoy Accounting?
I have met plenty of accountants who were perfectly happy with their chosen profession. I was wondering, why is it so? So, I inquired quite a lot over the years about whether one can love or like being an accountant.
The reasons accountants like accounting include income stability, a good job market for accountants, and resulting relative job security. Other reasons to enjoy accounting may be intellectual and analytical aspects and the ability to learn the business.
There are cons of the accounting profession and reasons why some accountants do not like working in accounting. But in this post, I focus only on reasons to like and enjoy accounting.
The below is an almost complete guide to why you can love, like, and enjoy accounting and being an accountant. Let’s dive in.
Reasons to Like, Love, and Enjoy Accounting:
You may like accounting for respect
Accountants often like to enjoy the public’s respect for the accounting profession. Accountants are true business professionals with strong integrity and ethics.
Therefore, accountants are some of the most trustworthy and reliable business professionals out there. This is a major reason why many accountants like or even love working in accounting.
Everyone likes accountants. How often have you heard that someone just hates accountants? I never heard it.
Accountants and CPAs are not “sleazy” salespeople many people detest. They are viewed as competent, knowledgeable hard working accounting professionals helping people and businesses manage their finances and money. CPAs are especially valued and liked for their high level of skills.
People are much more likely to open about their finances and personal life to an accountant than to a lawyer, for example.
You may like accounting for income stability
Many accountants I have met admitted that despite some boredom and other issues, they liked and enjoyed accounting because it provided stable income.
There is nothing better later in life than having a job that regularly and comfortably pays your bills and puts food on the table. All that without working physically too hard.
People also enjoy accounting because of its reasonable level of pay.
The median salary of an accountant is about $71,500 – $73,500 annually or $30-$35 an hour. While this may not seem like a lot, many other professions fare worse than that. Most likely, the salary level will grow in the next few years.
Accountants are paid well in states like Washington D.C., New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts.
You may like accounting for its income potential. Experienced accountants, especially CPAs, can make over $100,000 and more. A six-figure income is well within reach of an expert accountant or CPA.
Only a few CPAs make millions annually, but that also is not outside of the realm of possibility.
Some accountants love accounting because income puts them into the middle or upper-middle class. Accountants often own a home or condo, have a family with children. Accounting usually provides stable steady income helping to raise kids.
Yes, the first few years while accountants are getting that experience are hard. But after learning the necessary skills they enjoy accounting as a semi-automatic job.
You may like accounting for job security and stability
Besides reasonable income, accountants enjoy one of the most stable careers with consistent demand.
According to BLS, at least 135,000 annual job openings for accountants and auditors are expected in the coming years or until 2030.
Accounting is an essential function of any business or even government entity. That is why accountants enjoy such market demand for accounting skills.
Let’s do some numbers to prove my point. According to BLS and other sources, average national (USA) professional staff voluntary turnover (changing a job or firm by employee) in 2021 was 13%-16%. Non-professional staff turnover was 57%!
The professional accountant industry turnover average was only about 13%. That means fewer accountants than even some other professional workers had to hop from firm to firm.
Larger CPA or auditing firms generally have higher turnover. And often accountants leave public accounting and go into private accounting. This is a good reason to like accounting.
Consistent demand for accountants with good accounting skills leading to job security gives a piece of mind. Working in accounting still allows me to focus on family and personal projects after work.
Job security provides not only income but also balances stress from work. Accounting is one of few professions which still enjoys that demand and stability.
You may love accounting for a variety of career options
You may like accounting because it can be applied in practically any business environment. Accounting is a fundamental core business area.
See, accountants understand not only how to calculate profit. They understand service or manufacturing business through numbers.
Therefore, sometimes accountants can break into non-accounting careers due to their knowledge and understanding of business processes.
Accountants can easily shift their careers into the financial sector and become financial specialists. For example, accountants can take the CFA exam and become financial experts. But finance graduates must take additional courses to sit for the CPA exam, for example.
Some accountants like, love, and enjoy the fact that they can go into finance, manufacturing, or even logistics. They can work for private, public, or government accounting.
Accountants enjoy such options as financial managers or actuaries, economists, or mortgage specialists.
Other accounting pro-options include becoming independent accountants, or business and management consultants. CPAs can open their firms. Accountants with good interpersonal skills can become financial planners or financial advisors (semi-sales jobs).
Often accountants like to become auditors and perform higher-level auditing work. Accountants can go into compliance (more legal type of work). They can also pass the CPA exam, then go to law school and become very solid tax attorneys.
Finally, I have seen accountants start their non-accounting businesses. Accountants are likely to succeed in business because they can manage finances and accounting for their business. Sometimes accountants start their real estate investment business on the side.
You may enjoy accounting for career growth potential
Accountants can move into senior accounting after gaining multiple years of experience.
Accountants know the business very well. And with decent social skills, they can climb the corporate ladder into management later in their careers.
Companies usually like to have at least one executive with accounting or finance experience.
Business management is also an option.
Accountants in the private accounting sector can grow from regular accountants into such roles as senior accountant or auditor, accounting or financial manager, finance director, controller, treasurer, or chief financial officer (CFO).
I had accountant classmates in my MBA program who became top executives, including company vice-presidents or CEOs.
In the UK about one-fifth of the top 100 company CEOs have an accounting background. In the US about 5% of CEOs came from accounting.
Accountants who also learn technology skills are likely to have more career options in the technology area. That may include becoming executives with responsibilities in accounting, finance, and information technology.
Learning technology is probably a key skill for modern accountants.
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You may like accounting for structured approach
Accountants like accounting for its straightforward approach. Accounting is about a deep understanding of debit and credit with few “ifs”, “buts” or exceptions.
Unlike law, for example, where everything is politics. In legal work, I had to spin the facts and truth and laws and kind of makeup arguments sometimes. I hated it.
Accountants usually record and analyze facts in the form of solid hard data and numbers.
Accounting is a very old profession and accountants I talked to love the predictability and certainty aspect of the profession.
You may like accounting for defined scope of work
There is nothing worse than an unclear task. This is how the law is – unclear tasks and uncertain outcomes.
Another major reason to like and enjoy accounting is a defined set of an established set of tasks. Most milestones, reports, deadlines, deliverables, tasks have been set as industry standards for a long time now. They are well defined and known.
You know when you are done or finished. And you ARE done or finished. The exception can be the auditing sector, where things can be discovered, leading to other things
Accountants love accounting for its structured approach to business.
You may like accounting for the easy math requirement
Accounting students usually are required to take algebra or precalculus. But regular accounting or bookkeeping does not require high-level math. Accountants and bookkeepers like the fact that they can do well just with basic math.
Accountants who enjoy doing high-level accounting, finance or auditing, or other top-performing accounting roles may encounter some more serious math. CPAs may need to have advanced math skills.
But overall, much o accounting is low-level math and some algebra. Most math skills regularly employed in accounting are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, understanding of decimals, fractions, and ratios.
Accounting math is basic arithmetic, plus percentages and negative numbers.
You may love accounting for transferrable skills
I already described that accounting skills can often be sought by businesses that love to hire people with an accounting background. The accounting skill can be transferred into manufacturing, production, or service jobs.
Businesses like to employ accountants as middle managers to manage resources.
Accounting skills like understanding business numbers can help accountants move into various business and management consulting jobs.
Why not like accounting for the fact that you can move abroad? Because accounting is pretty much the same everywhere. Especially if you are a member of global ACCA – the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants)
Therefore, accountants often like accounting because they can apply their accounting skills in practically any company. They can work in service, manufacturing, small or large company alike.
Especially accountants love the uniformity of accounting principles, standards and methods. Those remain pretty much the same no matter the industry, company, or even country.
All this make accounting flexible and easily transferrable skill. Another good valid reason to love and enjoy being an accountant.
You may enjoy accounting for honest work
Integrity and honesty are the foundations of accounting work. The ability to perform honest work and building a career is a big advantage and pro of accounting.
Many professions nowadays require employers to do shady stuff. In accounting, it is easy to distinguish between shady and honest work. And easy to choose which type of work you want to do as an accountant.
You may like accounting for an opportunity to perform competent and honest work. Accounting can be a profession of choice for honest people.
You probably will love accounting for its transparency. And you will enjoy accounting for the ability to perform honest work, going home, sleeping well, and be paid alright.
That is why accountants are generally lauded and sought for their integrity and honesty.
Business owners want to see true numbers to understand the business course and make proper judgments.
Investors want to see the true financial situation of the business to make correct investment decisions.
The government wants to see real profit and loss. Everyone wants and helps accountants to be honest.
That is quite rare these days. Something to appreciate in accounting.
You may like accounting for plenty of work
Sufficient volume of work and average competition are two other reasons to like the accounting field.
Accountants hate when they are busy. But they love accounting for plenty of consistent work. I have yet to meet a good accountant who cannot find a job.
Accountants face average market saturation, and the accounting field is not too competitive. Accountants enjoy a low 2.2% unemployment rate in the accounting industry if we disregard global pandemic disruption.
During the 2020 pandemic accounting professionals enjoyed a lower-than-average unemployment rate of 5.7%. Compare that to the average unemployment rate of 8.4% at the same time. Don’t you just like or love accounting for such job stability?
Things in accounting are gradually getting back to normal. And new accountants still can find a job quicker than many other types of professionals.
According to industry experts, good accountants or CPAs still enjoy high demand for their skills and expertise.
Skilled accountants with digital technology knowledge are likely to have plenty of well-paid work in the decade to come.
Skilled accountants are always in demand with plenty of work available to them. That means lots of work and job security, which we talked about earlier in this blog post.
You can like accounting for average stress level
Generally, many accountants like accounting because of its relatively low stress level. There is a caveat. You must love doing numbers all day long, year after year.
Many younger accountants nowadays complain about stress at work and in life. But so are people in many other industries. Accounting job is less fun than entertainment on social media.
Most accountants who site suffering from stress at work often are stressed out by the mundane or dull tasks they perform. But it also depends on the company, management, and co-workers.
I think stress in accounting has more to do with a modern way of life and with the work environment. Rapid changes and increasing demands lead to overstressing in accounting.
According to one elder accountant I spoke to performing accounting work is not stressful. He enjoyed it and it calmed him down. It is all the modern work environment that causes stress.
Public accounting is generally more stressful than corporate accounting, especially around tax season. Many accountants enjoy and love corporate or private accounting more than public one because of lower stress.
You may like accounting for collaborative work
Those in private accounting often have greater flexibility in hours and work arrangements than those in the public accounting sector
Tax accountants and CPAs are extremely busy and stressed around tax time. Auditors may be stressed when they must finish audits by deadlines.
Other than that, accounting is generally not as stressful as law or nursing, for example. After becoming a skilled professional you can enjoy accounting by having some leverage against unreasonable demands from employers.
You may like and enjoy accounting for a collaborative teamwork setup. The accountant job description does not involve constant fighting with other accountants. Contrast that adversarial nature of the law, where a lawyer must counter opposing lawyers almost all the time.
And with the economy shifting towards more remote work, the accounting profession is becoming even less stressful. Now accountants can save time and money by skipping long commutes and living in less expensive towns.
Some of the least stressful accounting jobs are in budgeting and forecasting. Probably, because there is sometimes room for estimation and error there.
You may truly enjoy accounting without stress if you like dealing with numbers, performing analysis, and have great attention to detail. Then accounting work will be not so stressful for you.
You may like accounting for work hours
Generally, you may like accounting for a regular schedule and work hours. Despite industry and economic changes, there are still plenty of accounting jobs with reasonable work hours.
Public accounting work is not so enjoyable because it often involves 50+ hour weeks, including weekends. CPAs often work long hours.
Regular corporate or private accountants often have a better work hour load. And you can set your schedule if you work alone. That is why some experienced accountants like to work as independent accounting consultants.
I also have heard that some good accountants with nice bosses even have a flexible schedule and work from home arrangements. Make your hours but get the work done is a new potential industry trend.
Potential flexibility in schedule is likely to make you love accounting even more.
You may enjoy accounting for learning business
Another reason to like accounting is learning business. Accounting presents an opportunity to learn business in excruciating detail. Accounting is a language of the business and accountants are fluent in understanding it.
They know the business inside and out. Accountants learn how a business operates and they can use business knowledge in their career.
They can also start their own business more easily than people without accounting knowledge. Especially they learn a specific type of business where they work as accountants.
Every businessperson must understand accounting at least on a basic level. This is a major reason why some people like to study accounting.
You may like accounting for financial literacy
Accountants learn how to manage finances. Besides accounting, accountants also understand and can easily learn the basics of finance.
That skill and knowledge are easily transferable anywhere they go. Accounting skills are also very helpful in either managing family finances or starting a small business.
The possibility of learning how to manage money well is another reason to like accounting.
You may love the analytical aspect of accounting
Once past the initial early career number-crunching stage, accountants perform quite a bit of analysis involving numbers and financial reports.
Accountants enjoy figuring out and digging into accounting data to paint the complete picture, recognize trends, and find solutions.
Many experienced accountants enjoy and like accounting work for its analytical aspect. Elder accountants say that accounting helped them to keep mental alertness even through respectable age.
So, if you like analytical work then you may enjoy at least that perk of an accounting career.
You may enjoy accounting for rewarding work
Some accountants feel like their work is not meaningful. But that is not true. Accounting is essential to keep a business or organization running. People like accountants because they help people or organizations to manage finances.
Experienced accountants are not mere bean counters. Many of them love performing high-level accounting work.
Once financial statements are prepared, tax season is closed, budget and forecasts are prepared, accountants see their finished work-product.
And that should give you or them a certain sense of accomplishment and pride. Even if it is the same year after year. Not everyone can do that.
You may like accounting as an easy career to start
Accounting is liked because it is one of the easiest professions to start right after college or accounting trade courses.
Some young professionals may like accounting because of the low entry barrier. Sometimes you do not even need an accounting degree to become an accountant.
While an accounting degree is preferred, it is not mandatory for entry-level accounting clerks. Trade school or courses may be enough. You start on the low level, learn on the job and then work your way up.
Entry-level accounting jobs sometimes require only a few to six months of general accounting experience like doing accounts receivable, accounts payable, and some payroll.
And quite a few experienced accountants love accounting because it becomes much easier with time and experience.
Therefore, you may like, love, or enjoy the accounting profession
Some accountants like accounting and consider it rewarding for several reasons. I mentioned financial stability, income growth, career potential, transferability of skills, flexibility, and much more.
You can enjoy accounting not only because it pays bills and mortgage, puts food on the table. But it also allows to have a personal life and raise a family.
Some elder accountants love accounting because of professional stability that allows them to enjoy after-work hobbies and leave otherwise interesting and meaningful lives.
Accounting allows building a stable and structured life. There is so much one can do with accounting skills that some other professions can only envy.
Accountants enjoy people’s respect and trust kind of close to that enjoyed by police officers, firefighters, or paramedics. But an accounting job is way safer and less physically demanding than those I mentioned.
True, accounting is more tedious than said professions. But it is an as good profession as any out there. Just choose wisely.
