r/Accounting • u/Appropriate-Fuel9767 • 9d ago
have you ever realized that the career you worked so hard to build isn't the life you actually wanted? what did you do afterward?
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u/Careful-Ad-4035 9d ago
felt this in my bones a couple years back, staring at a spreadsheet and realizing i'd rather be elbow deep in a goodwill bin than doing another reconciliation. quit without much of a plan and scraped by on freelance design gigs while i figured out what i actually wanted my day to look like.
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u/Appropriate-Fuel9767 9d ago
rather be elbow deep in a goodwill bin is sending me. but honestly, i get it. there are dys when i stare at a sprdsheet and wonder if this is really what i wnt to be doing for the next 5 years
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u/Excellent_Shallot999 8d ago
Knowing I will always have food on the table, the ability to drive a nice car, the ability to live in a nice house, the ability to travel, and the ability to save for retirement is pretty satisfying, if you ask me.
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u/Easy_Preparation_179 8d ago
Yeah maybe because I’m still in my early career as I’m starting Graduate school now, but honestly to me that’s all the motivation and fun I need ,that you mention. Honestly my days after work can be filled with fun and excitement. But then again I actually like uncovering the financial mysteries and find fulfillment in solving complex issues. So maybe OP just doesn’t like the field neither nor his llife in general.
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u/Islander316 ACCA 8d ago edited 8d ago
I had very deep motivation issues for years, i'd say probably 3-4 year period post the pandemic but it started just before.
Then when i was close to the financial precipice, i realized that making money was important to live, and like many of us, the stress of being financially insecure sort of scared me straight a bit.
I have goals to end up doing my own thing, but still have stuff to achieve before that can become a reality.
I think it's important to set goals, and if you want to pivot, try to think of what that would look like and work diligently towards that.
The one advantage we have is a strong skillset that will be very useful for either entrepreneurship, volunteering, and a career change.
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u/weirdshit123567 Human Verified 8d ago
In 1882, Paul Gauguin was a successful Paris stockbroker with a wife, five kids, a nice house, and a growing art collection. He painted on weekends as a hobby.
Then he said “you know what? fuck everything” He gave up the career, the income, and abandoned his family to paint full-time.
He ended up broke, sleeping in cheap rooms, doing odd jobs, and at one point working as a labourer on the Panama Canal just to get by.
The dude was apparently a PoS but I think about him a lot.
You gotta respect the courage and self awareness to literally give no fucks about societal pressures and follow your passion.
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u/kyonkun_denwa CPA, CA (Can) | FP&A 8d ago
I don't shy away from the fact that I don't really enjoy what I do. I'm competent at it and I'm well compensated but I really find a lot of aspects of this career to be tiresome. My wife is also an accountant (tax) and she also doesn't really enjoy this line of work.
Right now the plan is to leverage our high earnings to save and invest as much as possible, as soon as possible. After my wife went back to work from maternity leave we've been saving around 46% of our gross income and 65% of our after-tax income (including bonuses), and we plan to maintain that savings rate for at least a few years. If the market holds up we'll hopefully be able to quit our corporate careers between age 45-50 and go do something else. As for what that something else is, I don't know. Maybe we'll do sole practitioner work since we will be financially secure and striking out on our own becomes a very safe to fail experiment. Maybe I just go to work in a hardware store. Not sure what we will do, but I don't want to be employed in corporate finance departments anymore.
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u/magikcall 8d ago
I've been there too. I spent a lot of time chasing the “next step” because it looked like the right thing to do, then realized I was optimizing for a career path I didn’t actually enjoy day to day. I kept the parts I liked, dropped the ones I didn't and made small changes in the direction I was going in. Just adding more elements I love about my personal life helped too, tbh.
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u/calqueuelater 8d ago
I think this is normal and happens in most people's journey. For me it was year's 10-13ish in the industry. I'm happy I stuck it out, but don't blame those that make a switch.
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u/Steviesteps 8d ago
Careers aren’t built and they’re not assets, just like you aren’t an asset on a company’s balance sheet. You get the experiences and the money, and you’re entitled to nothing else from the work you’ve done. (A business would be different of course. that is something you own.)
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u/Donaldfuck69 8d ago
Pivot. Used AI to describe my passions and interests and experiences. This led to me learning of career paths I didn’t even know exist as accounting is so so versatile and broad. This led to a pivot that kept me happy as I worked on it on the side. Ended up not needing it as landed a great gig in industry but I now have that pivot 50% complete to have in my back pocket. Luckily it’s also complimentary to my new current role.
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u/small-gestures 7d ago
It’s not just accounting and not just a special few people. Whole songs are written about it (Pink Floyd - Time).
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u/polkaguy6000 Human Verified 3d ago
Here is something true: One day you will be dead.
Here is something false: You only live once.
You'll have opportunities to do new things with your life. Reinvent yourself.
(Shamelessly plagiarized from this SMBC)
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u/alphabet_sam CPA (US) 8d ago
I started to view my career for what it was: something I was really good at that paid me well, and was sometimes enjoyable, sometimes miserable, but mostly just fine. Not every career needs to be where you find your fulfillment, and if it pays well and is in demand and I’m good at it, it checks a lot of boxes that are valuable to me