Accountant by Day

For a blog supposedly written by an accountant, I haven’t talked much about accounting recently, have I? Well, I work in public accounting, and we have a busy season that begins shortly after Christmas. Right now, we’re in a little slow point (although I am happy that I got to go on a couple of preliminary audits.) So, once January gets going, I’m sure I’ll be so busy with auditing that I won’t be able to think of anything else to talk about!

We often use “Keeping up with the Joneses” to refer to the phenomenon of people spending more than they can afford in order to act like they have the same income as their neighbors. (Who are probably also spending more than they can afford.) But keeping up with the Joneses is not just limited to overspending. We live in a competitive society, and it seems like we can also get competitive about frugality - or even going green!

In the process of switching my hosting account to this new domain, the host copied all of my OLD domain’s files onto this domain! Luckily I only had a few posts up, which I will be restoring this weekend. Adios for now!

Brief Summary of IRA and Roth IRA limits in 2011: Roth Contribution Limits for 2010 and 2011: $5,000 Traditional IRA Contribution Limits for 2010 and 2011: $5,000 Total contribution to your Roth IRA and traditional IRA combined cannot be more than $5,000. (Unless you’re over 50-ish, then you get to make up to an additional $1,000 “catch up” contributions) You may have heard of a Roth IRA before. I first heard about them in tax class 4 years ago - back then my parents didn’t know what a Roth IRA was.

Today is my labor day, since I didn’t take labor day off! I have been running errands all over town in the rain, but now for the fun part of catching up on my life - reviewing my budget for the last couple of months. I use an online budgeting software, but if you compare bank account offers, you may be able to find a bank that offers a budgeting services built into your bank account website.

Currently, more women than men are graduating with degrees in accounting. However, in my experience, there are still far fewer female partners in public accounting firms than there are male partners. I’m sure I could write a huge post speculating why there are still so few female public accounting partners, but this is my blog so I’m going to write about me, a 23 year old first-year female accountant. Making partner is not remotely on the radar, but what is it like starting out in accounting today?

My (extended) tax season has really ramped up the last couple of weeks. Most of our tax returns are due by September 17th, which is still 4 weeks away, but a) we like to have returns to clients at least a week ahead of time where possible, and b) all MY work has to go through a reviewer, come back to me for changes, go through review again, before it can go to a client, so I need to have all of MY stuff done ASAP.

Some musings on the difference between work and school (specifically, higher educations)–expectations, what behavior you’re rewarded for, the type of rewards you get. How does 85% sound? If you’re like me, 85% wasn’t what I wanted to get in a class–I wanted an A! But 85% was a good grade for the majority of students. Chime in here professors, but typically, at least 70% of students received an A or B in classes.

Well, it’s been a Monday… I received my first water bill last Saturday, just over a week ago. My heart stopped for a second when I saw the charge: $350. At first I thought, someone’s put the decimal in the wrong place. So I checked the “calculate your bill” feature on the Water Department’s website, and sure enough, the “usage” amount came out to $350 worth of water. I promptly sent the Water Department an email, asking what was going on.

Sometimes I think that the worst part is traveling is being forced to watch TV news while eating my free breakfast. The world is a terrifying place on TV news, with toddlers kidnapped, teenagers raped, and wives murdered by husbands. Then they immediately switch it up by doing a human interest story on the country’s most friendly ice cream shop. (In Minnesota of course!)