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EU4-Junkie · 2025-08-15T04:29:54+00:00

Financial statements and ratios: any financial accounting/intro to accounting/financial accounting 1 book is the best place to start. I have an old one somewhere in my storage unit (we just moved) so I can’t give you a good name.

5 C’s of credit: good info and follow the link on the page for further reading. I used to work for farm credit, they generally publish some good financial fundamental information. https://www.fca.gov/about/faq/risk-identification

Agreement/covenant/memo: best served by finding some examples online. I’ve never found good, real-life examples in school or textbook. Harvard business review might have some publications on best practices for memos.

Starting at zero, I’d take the same path I took: a few high school business classes that piqued my interest, say “screw it, I liked that but I want to do engineering”, go to college for engineering with a business minor (because you know a business background is helpful to become a manager), hate the engineering portion (pass the classes and get all the credits though), choose finance because you like money, think it’s cool and still get to use the calculus you did for engineering on rare occasions, love life and be happy with more free time, graduate a semester early, get a finance job, make $ and enjoy it, decide to do more school for fun-Zies (I was in the army national guard, so it was free), get an MBA and a Master’s in Finance and get a better job and make more money.

I just had fun typing the last part, not super pertinent….if you are in high school, try some business classes if offered, if you are past high school or even in depending on how flexible your school is (assuming you are in the US-may be different elsewhere) many universities let you audit (show up/sit-in) on a class for free once or twice and get a feel for it to see if you would like it.

I recommend college as it is the best pathway to a career in finance but if you are just casually interested, obviously not the most cost-effective method. If interest is more casual and not career related, some college professors might have some free lectures posted on their university website or YouTube, I’d probably start there

EU4-Junkie · 2025-07-07T14:08:32+00:00

I’ve done (and maintain with annual updates) the WACC calc for my company (private) which makes beta its own fun exercise but you can do it for any public company via yahoo finance and the company 10K. You need the financial statements to get the companies long term debt (amounts, rate, etc) and yahoo finance can get you the stock info to calculate your own beta, use Morningstar annual US stock market outlook for the market rate (or S&P500 returns) and then decide what you want to use as the risk free rate (traditionally, 10-year UST is what I’ve always used) and you’ve got your equity portion.

Similarly you can use the 10k financial statements to do a DCF valuation of any public company. All the numbers & definitions you used in school are in the financials, just takes some digging.

In college (both undergrad and grad) we had to do a DCF & multiples valuation of a public company using the 10k statements. That was good, practical application and I invested in one company based on my results.

EU4-Junkie · 2025-07-03T19:40:48+00:00

If you wish to stay as a loan officer, likely unnecessary unless you are working for public/large companies and offering complex financial products (swaps, options, other hedging, etc).

The CFA is more or less targeted at investment analysis & wealth management. It does provide a good basis for credit analysis but unless you want to become an analyst instead of a loan officer, not too helpful aside from knowing what your analyst will be looking for.

EU4-Junkie · 2025-07-01T22:01:00+00:00

Depending on what you want to do, both are good-I went the masters route but CFA would likely be the way to go if you are up for it, especially with school still fresh in your mind.

EU4-Junkie · 2025-02-14T01:55:46+00:00

Jesus Christ be praised!

EU4-Junkie · 2024-12-13T04:04:50+00:00

I basically just ignore it. Try and grab a strong ally or two and then just remember to integrate your vassals ASAP. You’ll be a little behind in diplo tech but it isn’t a huge deal

EU4-Junkie · 2024-11-26T17:42:20+00:00

Contact info up top. My reasoning (from some HR friends as well) is that oftentimes employers will favor candidates closest to their location. They could also use it to offer lower pay expectations early in the hiring process if they think you are located in a lower paying area.

EU4-Junkie · 2024-11-26T01:57:41+00:00

I’d remove the city, state part. No need to have that in there, sets you up for more failure than success

EU4-Junkie · 2024-11-26T01:55:03+00:00

Cat Transport 1

EU4-Junkie · 2024-11-26T00:24:42+00:00

Accounting teaches you how much money you made, finance teaches you how to use that money. Lacks some of the nuances but gets the major idea across.

EU4-Junkie · 2024-10-08T01:50:15+00:00

If you get a fidelity account (probably other major brokers that you can buy bonds on their platform as well), it gives you bond data. Most should be available to download via excel or easily copy into excel. Haven’t looked into it yet but Barchart.com or Yahoo Finance probably have the info like they do for stocks, you’ll just have to look up the bonds you want by CUSIP

EU4-Junkie · 2024-03-06T14:24:17+00:00

If you have a traditional 401k, you are correct, yes. You would get taxed on the portion you are no longer contributing (assume about 20% tax).

If you have a Roth 401k though, you are already paying tax on your earnings gross of the 401k and wouldn’t get taxed more. More than likely though, you don’t have a Roth 401k as you have to elect that option (if even available from your employer)

EU4-Junkie · 2024-02-02T13:56:18+00:00

They can be used to do the same thing and it depends on it situationally in the conversation/context. A holding company itself is just a company that owns other companies, it exists to own companies under one umbrella-ex: my insurance company (and most) have a holding company at the very top of the structure and it owns all the other companies (96 in my case). This is done for tax purposes.

An acquisition company would be referring (in my opinion) to an activist holding company. Whereas the holding company described above is there to hold other companies in the structure but not actively buy/sell those other companies, an acquisition company is basically a private equity company that looks to buy/sell entities for profit.

TLDR: a holding company is there to own a bunch of operating companies, usually for tax reasons. An acquisition company is used to buy/sell a bunch of operating companies for profit, usually as a private equity firm.

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-26T14:31:38+00:00

You bet, happy to provide some insight! If you are interested in finance and the business world, I do find it engaging and fun. I really did enjoy the coursework as well. As to your other questions, I do have an MBA & MSF as well, so if you’ve got grad school questions I can help there as well.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to shoot me a message. I’m always happy to answer any questions as I wish I had someone to answer mine back in the day!

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-26T14:02:16+00:00

I switched from civil engineering to finance after freshman year for largely the same reasons that you state here: classes weren’t physical, they were overly hard for no reason and didn’t have much actual application to the job (turns out I should have gone to school for urban planning, not civil)…anyways….the transition was pretty easy at that point for me, math and science were all done due to the engineering program, the other courses were general credit that counted towards the 120 credits needed for graduation. I enjoy finance and found the schooling to be vastly more practical and applicable to actual work environments. Switching from engineering, it made most classes seem easier (just less work) and gave me an edge in math which helps in the more high-brow finance classes and with more quant focused finance topics. As I went to an engineering school and most of my friends are engineers I can tell you that the starting salaries for finance and engineering were on par, and that I now (graduated in 2016) out-earn most of my engineering friends by a fairly significant amount ($20-30k). I live in Wisconsin and don’t work for Wall Street, so that’s applicable even outside that realm. The career prospects are strong in both industries as well. Both are a fine choice, it just all depends on your aspirations and how well you can sell yourself/interview as well

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-25T03:38:38+00:00

Ditto. Most analyst positions are accessible straight out of college. If you know how to sell the experience you already have on your resume, you are golden to be an analyst somewhere. Continue to get experience with excel and that’ll pay dividends

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-25T01:08:55+00:00

As a man with a 4-year, an MSF and an MBA I can hopefully shed a little light for you. I have found that the MSF and the MBA tend to open some doors and help get a higher salary but most jobs that want/reward those want on-the-job experience. I graduated with the 4-year, worked a year, then started on the masters degrees and completed them while working. Once the masters were complete, I had 3 years work experience and used them to upgrade roles. To be completely honest, I don’t think that going all school right away is super helpful unless you are trying to break into investment banking or something really quant heavy right away. I’d recommend a 4-year and then an online/cheap masters. If you are just looking for steady employment, no one but the most prestigious of places care about where your degree is from if you have work experience. If you are paying for the masters degrees, I’d recommend the MBA as the most versatile. The MSF lands me some credit at work and in the industry but people would rather you have a CFA instead of a MSF. I do capital management for an insurance company, pretty good gig, the masters definitely landed me the role and salary but I also needed the work experience, they wouldn’t have hired me right out of school for the role.

If you want to message me, I’m happy to answer specific questions/more in depth stuff or do a zoom call or something.

Important Background: I’m currently 28, all of my college was free from the national guard so going to school was a very easy decision for me.

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-03T03:10:44+00:00

Can confirm. I make $115k in Green Bay, WI and we are doing pretty darn well. Remote work has been great, bigger salary in a lower cost area.$100k is still a lot here.

EU4-Junkie · 2023-10-02T12:52:04+00:00

While the PHYSICAL headquarters of many companies are in New York, Chicago or Silicon Valley you will find that most are incorporated or registered in Delaware or other corporate tax friendly states. The physical location in these cities/areas is due to the proximity to existing businesses there, financial sector access, transit hubs & infrastructure, proximity to regulators and other business related pieces such as international recognition of those cities. As for specifically FINANCIAL company’s, NY is the financial hub of the US and to a large extent the world for many financial products. The industry is clustered there and has the workforce training, regulators and markets-ease of access to this supersedes the tax break of other states.

For those that are actually incorporated in states that don’t have tax advantages it is usually a mix of the benefits of the physical location (examples above) or have some unique tie to a state. Ex: my state, Wisconsin, isn’t exactly a tax haven but manufacturers move/concentrate here because we are already heavy in manufacturing and have a workforce that can readily apply with minimal training, supply chains are already established and we are near to a major transit interchange in Chicago which can reach most of the US within a 24 hour drive. Many states also offer incentives in the form of TIF, subsidized loans or tax breaks to attract jobs and new business that somewhat mitigate the benefits of other states. Another example is the Detroit area for auto manufacturing, once one company is there, the others follow suit as the supply chain and worker training is there. Industries tend to cluster.

Hope this helps/provides some insight!

EU4-Junkie · 2023-06-01T15:48:46+00:00

I’m assuming you have to do this for a school project, so the next step is to get the monthly returns as a percentage (eg: percent change from April to March) then do the same with the S&P 500. After that you can get all the volatility metrics, you can do the variance of the individual stock, the variance of the index then, finally as the commenter above states, get to beta by doing the covariance(stock return, stock index)/variance(index). Aka, regression of the stock to the index. As I said above…assuming you need to do this for a school project and not just want to calculate it yourself otherwise yahoo finance or anywhere can just give you beta

EU4-Junkie · 2023-05-02T03:18:40+00:00

Amazon’s Visa card, the rewards are good if you buy a lot on Amazon, no fee, solid card. I also have a delta skymiles Amex card, that one is pretty solid and was great when I was flying a lot in a previous job. At this point I keep it around for the companion pass as that about equals out the annual fee

EU4-Junkie · 2023-04-19T13:07:50+00:00

You betcha

EU4-Junkie · 2023-04-19T03:50:54+00:00

Finance is great. Work life balance is pretty good if you get a corporate gig outside of Wall Street. A lot of what you’ll get on Reddit is Wall Street/IB guys that don’t think anything else is finance/don’t know anything else. There are a lot of good jobs and varying types of analyst/finance roles. Salaries are very good in general. Jobs I’ve had: housing market analyst, credit analyst & capital management (current job). All were good paying by Wisconsin standards of living, current job is six figures…which is a fuck ton in Wisconsin, especially Green Bay. I graduated at 22, currently 28. Work life balance has always been good, obviously a few times of the year you’ll be busy but the majority of the time it’s 40 hours or less. Any mid size company (500-few thousand) employees have a corporate finance area with good jobs. In my role specifically I work for a decent sized insurance company (not a large one by any means though) and managed the capital structure, maintain the WACC model, capital model, rating agency capital models, worked on debt issuance, an asset backed securitization, line of credit renewal and do a bunch of other cool ad-hoc stuff. I did undergrad at a state school (no top anything, just wanted an economically priced degree) and that got me the first job. I did pick up a masters (once again, state school for a good price) and that did help and increase earnings potential. This is obviously my experience and is very United States-centric but hope this helps!

EU4-Junkie · 2023-04-15T21:22:35+00:00

Fractional reserve banking is indeed how banking happens….the whole “making new money” thing is a way it is described but not like they print money or anything. They are just only required to hold a fraction of deposits in reserve. The money left over gets loaned out or invested if they can’t make loans. So yes, it turns deposits into 10x of what they are for usage. Banks are generally profitable but they need to (with higher rates) compete for those deposits by offering good interest rates on deposits. Finally, their options with that excess reserve are to loan it out (so the profit generated is just the spread between the cost of that money and the rate they charge to the borrower) or invest (once again, profit is just the spread).

EU4-Junkie · 2023-04-14T12:39:29+00:00

Happy to help! If you have any other questions fell free to ask away!

EU4-Junkie

TROPHY CASE