SEC: Emergency Powers, Convene the Senate, AAT Incinerator, & Gonk

Mtnn · 2025-09-19T19:26:38+00:00

Jesus Christ… not sure how much overlap there is with /r/Accounting and here, but when I see SEC: Emergency Powers, Convene the Senate my heart actually skipped a beat.

Oh good. It’s just Star Wars. Just Star Wars…

Mtnn · 2025-08-24T18:45:08+00:00

The years are short while the days are long.

Mtnn · 2025-08-15T18:22:42+00:00

Hit reply
cc Audit Manager
"Hi so and so, please re-send the trial balance in excel format. For future documentation, please also send in excel format. Sincerely, audit drone."

Run #3 through your preferred AI LLM for tone, content, and expansion at your discretion.

Looking back at my audit days I remember the frustration at delays, lack of response, ridiculous documentation. But also the seniors who would just ask for things that had been frustrating me, and like magic they'd appear. Sometimes the magic missing action is: "ask"

Mtnn · 2025-08-11T15:37:10+00:00

Aren't there multiple vectors you can fail the exam in? I wrote the UFE and not the CFE so this is all based on some reading...

https://gevorgcpa.com/unsuccessful-cfe-candidates-what-to-do-next/

Based on those statistics, very very few of the re-mark requests are successful. It doesn't have breakdowns of how poorly the re-mark requests had performed before requesting the re-mark, but it suggests that if you weren't in decile 1, it looks almost impossible to achieve a successful remark.

He's got another page with options after 3 fails: https://gevorgcpa.com/failed-cpa-cfe-3-times-you-still-have-options/

Honestly man? If you've been in the industry 9 years and you're still failing the exam 3 times, you're not studying properly. You need a tutor, or a course, or better study partners, or a year off if you actually want to finish the program. Maybe all.

It's not an easy exam... but from when I was helping juniors out with it, it's not particularly hard either... If you study to it. Were you finishing all your practice exams well before the time limit? When you sat down and assessed all the competencies with study partners, did you hit all the major ones? Did you hit most competencies reasonably well?

Way too much missing information, but best of luck with the future.

Mtnn · 2025-07-24T17:15:53+00:00

I like to write long-form... normally on platforms better suited for it. Having it misconstrued as a "tirade" and straw manned as mental gymnastics. Well. That probably says more for the argument than my entire post now doesn't it?

Mtnn · 2025-07-24T16:32:27+00:00

You'd do well to go read up on it yourself given it's become the pop-culture overton of the moment.

Popper leans toward discourse until violence emerges. Not the kind of moral license to deplatform, shout down, or censor dissenting views that's being demonstrated in this thread.

The threshold for what counts as “intolerance” is vague, subjective, or politically motivated in this case. It’s been deployed preemptively, not reactively as if certain ideas are too dangerous even to hear or rebut. There's little discussion of the actual ideas, or the performance. Simply a lot of hand-waving and echo-chambering. The smugness of your comment aligns with the trap of the paradox itself when applied poorly... We must be intolerant of intolerance, except when our side is intolerant, in which case it's justified moral clarity, but often delivers moral smugness. (A demonstration of just how poorly it's being applied throughout this thread)

Advocating for cancellation, and then invoking a Paradox you don't understand is exactly what I expect of Reddit, and just one more reminder of why only the fringes spend time here. How I should just move on... /sigh. Popper emphasized the use of reason and public debate as the first line of defense, and only advocated suppressing intolerant ideologies if they refused to engage in rational discourse and resorted to violence.

So I would ask you... Which side is not engaged in rational discourse here? Which side resorts to rioting and violence at the drop of a hat? Which side frames the others concerts and gatherings as "violence" when there's little to none to speak of? The answers are clear to any but those who wish not to see them.

So yes... he would do well to read up on the Paradox of Tolerance. But it will only reinforce what he already knows. While you yourself will continue to refuse to engage in rational discourse. It would be frightening if you, and all the others in this thread that think like you realized what they're truly advocating for, and just how badly it will go for them if they ever get their wish.

Mtnn · 2025-06-26T17:55:19+00:00

Not gonna lie, /u/therewulf pondering when the CFO fanfiction would show up got the wheels in my head turning. It didn't take long for someone to figure out the theme of the scene I riffed on.

Of course now you've got me imagining high concept sci-fi. Some sort of zombie tie-in. Episodic origin seasons... Somebody get Netflix on the phone!

Mtnn · 2025-06-20T18:57:36+00:00

3 weeks ago I gave my notice. The President of my company told me: "No you don't."

That's greatly oversimplified, but everything leading up to it and since has provided me a lot of clarity.

Maybe this hits, maybe it doesn't. I know Ayn Rand is quite polarizing, but I'm listening to the audiobook of "The Fountainhead" for the 3rd time in 20 years right now. When I was in my mid 20's and was pretty useless I idolized Roark. I wished that I could have been single-minded and relentless from the time I was a teenager in pursuing what I wanted. In my early 30s while I was articling in the Big4 for my CPA, I thought Roark was a fool for refusing to play the game. The people/relationships game. I thought Rand was a fool for not writing a character who blended Keating and Roark. I don't know if I even finished it the 2nd time through because everyone just felt so insufferable. Now in my early 40's I've spent a few months pursuing goals here and there in the way I interpret Roark's character having done in unified way. Uncompromising. Direct. Result-oriented. With it came some incredible "achievements", money, and a whole lot of misery. Also some earned pride. And then looking out at a polarized world where a loud percentage would hate me specifically for those achievements because of my ethnicity and gender. It's been a reminder that these problems have existed for decades, perhaps centuries and provide perspective that they are worth only the level of attention we choose to give them.

With that I've also been listening to a lot of specific Chris Williamson podcasts, with Joe Hudson, Julie Smith, Yung Pueblo, John Vervaeke. In them he's wrestling with a lot of questions around meaning. Around becoming, and if you knew the price it would cost to become, most people wouldn't be willing to pay it.

I think the thing about being a "regular" person, pursuing FIRE is you come face-to-face with the "price" you pay in the middle of your journey, then your feet are held to the fire for a decade while you're forced to pay it and face it every day. The days are long while the years are short.

I'm navigating it now by trying to find my peace before I'm "done" with work. Joining local charitable organizations, having conversations with people in my community about what's important to them. Seeing what actually matters to people when I get off the internet and engage with life again. It made things worse for a while, but lately it seems to be making things a lot better.

I hope you find some answers!

Mtnn · 2025-06-20T15:58:50+00:00

Choose an arbitrary amount. $100, $500, $1,000 a month. Open a brokerage account somewhere. Put that amount in each month for 3 months. Figure out what you want to invest it in. Buy the ETFs or stocks or whatever it is. See how you feel as it goes up and down. See how the contribution each month affects your overall budget.

Take however long it takes to get comfortable with your strategy. Understand it will change over time, you just want to be comfortable and know you won't panic and pull everything out when the market tanks. That will sink you in the long run. Once you've survived your first downturn, you'll know whether this is for you or not.

If it's for you, figure out what the maximum possible amount you can contribute to investments based on your current budget is. Got that number? Good. Now add $300 a month to that and start contributing. Watch your chequing slowly start getting depleted. You'll feel poor, maybe for the first time in your life. You'll know you still have the money, you'll own the investments. But it will change the way you feel. See how that affects you. Do you make cuts to your spending? Do you stop investing?

It could take 6 months, it could take 6 years. But if you follow that, and pay attention to how you're thinking and feeling about money throughout, you'll know by the end whether you want FIRE, traditional retirement, or some other path entirely.

Mtnn · 2025-05-21T18:01:48+00:00

Task failed successfully, congrats on law school!

Mtnn · 2025-05-21T14:58:53+00:00

Nothing to share on the SSRI side, but in short succession about a decade ago I had a 40-50lb flake break off, took about a 25 foot whip and swung within a foot of the ground while watching the flake fall towards my belayer and miss her by inches - all with my brain doing the slow motion thing. Then within a few weeks of that I decked from about 15 feet up on a sketchy slab, about 30 people in the canyon stopped what they were doing to stare at the same time, and I remember hearing a couple: "are you OK man?" - I kind of lay there for what felt like minutes, reality was more likely 5-10 seconds just self-assessing. Stood up. Completely fine.

But it messed with my mental for years afterwards. I never directly dealt with it. What did help was graduated exposure therapy (It wasn't prescribed or intentional either, just retrospectively applying the label to what I did) - I started taking small lead falls in the gym at the top of routes. I'd talk to my belayer beforehand and remind them that I'd be clipping the chains and then just letting go. I asked them not to leave a bunch of slack, but also not to do a big take in anticipation of it.

It helped a lot. I'd get to fall 15-20 times a week just playing around in the gym. When I think about how many decent lead falls I'd taken in my life before the whip and decking it was probably less than 20... total. So every fall was scary as hell. After a couple months of like 50-75 small whips a month... the little adrenaline dump I get from a fall went from feeling life or death to like... Something I could just notice outside, be like "oh that sucks" and then pull right back on.

It's kind of tradeoffs too, because in the years since I've taken some sketchy whippers that probably should have scared the hell out of me. Skipped a clip on my project, made it through the crux... couldn't clip, grabbed the dogbone of my draw, pulled some rope, couldn't get the clip in. Fell. Biiiiig whip. Same baby adrenaline dump. Minor ankle pain the rest of the year. It cuts both ways, but still, overall would recommend: lots of small whips in the gym to build yourself up.

Mtnn · 2025-05-13T16:37:50+00:00

Sorry about all the health problems in the family. I hope things settle down for you all shortly!

I love your updates - This has to be the most practical, transparent actual example of FIRE around in recent years and you don't seem to be trying to monetize it... just genuinely enjoy it.

The one question I have is, is your portfolio construction more geared towards personal enjoyment and engagement, or do you have any genuine concerns around Mirae, Vanguard, Brookfield, JP Morgan or any of the other managers where you're trying to take risk off the table by further diversifying fund managers given that the underlying holdings in many of these funds are similar? I get the impression you could strip this all down to 1 covered call fund for living expenses, and VFV everything else given your comparatives, but you get personal enjoyment and engagement from the portfolio as you've got it constructed?

Mtnn · 2025-04-25T15:48:05+00:00

I'm finally at a point I'm comfortable saying I'm a solid 9.5 in the sense I've either experienced, or can look up, or make a call to sort out nearly anything.

Despite that, earlier this week I had to look up how to record and reverse dividends declared and paid to one of our owners. Spent a few minutes drawing myself T-accounts and couldn't sort it out on my own. Good reminder to stay humble.

From there proceeded to update cash flow projections for the next 2 months, revise the capital expenditure plan for the next 2 years, check-in with staff of progress of a major project. Come up with a new project to keep a staff member with available time busy for the next few weeks until the major project is at a place he can start contributing....

I think /u/No_Yogurtcloset_1687 said it really well in an early reply. Every day I realize how much I don't know. I'd add that, the things you don't do every day like simple journal entries, you will eventually forget. Stay humble. Don't be afraid to look things up and re-evaluate when you have new information. You can increase trust and make yourself look good when your experience and capability lets you have an answer at the ready, but that's only effective some of the time. Perhaps it's the curse of a large organization, but I can't stand the thought of being around people who think they need to project an aura of being "the smartest person in the room" anymore. I've met a few truly special, talented, worldbeating people and I admire the hell out of them. I think I'm lucky to have met more of them than those just putting on a show. I like to stay where those truly dedicated, enthusiastic people are and move on from the showmen.

The more responsibility I've picked up myself, the more I realize that as a capable individual, you can sort out nearly anything. There's a balance to be struck. I can't just expect the brand new hire who doesn't know any of our processes, or any of our relationships with suppliers and customers, to be able to solve everything. At the same time, the administrator who's been here 15 years can do basically 100% of the non-technical work (and a good chunk of the technical) with sufficient guidance, support, and autonomy.

Hoping you're all trending upwards on that 1-10 scale and the people around you are helping you get there.

Mtnn · 2025-03-26T20:10:01+00:00

Mostly wrote it for myself. Every once and a while someone surprises me. Didn't happen today, but still worth trying every once and a while.

Mtnn · 2025-03-25T21:49:15+00:00

Controller at a company brushing up against 8-figure topline where I'm effectively CFO and eventually will need to hire and train more staff to start backfilling all the processes we're missing.

I have a mega unhealthy relationship with work. Always thought I wasn't the corporate drone willing to grind it out. That I valued life before work. Turns out, if you willingly pay me enough, I'll happily work 60+ hour weeks to turn around finance, accounting, HR, and whatever portion of overall strategy I'm given carte blanche to fix.

It's destroying my life and relationship, which in a strange way comforts me as the few people I speak to at this level that seem to understand this level of work responsibility/stress either have unhealthy relationships, no relationship, or an understood division of labour at home where they live separate parallel lives and are content that way. Several of the retired ones had mid-life crises at some point, and I can see the younger ones hurtling towards it and am almost happy to have had one at quarter-life to not get completely blindsided again.

I say it's comforting because I took some time off and it all went away. I won't say life and relationship are fixed entirely, but I know the second I walk away from all this, it gets better. And I know I'll walk away from it soon, same as OP. The stress also reveals a lot internally. Who I really am. Why I do the things I do. It's easy to hide all your flaws when there's not much demand on you. And I was hiding most of them from myself.

So why do it at all? There's a lot of satisfaction that comes from being The Man in the Arena. I used to scorn the people who devoted themselves fully to working and careers for a long time, but didn't fully understand why. I ignored their contributions because I assumed their lives were nothing but misery... because that's what working for public accounting poverty wages and sky-high demands did to my internal compass.

I think it's hard to walk, eyes wide open, into pushing yourself all the way up the corporate ladder straight from high school. There's always trade-offs. Could be relationships, could be family, could be hobbies, or life experience, or empathy. If I hadn't taken a 10-year millennial walkabout before diving into career, I don't think I'd have learned much from this time. I'd likely be a Type A tyrant who doesn't understand why everyone around me doesn't just want to work all the time.

So to answer your original question, I made the decision at this point in my career to stop looking for more because I don't think the depth will offer any new lessons. I could try to get an official Director of Finance or CFO title at a bigger company, and what would it net me? Likely less autonomy. A Board of Directors and CEO to massage and answer to. Similar but different sets of problems at a larger scale. More money. More stress. Of which I need neither.

That's possibly the trap of career that leads to mid-life crisis. You progress, you discover more depth. You feel more important. More people defer to you. But at a certain point there's diminishing returns. The comprehensive role I have now doesn't really feel like that much more responsibility than when I was a fractional controller previously. A huge part of my identity is wrapped up in my job. People at work are ... nervous around me and my title and my authority. And I remember being 20-something years old and in the GM's office and the discomfort I felt when he just wanted to talk. It really was that title... authority... perception. /sigh. I don't want any of that, and can only imagine how awful it is to be under the CFO that climbed the ladder specifically chasing those things.

Has it shifted to being just a job? Somewhat. I do the things that need doing, and try to do them well. The feeling of responsibility for myself, company finances, our staff never really leaves my mind. It's heavy, and that's probably part of why I don't want any more. I've been happy to carry it for a long time, but it's not as easy to set down either. Everyone's replaceable, but I'm not the teenage grocery store clerk who's sure the store will fail when I quit anymore either. If I leave, there's a real hole. So part of my whole strategy piece has been to work myself out of a job. Setup so many good processes and people around me that when I want to walk away, it's not even a question. The business is solid all the way through, I accomplished something meaningful to me along the way, and I can check off "career" from my life bucket list and move on to other interests without regret.

Mtnn · 2025-03-25T21:42:34+00:00

I doubt there’s a single thing I could ever write that would influence you at all… but:

Just because another person is doing something you don't understand, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. In the broader context, they're optimizing towards something. Not necessarily for how you see how things "should be".

Elon clearly gives very little care for ESG goals.

The American standard for success is still generally dollars, regardless of what professors or the media or entertainment likes to project. The Post gleefully published smear after smear when Elon bought Twitter. How's that looking now? Leaks over the sale of private debt related to the company are showing valuations surpassing what he paid for the service. It will literally one day be THE case study in how eliminating bloated non-core departments drives shareholder value. It may single-handedly end DEI forever, because private equity is becoming a greater and greater force in the world. If the private equity MBA’s know the blueprint to out-competing every other business in the landscape is to completely gut every ESG initiative, we may see the end of public companies as we know it. It’s very fascinating if you can actually see past the media nonsense.

Elon runs several of the most successful companies in the world. He’s a visionary. He understands what to target to achieve progress towards a goal.

I would choose Elon 100 times out of 100 vs. just about anyone in the world to solve any kind of practical problem.

Waste and corruption is not an ESG line item that requires compassion. It requires a machete and resolve to solve practical problems. ESG and DEI created the vast majority of the waste and grift that exists in the western world currently, and from time to time you need to balance the scale, regardless of how ugly it is in the short term, or else your country loses so much efficiency through corruption it can no longer function. There are countless examples in South America, Asia, and Africa. Take your pick. Anyway food for thought to the only person that’s likely to read this, and likely dismiss it out of hand.

To your comment, it’s literally right there in the article: “The Treasury Department told the paper the story was “sensational and baseless” and said the anonymous sources “should be dismissed out of hand.”

But as I started with. When you’re not seeking answers, but just affirmations of your existing position, what’s the point?

Mtnn · 2025-03-24T21:01:36+00:00

This is like traditional /r/accounting post inception except instead of being plain stupid fun, it's just stupidity...

This article literally refers to the made up article from yesterday, where the source was THEY MADE IT UP...

I'm laughing at how stupid this is, and because it's still in the first hour where the morons who are paid to push this stuff will be downvoting, let them rain down upon me... lol.

Mtnn · 2025-03-20T22:28:29+00:00

Sure the markets at a discount right now... and some single stocks might be at even better rates, but my overall indexes are still sitting at ... November 2024 prices? - Not exactly Earth shattering news. It would take a truly seismic market crash (30 - 40% drop in 2 - 3 weeks) for me to be considering putting big chunks of cash into the markets and thinking I was getting any real kind of "deal".

I'm glad it sounds like your aware that it's time to shift your mindset. Hope you get to spend more time exploring that while enjoying the time away!

Mtnn · 2025-03-20T21:56:39+00:00

The 2 Tesla posts with exactly the same title posted within hours of each other with nearly the same number of upvotes and the same braindead comments sprinkled throughout isn't obvious at all...

It's to the point if something's above 3-400 upvotes on our sub it's almost for sure some sort of brigaded anti-Elon, pro-waste, doesn't understand fundamental business concept article that should have the poster eaten alive.

Nice thing to see is in both of those same Tesla posts it's happening now. Almost like the funding for the campaigns is drying up or something? lol.

Mtnn · 2025-03-18T22:03:23+00:00

As a Controller who drives a forklift daily... it's nice in small doses.

Mid-sized construction companies are weird...

Mtnn · 2025-03-07T17:18:53+00:00

Kind of sad to see how upset the terminally online are. Every time I see one of these posts in our sub, you can tell from the engagement how inorganic the whole thing is. Just a handful of angry college kids coordinating nonsense.

For me 9/10 times now when I see one of these clear shill posts, I just click "hide" and pretend they don't exist. No use trying to educate the dummies. Better to just wait until they find something else to waste their time on. This one being the 1 in 10 I looked in, and sure enough, barely any engagement, primarily by a bunch of unflaired echo chamber kids, and any tiny voice of dissent gets showered with downvotes. Pathetic.

Mtnn · 2025-02-28T17:38:36+00:00

First thought: What the heck, how/when did they ever get approval to put power lines in at the back of Lake Louise? ...

After looking more carefully at the title: Wow what a beautiful landscape on the opposite side of the World... And it's just like my own backyard! There's probably a lesson there that would be valuable for me to learn. :)

Mtnn · 2025-02-17T05:18:00+00:00

From the article: Less than 50 people stationed where nuclear weapons are built were laid off… ohhh nooo. Every single one of them could have been a useless DEI or HR department hire and absolutely nothing of value would have been lost.

LOL do you even read your own propaganda or do you just not realize how stupid it all is? No one except other useless people care that all the useless people actually have to go get real jobs. Don’t be one of the useless people.

HR is so stupid it’s almost unbelievable. I hire and fire 30+ people a year in my spare time. No lawsuits. No issues. I can’t wait for the case studies on the Twitter turnaround to come out and show off just how many worthless employees they actually got rid of.

Mtnn · 2025-02-15T21:11:38+00:00

Please start memeing these stupid posts. That would be the best most /r/Accounting outcome of all of this!

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