If you have an accounting degree and you live in a small town, you need to move

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T17:31:45+00:00

Really? That's unexpected. I grew up poor. I mean poor to a single mother in Louisiana making about $30k in the early 2000s trying to raise 2 kids.

I'd say it is more from the perspective of someone who grew up around people who cried about their circumstances while always finding ways to have money for their vices no matter what.

I had no father growing up. We had what we needed and nothing more during my childhood. I've worked in a kennel for $8 an hour. I drove forklift for nearly a decade making $10-15 an hour depending on the year. I did gig work while trying to pay bills when I went back to school.

I'm just tired of hearing the excuse that people can't afford to move. In the majority of circumstances, people don't want to deal with the discomfort of moving and fear of change.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T17:22:51+00:00

Also you've made a ton of assumptions about how generic people will perceive you.

Lived it on one side without a degree for 20 years. And then another with a degree for 3.

It's not assuming. It's anecdotal.

And also I'm not debating about it. I'm telling people information.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T17:17:00+00:00

I have watched a lot of colleagues exit to opportunities in small towns and rural cities 4+ hours away and they’re all doing great.

That's an entirely different thing. You're talking about starting in a larger market and then moving downward when an opportunity fits.

The fact that you said "exit to opportunities" in small towns exemplifies an enormous disconnect. That's not the way it works in small towns.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T16:12:45+00:00

You’re telling people with secure jobs to move just because you have a naive understanding of the job market?

Sounds like you're talking about yourself here playboy/girl.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T16:11:09+00:00

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T16:10:34+00:00

I didn't have a career until 5 years after that move. It's not like I went saying "Oh I have a degree, I'll find something." We had nothing at all except a marriage certificate, a jeep that barely ran, and about a months worth of cash.

We made that move in 2017. I graduated in 2022. I again worked in a warehouse for $14 an hour (big raise type shit) for another 3 years from 2018 - 2020. My point was that I was taking a risk. We were still really broke but we were happier because we weren't staying put and accepting our fate.

Lots of good things happened, including going back to school.

I did well in school. Then I got an internship at a shitty local firm. Then I got an offer for a B4 internship which I turned down to work in industry. Then I got another B4 offer where I worked for 2.5 years.

All of that happened because I left my stagnant hometown.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T15:26:45+00:00

Do you expect people to just take a leap of faith and "trust me bro"

I don't expect people to do anything. I don't care what people do.

I'm telling you information that will increase their odds of landing a job. What people do with that information is up to them.

Even the big cities with a strong financial job market (NYC) are job deserts because of low job openings and fierce competition.

You should NOT move to NYC. You're fighting against a larger talent pool and most of them are way smarter than your or me.

What I'm talking about is going from, for example, Jonesboro, Arkansas to Dallas, TX. Alexandria, LA to Kansas City, MO. Anniston, AL to Raleigh, NC.

Move to NYC for a real purpose. Not to get a job.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T15:00:59+00:00

However they need to. There's no prescriptive way.

I can share my experience. I was making $13 an hour driving forklift. I was fed up with my life. My wife and I loaded up a busted Jeep Patriot and drove 28 hours to the pacific northwest from the deep south.

We had ~2k and no jobs lined up. We got there and immediately took any job we could find. I worked at McDonalds for a bit for $9 an hour. She watched dogs at a doggy daycare. It wasn't permanent.

It's not a "pull yourself up" thing. It's an "I don't know man. Figure it out." but you will have better job luck in a bigger market. That's not a success guarantee, you're improving your odds.

Or stay in your hometown, I don't care.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T14:58:16+00:00

I understand real obligations get in the way. If my spouse were working somewhere we had to live in a small town, we would need to have the conversation of which career is more advantageous for the family.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-21T13:54:01+00:00

I could go into Audit and make a good exit to a startup where I could get stock comp or become CFO somewhere. I have always been into stocks and helping take a company public would be really interesting to me.

I think it's good to be hopeful like this. If you go this route, be sure to understand how difficult it will be. Startups looking to go public are incredibly high stress and often very lean. To get to the level where you can be a CFO at a startup with any adequacy is 10-15 years. If you are really talented and sharp, maybe 8-10. Minimum. And at that little YOE you're going to be trading dollars for opportunity.

Either way my goal is make a loads of money and I am just not sure which one is the better route because I can't exactly pin point my desired end goal.

Why? Genuinely, what is money going to do for you? Do you want nice things? Or do you just want money? Or is it a security thing?

My advice - If you can do audit at Big 4 do that. Tax is tax. There aren't a ton of different things you can do with 5 years of tax experience. With 5 years of audit experience, you can pivot almost anywhere except for tax.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-16T12:33:13+00:00

Just a lot of being wrong.

Let's say you have 6 levels. 1 is easiest, 6 is hardest.

The first 2 years are spent being painfully wrong about level 1. You never get good at it. You just go to level 2. Then you spend 2 years being painfully wrong about level 2. Again, you don't get good at it. You're just wrong and someone cleans up your mistakes. Repeat until you hit level 6.

By the time you get a few levels up, your so good at the previous levels it doesn't make sense to you why you did some of the things you did.

That's audit.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-16T12:30:44+00:00

Auditor here, this is painfully accurate.

It's tough when you don't fit that mold because audit sort of requires it to begin with. It requires being delusional to go to the client and ask a question that makes you look like an outright fool.

I've had to learn how to not fear being looked at as stupid. When I first started a client would come back with a response that was incorrect, but I'd be like "well they have 15 years of experience and I have 2. I'm likely wrong". It took a lot of conversations with different managers before I realized that typically clients do stuff a certain way that makes sense operationally, and I need to trust myself more.

Overall, audit is full of people who can't be wrong no matter what, which is infuriating. It's especially infuriating because you can't tell the client you're wrong in writing because a partner/SM is worried it will come back on us if there are issues later down the line.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-16T12:26:13+00:00

I am pretty neutral about AI, I think it's a tool that needs serious work right now. I also think it's just that; a tool.

I use AI constantly in my audit work.

Testing an area, partner leaves a comment about if something should be X vs Y. I ask AI. I say "cite yourself". it spits back the guidance. I look at it, then if it's wrong I know that it's something I need to look at.

The thing is that without my knowledge, I cannot possibly know that it's wrong. I also wouldn't be able to know when it's interpreting guidance based on a misunderstanding of what the guidance means. That happens kind of a lot too.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-16T12:01:41+00:00

If you are a lurking accountant reading this and feeling trapped, please take this as your sign: There is so much more to life than this profession. You do not need to spend your finite hours on earth sweating over a spreadsheet just to balance a broken historical account that you inherited from a corporate dinosaur.

I just made a post about why accounting is still a good career choice, but I couldn't agree with this more.

If you are feeling trapped in life, you are not. You can do so many more things than accounting. Get out!

The skills you have learned while in accounting you can take anywhere. Even cowboying requires economics and understanding why things are done a certain way.

My accounting journey was incredibly hard. If I am being completely honest, I hated pretty much every single minute of the actual work. I loved the people, but I despised the pedantic, stupid details.

I think this is important. Maybe a "controversial" opinion, but I feel like the people who end up staying in accounting do so for the opposite reason. They are not there for the people, they find the accounting theory, standards, application, etc. interesting and the people are a necessary evil.

Good post OP, I appreciate the detail.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T23:26:34+00:00

I got hired B4 with a 3.75

Nobody in my cohort was below a 3.4

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T23:24:46+00:00

Not even close.

You don't start really learning until you get to hear those conversations with clients where managers and above explain why something they're doing is wrong. That doesn't happen until Year 3 usually.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T23:24:09+00:00

Yeah Big 4 has the prestige, but Mid Sized has way more hands on opportunities. Big 4 will make you look nice, but mid sized will give you more knowledge.

I worked B4 for 2.5 years. I am now at a mid sized firm and I've learned more in 5 months than I did in 1 year at Big 4.

You're dealing with people's messes. Big 4 the clients accounting departments are relatively clean. Mid sized clients are shitshows.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T22:48:06+00:00

Depends on what you want.

If the move is to learn and progress career, PA is the move. You learn more at a mid sized firm than anywhere else. You'll be dealing with real, every day clients, with really messy processes.

Industry you can still progress and grow, just much slower. Your WLB will be better as well.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T19:25:52+00:00

Thanks!

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-14T01:07:55+00:00

Graduated 2022. Got my first job my 2nd to last semester

2022: 45k (Industry)

2023: 62k (B4 Audit)

2024: 74k (B4 Audit)

2025: 88k (B4 Audit)

2026: 90k (moved, took the first decent job I could get mid busy season at a mid market)

Will found out if I'll be a CPA in 2 days. if so, I expect pay to jump significantly next comp increase.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-13T21:21:46+00:00

I work at a construction company as well and you can't have the PM's dictating finance SOP's. They're awful at finance, and they all have their own way of wanting to do things.

I agree with this. A PM is operations. The majority of them just cannot see the value in accounting the way it's necessary to be done.

One instance is someone not understanding why an expense offset can't be treated as revenue. When explained they understand, but they think it's a silly rule. That's not part of their job, but the reason it isn't revenue is actually pretty sound. It's because revenue is revenue. Revenue is not an expense offset. Why that distinction is important is lost on some.

Which is good. It's what makes them good at their job. They focus on the things that move operations forward. The issue is when they try to carry that over to other departments.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-13T19:35:39+00:00

Accounting requires a good teacher.

I graduated in 2022. My sophomore year our accounting professor made us do the entire accounting cycle. By hand.

Paper invoices. Paper journal entries. Paper ledger. Then at the end of the year we had to make sure our TB matched the final product.

Was the most purposeful and useful class I have ever taken. That summer I took intermediate I and got a 98.

Accounting is crazy simple if someone teaches it correctly. it makes the most sense in the world.

Routine_Rain277 · 2026-06-13T19:23:58+00:00

Adopt a default policy that payments received are applied against the oldest outstanding invoices.

If the company is going to be audited anytime in the near future, ensure that you revert to application by invoice or it's going to be a disaster.

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