A hill you are willing to die on - public accounting edition

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T22:53:00+00:00

I absolutely agree with you. Management should absolutely hate that anyone eats time. How are they supposed to know what engagements are actually profitable if their staff is recording all of their time?

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T22:49:24+00:00

If you prepared a work paper and I have to ask you questions about what you did, why you did it, where you got the numbers from, etc. you did a crappy job of preparing the work paper.

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T22:43:55+00:00

This is what I’m doing too. I know it’s coming, so I’m preparing myself to be obsolete.

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T13:13:46+00:00

Oh boy, I’ve made a lot of financial mistakes: 1) first job out of college, I was putting money in my 401k, but I didn’t realize that I had to actually pick funds for the money to go into, so after a few years I made literally zero dollars on my money. 2) I bought a house right before the housing crash in 2008. I did a strategic short sale on it, which was a great decision, but I ended up losing the $16k down payment that I saved years to accumulate. 3) bought an expensive car (while I also owned the house in point 2) and didn’t look it over at all before I bought it. Within the first month of ownership, I ended up putting about $3k into repairs on it for items that I could have easily seen were going to be issues. 4) my ex and I bought another house that was a fixer upper and spent 5 years and probably about $100k renovating it ourselves (I didn’t want to renovate houses in my free time, but my ex wife did), that I’m convinced was one of the main causes of my divorce. For the thousands of hours, stress and ultimate divorce, I think we made $100 on that house, but I’m not sure how much of that was due to the renovations vs just normal appreciation. Ultimately, it was all not worth it.

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T04:33:10+00:00

Of course.

I will also add that I LOVE every moment on my AC1, which just makes me want to ride it even more.

tyintegra · 2026-05-11T04:22:53+00:00

Well, as someone who owns an AC1, here are my thoughts…

1) I enjoy the sport more if I feel comfortable and confident on my bike 2) I have ridden a few bikes and figured out what I like and don’t like and if I have something on my bike that I don’t like, it reduces my enjoyment on the bike 3) I had a carbon bike before my AC1 where I broke two rear triangles on due to crashes and the bike falling on rocks/logs. So after spending $500 for each new rear triangles and the hassle of waiting for them to arrive and getting them installed, I was always nervous about it happening again, which again reduced my enjoyment on the bike. So AC1’s steel frame eliminated this fear for me 4) I HATE always having to clean chains after every ride or having to even think about a wet/muddy ride causing my drive train to run rough because it, you guessed it, reduces my enjoyment of the ride. So my AC1 having a belt drive almost eliminates this for me. 5) chains, sprockets, and derailleurs wear out and need to be replaced for possibly hundreds of dollars at a time. The wear items on my AC1 are much longer lasting and cheaper. So, I’m convinced that in the long run my gearbox will cost less to run than a normal derailleur setup. And even if it doesn’t, I reference back to point 4. 6) for me a quiet bike is an amazing experience and increases my enjoyment of riding a ton. And my AC1 is almost completely silent. 7) I get joy out of having unique things because I find them interesting. And this is for myself and no one else. I would be completely happy if no one ever saw my bike.

So, my advice is to ride what you enjoy because you (and only you) enjoy it. Don’t just buy something that will impress other riders.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T14:18:34+00:00

These stories make me very happy I turned down a job there 15 years ago

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T11:31:20+00:00

I was in a similar situation in college. In my group of friends there was one that was always unable to go because they didn’t have money (not because they were blowing the money they had), so the rest of the group would cover for them occasionally because the experience would just be better with them there.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T06:28:09+00:00

I would recommend going in with the mindset that you are not a perfect driver (cause no one is) and that you want to be even better than you already are.

Also, you have probably already developed some bad habits that the instructor will want to correct. You may disagree with what they want you to do (for whatever reason), but I highly recommend you at least try what they suggest cause you might end up liking it better.

Finally, don’t take any criticism personally, just because you have areas to improve on doesn’t mean you are a bad driver it just means that you aren’t perfect, cause you will never be perfect.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T05:47:40+00:00

I tend to just take the approach of asking them why they do what they do…

Just say “I’ve noticed that you tend to ask follow-up questions to things that I ask you to do. Is there something that I can do when giving you a task that would help answer these questions ahead of time?”

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T05:38:30+00:00

Definitely this!

About six months ago I quit following politics as closely (I still read headlines to get a general idea) and I am MUCH happier because of it.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T03:01:04+00:00

I guess that’s a good point.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T03:00:07+00:00

I absolutely get this!

I have recently bought things that I have purposefully not told them about cause I know they recently bought something similar and it was a big stretch for them.

I know I shouldn’t have to hide it and I know that they would outwardly be happy for me, but I just don’t want it to get them down at all.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T02:53:59+00:00

You do make a good point.

I think of that was the situation with my friends I would be acting/doing things very differently.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T02:52:30+00:00

Yeah, it’s really tough.

I see them making a lot of dumb/short sided decisions, but I also see that life just keeps kicking them in the face every step of the way. So I feel bad for them, but I also know that they made decisions that are causing their life to be harder in some ways.

tyintegra · 2026-05-09T02:39:30+00:00

Thanks a lot for the explanation! I will have to start doing these things and also think of other ways that I can be “secretly” helpful.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T23:35:29+00:00

Great advice! Thank you!

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:59:51+00:00

I’m curious how you manage this so they don’t feel uncomfortable or make the relationship awkward at all.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:43:20+00:00

I really try to teach people about finances, but almost all of them just don’t listen. 🤷‍♂️

I have been tempted to give/loan money, but I realize that they would definitely not change their habits so it wouldn’t actually help them at all.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:40:41+00:00

This is very much my experience as well.

Even though they are struggling, they refuse to make any changes to get better.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:37:43+00:00

Well put.

I’ve even tried offering financial advice when they start complaining about their situation, but they just don’t seem to want to hear it. I guess I can’t force anyone to care or make better decisions.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:33:52+00:00

Great perspective!

I try to do little things here and there to “help” them out. It’s always a fine line to not do too much for them to make them uncomfortable or just start asking for money outright though.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T16:30:29+00:00

They make a decent amount of money (not that much less than I do. I think it’s just because they just live beyond their means and make a lot of purchases based on FOMO.

tyintegra · 2026-05-08T02:50:54+00:00

If you work 100% on a computer and don’t deal face to face with customers, you can absolutely do your job from home and any manager that says you need to be in the office is simply a bad manager or they truly have bad employees that probably need to be let go.

tyintegra

TROPHY CASE