Discussion Board Module 8

I have always said it’s so hard to figure out what you want to do when you grow up. I am 31 and still ask myself this daily! When you find something you love to do it helps your days and your life be brighter, but then what? Is there more to it? Is there any advancement? Or would you just be ok with where you are now for the rest of my career? There are days when I ask myself these questions and I answer one way and other days that my answers changed from the last time I thought about it. I don’t necessarily think that I would prefer a career in relation to taxes, however, I will never say never. I am big on trying to learn as much as I can in order to be an asset to a company. I love to learn and I love change, so taxes could be something that are in my future. Right now, I think my goal would be to move into a management position, possibly Accounts Payable Manager or Accounting Manager, and see where that takes me. That’s what I like to do most out of the tasks I currently have. Then after that, if my career advances, I would love to see a Controller position someday, however I don’t have my master’s degree and I don’t know at this point in my life if that is something I want to pursue. There is so much to learn in accounting and at the start of my certificate program I had mentioned to my boss that I didn’t feel like I was learning anything because there is just SO much material and so many details. He said a lot of accounting knowledge is gained hands on. You learned the things from a book, but once you put them into real life situations, it all starts to make sense. And so far, he is right. The position that appeals to me most in accounting, currently, is the Controller position. There is still so much to learn, but at that point, your accounting knowledge is pretty fair, you oversea departments, and help them problem solve. You work on internal controls and make sure they are in place, as well as creating policies to help maintain consistency throughout the company; as well as making sure everything is being done correctly, per the auditors. 

Looking at the link provided, the position that appeals to me most would be the Management Services/Consulting Senior (6+ years). Again, going back to the Controller position, this position resembles a lot of the things our Controller is currently doing and those are all the things that I would be interested in learning and doing. I like my job best when it puts my mind to the test. To go into work and do the same thing every single day out of repetition would bore me (not everyone, I understand that). I want to think. I want to problem solve. I took a class before this class that discussed budgeting and at first, I was like, “this is going to be awful,” but after learning and doing some projects, it was something that I really enjoyed doing and this position mentions “operational budgets.” 

There was a lot I didn’t know about taxes before I took this course. We don’t have children, but we do have a rental property. So, all things child credit related, I was clueless about. I had no idea there were so many options as to what can be deducted and credited. I didn’t know there was an option between standard and itemized deductions, I didn’t realize all the things you could deduct on your Schedule A, and didn’t realize that there were caps on the deductions. I was literally clueless. With our rental property, we have learned a lot about taxes as to what we can deduct and how the rental income affects our income taxes. There were a lot of things I took from this course, again because I was clueless on a lot of it. My mom has always done our taxes, so I never really took the time to learn the forms or understand what she was doing for us. Professionally, this could help me in my current position as we talk about sales tax and use tax often. There are times that the inside sales professionals add tax when they shouldn’t, or don’t add when they should, so it becomes a learning activity for all of us. This is actually something we just went over about 2 weeks ago. Personally, I will be able to understand our own personal taxes and make sense of what we are doing; specifically, when it comes to the deductions for our rental property. We will be able to better plan for those in order to get the most out of our deductions, legally.