Why My Brother Chose a Career in Accountancy

Being an accountant myself and an older brother not only inspired my brother to become an accountant, but also inspired many of his friends who hanged around me at the time. I have always liked numbers ever since I was a kid and growing up with a convenient store in the family greatly influenced my decision to go into business. Every single day, I would watch my mum doing the books at the end of the day and I was eager to learn and help her with this task. With time I mastered the ropes of the business and also ended up pursuing accounting in college.

My younger brother was not really good with numbers or in math either. He was an easy go lucky kind of guy who only cared for things that made him happy and caused him less tress or no stress at all. He only helped in the store just because it was a condition for him to get some pocket money at the end of the week. After I was done with college, I landed myself an accounting position with a leading accounting firm as an associate. The pay was really good and the hours were controlled by the firm to ensure that all of us had a healthy balance of work and social life.

Our firm in the City  understood that it was relatively easy to hire London accountants but extremely challenging to keep them in the staff due to high demand and stiff competition. The benefits and perks that came with the job were very attractive. My younger bother being a Sophomore in college at that time and still undecided, started noticing my new change in lifestyle and financial freedom. He wondered how I was able to afford all that I have within a short time by working only one job. There were others in my age group who had also graduated from other disciplines yet had not landed any job for over a year now, yet my firm and other accountancy firms were frantically looking for accounting graduates to hire.

It was then that my brother approached me to enlighten him more about accounting major and career options available in the field. We had a very long discussion about accounting, chartered accountants and the general expectations of accountants not only in the workplace, but also the society in general. Judging from my success in the accounting profession, he definitely knew what kind of money he could make and the doors that this career choice could open for him. We talked about compensation packages, work balance, career paths, hurdles in majoring in accounting and how to overcome them. He gladly took my advice, made up his mind and majored in accounting, and today he is fitted squarely in the career reaping the benefits of his work.

Thanks to London accountant John Dover for this article. You can read more of his articles here.