College Major – Accounting or Finance? #Finance

greetings everyone thank you for joining me today I was browsing the boglehead uh Community forums and I stumbled Upon A postposed by a fellow member and he asked the question of what is the superior major between Accounting Majors versus a

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance major so let’s read exactly what he asked the poster asked major Accounting or #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance which is a better suggestion Accounting CPA big four corporate possible MBA or Finance possible CFA corporate p possible MBA from

National universities ranked 25 to 75 well I found this question to be a very interest uh interesting question as as it was a question that I uh wrestled with myself back in my undergraduate days I ended up deciding to pursue a double major in Accounting and

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance and I decided to do this because the ACC the Accounting field was starting to require 150 Credits in order to become elgible eligible for your

CPA exam and that was something that was going to effect within the next couple of years so I decided to just go ahead and do a double major in Accounting and none;">Finance but for someone who only wants to choose one or the other the question is which one is the major that you should pursue well my answer is simply that the Accounting major will be the far better uh choice to make between the two majors and the reason I

and that’s a qualified that’s a qualified answer of course as any answer is there are exceptions to the rule but generally speaking an Accounting major will will give you so much more flexibility and opportunities in terms of jobs compared to a

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance major and the reason for this is that the Accounting major uh prepares you for a profession it gives you tangible skills whereas the

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance major is generally more it’s more General it’s more watered watered down I would say that the Accounting program is far more rigorous than the

Finance program uh generally speaking and as as such the Accounting program just prepares you for the Working World better and this is there are exceptions

to that rule as well uh it may vary within programs and uh at The Graduate level the Finance program does tend to become more rigorous as uh it becomes more quantitative and

there’s more of a focus on CFA content but that would uh vary based based on the program and the university that you are attending and the course load that you’re um attending but the text-decoration: none;">Finance program uh suffers from the fact that such a broad field so General that uh it doesn’t prepare you for for any specific uh work or for any specific uh profession that an Accounting would do Accounting major would

prepare you for so as an Accounting major you’ll be eligible to uh secure positions within public Accounting as an auditor or as a tax professional or you’ll be able to pursue positions within Private Industry I’ll work within a controllers

organization or CFO group or doing fpna Financial Planning and Analysis and you’ll also be able to be eligible for any other positions that any other um B business major would be eligible so a financial advisor or um a business business uh another General business person call

center what have you an Accounting major can pretty much do effectively anything that a Finance major can do but I can’t say that the reverse is

necessarily true a Finance major cannot do everything a uh that an Accounting major can do and this is owed to the fact that the Accounting

major is more specialized but it also gains uh a gains exposure to the other um Fields within business so it gains exposure to Finance marketing and management and those

fields within the undergraduate program tends to be more watered down anyway so I’ll give you another example I work within Private Industry and within Private Industry uh I work in the controllers organization and there are where I work at there’s a mix of Accounting

majors and Finance Majors but I find that the Accounting ma Majors tend to have a stronger conceptual understanding of the work that they’re doing for

instance some of my Finance colleagues will actually have a piece of paper posted in the wall that lists the debits and Credits that they need to apply in

their Journal journal entries in order to increase a asset or decrease a liability or what have you as an Accounting major as someone who studied Accounting in my undergraduate studies I that all just comes to me intuitively and that is um part of my conceptual uh

Foundation that so I’m able to uh leverage my foundational knowledge of Accounting at my work I’m able to apply apply my knowledge and able to move on to the next step to the next level to gain uh a deeper understanding of my work whereas my colleagues will often be

stuck at the first step of trying to figure out whether or not they need to debit or Credit an asset for their journal entry and now as I had mentioned before there are exceptions to this uh the text-decoration: none;">Finance major um can be the superior Choice depending on what your choices are for instance if you’re you are attending a top university a top 10 University a lot of top 10 universities don’t have an uh Accounting program at the

undergraduate level at all so for uh for this yeah go ahead uh pursuit of Finance major or a business administration major at one of these top 10 universities it’s my

opinion that it doesn’t matters so much what you major in anyway uh what matters more is the connections and the network that you uh cultivate and who who you meet and who you gain access to so having that um Prestige that brand uh on your resume of going to and attending a top university

will do uh wonders for you U regardless of what your undergraduate major is so um to recap uh and get back to the question um the answer is simply uh generally speaking Accounting is the superior major uh between the two uh in terms of job opport unities and flexibility that it

pursues you if you’re going to attend a top university where they don’t um provide Accounting uh Accounting major yeah go ahead you can pursue a none;">Finance major because that’s not as important what you majoring in or if you are pursuing a position within a field where you don’t need an Accounting major for instance you’re pursuing uh a position as a financial advisor or another General

business um business job within the uh whatever it is that you’re uh trying to pursue now go ahead uh pursue the Finance major it the less rigorous program will give

you some time to do other things to work and iron out other things work on your resume uh work on your professional uh development work on your uh professional presentation skills what have you so so if that is the case yeah maybe a bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance major maybe this may be the superior choice but generally speaking I feel that the flexibility and opportunities that an Accounting major provides you will lend itself to being the superior choice for most people

okay that’s all that I have to say but for that thank you for joining me guys have a great day