Finance Jobs with OK Work / Life Balance #Finance

hey this is matt ting from peak frameworks and today we are going to talk about a couple of great roles in Finance that have a good work-life balance now it might

seem a little counter-intuitive to focus on jobs that have a good work-life balance and Finance but they definitely do exist i actually think it’s entirely possible to

be earning over 300 000 a year by your early 30s while also working less than 50 hours if you pick your spots right before i left my private Equity role in none;">Finance i definitely evaluated different jobs to see if there was a way to get a better life without compromising too much earning potential and that search brought me to a couple of key categories that i would strongly recommend if you want that kind of mix for yourself

it’s pretty easy to grind in your early 20s but by the time you’re in your early 30s you really start making a lot of life trade-offs and i think a transition to a more relaxing field can make a lot of sense now as we talk about these roles i want you to think about the following two

factors because i think this really explains a lot of the work-life balance that you’re going to have in pretty much any job in any industry and the first is business model and when we’re talking about business model we’re really talking about how the firm or the fund or the

company makes money what is the engine at work that really generates Revenue and Profits for the business are they doing a lot of deals do they manage a lot of Assets is it a transactions oriented business whatever the engine is is going to

directly impact your life for example in Investment Banking you would generally get compensated a percentage cut of however big the deal that you’re working on is so you’re incentivized to work on larger deals as well as a larger volume of deals as such you are

motivated to constantly be pitching businesses to win new deals and that can make your life particularly busy and if you work in a client service business model like law consulting Investment Banking or audit then you are kind of at the whims of your client as well if they want a

lot of deliverables over the weekend or they’re working on very short sprints then you’re also going to have to do a lot of weekend work so when you think about avoiding weekend work or having a predictable lifestyle think about the business model and the flow of work in that industry i

think the other main factor i would think about when evaluating roles is ownership expectations whatever the owners of the business or shareholders of the business expect is going to have a direct impact on how much stress you will have i think this is most obvious when you look at Hedge

Funds investors in Hedge Funds will get access to market data and essentially see how you’re doing on a daily basis a lot of investors in Hedge Funds also have the opportunity to withdraw their funds so that means if there’s a bad quarter or a

bad year then these investors might pull out and that would have severe impact to the fund that you’re working at if you want a lower stress life you essentially want to work at places where you know the money isn’t going anywhere you don’t have to constantly be worrying about how

you’re evaluated on a daily or quarterly basis with that being said the first category of roles i want to talk about that i think tend to have a better work life balance are at long only funds or mutual funds now long-only funds and mutual funds are technically still Hedge

Funds but they’re very distinct from the kind of lifestyle that you would get at a pod or a long short Equity fund those places tend to be quite a bit more intense as a result of their business model the amount of work that is required to effectively short businesses

is so dramatic that the lifestyle tends to be quite different now there is a trade-off you tend to get compensated a little bit more along short funds in exchange for that additional stress or time but for me personally i was more than happy to think about working at a long only fund many of the

largest asset managers like fidelity blackrock and vanguard all offer some kind of long only or mutual fund product and that’s essentially where you would work to work in this kind of role now when i think about the pros and cons i think the biggest pro for me is that the hedge fund world

still feels like pure Finance you’re still investing in businesses you get to learn about companies and follow trends and i think that’s what’s really

exciting about investing in general a lot of long-only funds often have a long time horizon as well so you get to think of the long-term perspective of these companies and again i think the main draw for me is that the culture and the hours seem to be a little bit better than other kinds of

Hedge Funds now i think the main con comparatively is that your earnings potential is generally going to be less these mutual funds often give less carry or less Equity than you would get at a long short fund additionally it’s still a stressful job

you’re still managing other people’s money it’s just that the culture is a little bit different generally so that you’re working less hours from a strategy standpoint one big con of long-only funds is that during bear bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Markets they tend to do very poorly the main strength of these pods and long-short funds is that they can hedge their own risk during downtime long-only funds can only go long equities so during bear

style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Markets they tend to do meaningfully worse i think if i was forced to stay in traditional Finance i

would probably pick a role like this the people i relate to the most that are still in the industry all took roles at these kind of long only funds so the next category we’re going to talk about i’m going to kind of cast a wide net but this includes pension funds family offices and

endowment funds now i was saying before that the type of Capital you have really impacts the kind of lifestyle you have and i think that’s the most true at these kinds of firms now if you think about a traditional fund whether it’s private Equity vc or

Hedge Funds you’re raising money from lots of different kinds of investors and thus you have to be subjected to them you might have to do quarterly Valuation or annual meetings and there’s generally a lot of upkeep when you have to raise new money

however think about how a pension fund or one of these other funds is structured they’re essentially getting pension payments from a diversified body of employees or people and that’s their source of Capital places like canada california and singapore all have huge

pension funds that are funded by their constituents so we’re talking about teachers employees and firemen that contribute some of their earnings that these pension funds get to invest and that’s much more stable than the alternative a family office is when a really rich person wants

someone to manage their money big examples would be places like msd Capital which is michael dell and soros family office and finally you have endowment funds places like harvard and yale have enormous endowment funds that are honestly larger than a lot of private

Equity firms and endowment funds are primarily funded by alumni so you can see how these sources of Capital are much more stable and if you work at one of these firms generally the culture is going to be much more relaxed much more manageable as i say this i think

the variance at family offices tends to be the widest family offices from what i’ve heard have a lot of key person risk so if the person at the top is extremely stressful or extremely difficult to work with then it would still probably be a bad overall time at that fund so i think the main

pro here is the Capital is extremely stable that tends to lead to a much lower attrition and generally better culture it’s also worth noting that a lot of pension funds have become some of the largest money managers in the world and that means they have a lot of sway in

different Markets places like cpp and ontario teachers pension plan often can co-invest alongside the best private Equity firms just by virtue of how much money they have and

the relationships they have with different firms and i think another great benefit of these kinds of firms is that they tend to be more geographically diverse most Hedge Funds and private Equity firms and venture Capital firms are either in new

york or san francisco when you think about the north american landscape however what if you’re from alaska or alberta there might not be a lot of other options for you if you want to go back home and you’re from these places however there are pension funds in these locations that can be

very strong employers i think the primary con here is that earning potential tends to be quite a bit lower particularly at pension funds you know you don’t want to take too much money from these retirees and these pensioners and as such you often don’t get as much

Equity or carry that you would given your seniority also note that the job you do at these firms is not fundamentally different from working at another investment firm or buy side firm but what is different is the structure of your job and the source of Capital and

i think that’s a pretty important observation now the third category of jobs which i still think has relatively strong earnings potential and a good lifestyle is investor relations and business development i’m more specifically thinking of investor relations teams at places like

Hedge Funds venture Capital firms and private Equity firms now the role of investor relations people are essentially to communicate with investors especially during times of Fundraising there is a lot of work that actually needs to

be done if you’re a private Equity fund raising a new fund you need to go on a road show to talk to a bunch of different investors create lots of marketing materials in order to convince them you also have to manage the payments that come in as well as update them as the fund

progresses so a lot of people that end up in these investor relations or biz dev roles at these funds actually have Investment Banking backgrounds because you need to understand how the Capital #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Markets work you need to understand how private Equity and Hedge Funds work as well as what investors are looking for and these roles tend to be a lot more survivable than those on the investment team because there’s not a

concept of live deal mode and there are fewer short sprints generally so if you do want to work on the buy side still but you don’t want the same level of intensity and the same level of grind then maybe biz dev or ir rolls are a good place to look i think a big pro here is that you actually

get to interface a lot more with top investors around the world you know if you’re on the deal team as a private Equity person you’re not actually talking to a ton of investors it’s not really your job as an associate even up to i would say the vp level but if you

are on the ir team you’ll get to talk to investors from around the world and understand how the flow of money really works another pro i would say is you’re learning a completely different skill set you get to understand how investors think about your asset class why do they pick one

private Equity firm over the other so you are really thinking more about fund metrics as well as Asset Management as a whole and like the other roles i think the primary con here is earnings potential tends to be a little bit lower people on the business side

typically get a little bit less carry than those on the deal team so if you prefer the selling mindset or working with clients i think it does make a lot of sense to transition to a biz dev role and i’ve seen a lot of people in mid-level as well as senior level private Equity

transition to biz dev so it is true that a lot of people stay laser focused on Investment Banking and private Equity due to how much you can get paid as well as the prestige but if you’re looking for a better work-life balance there are definitely great roles

in Finance that do exist now if you’re still interested in recruiting for private Equity you can check out the course on our website which is going to

teach you how to build models as well as do case studies required for the interview so this and i will see you in the next one