@jomarie – That's actually pretty awesome. I'd love to be able to work from home during part of the year. Also becoming a partner will be totally worth taking the lower pay for a while!
I work at a publicly traded bank with just under $1 billion in total assets. I had one year of public accounting experience and about 6 months of pension accounting experience before I started. Here's my breakdown:
Starting Base Pay: $48,000
Title: Staff Accountant, I work directly under the controller
401(k) with 100% matching for first 3% of pay contributed, and 50% matching for next 2% (so 100% matching for up to 4% of my pay, which I take full advantage of)
Health, dental and vision covered 75% by employer
Life insurance covered 100% by employer
10 days vacation
14 days sick time
Annual bonus (usually at least $500)
They paid for all of my CPA exam attempts (which took me 9 tries, so they dumped around $1,800 in that) and they also paid for my ethics exam, fingerprinting, etc. They will pay for my continuing education also. They also covered one section of my CPA exam material.
The environment is pretty cushy. I work hard, but not like Public Accounting. I get paid overtime. I have a lot of busy seasons (4 per year that last 2 months each, for quarterly reporting). But the most I work in a week is around 55 hours.
First year raise: 2.5% (this was a bank wide standard raise, nobody got anything more. Officers at the bank haven't had ANY raises in a few years)
Second year raise: 2% bank wide, and then I got an additional 2% for earning my CPA license. At first I felt pretty insulted by this, but my boss apologized for how meager the raise was and said that I am literally the only person in the bank getting more than 2% this year. Earnings just aren't where they need to be yet. Ever since the economy went under, banks have been struggling. He said he wanted to give me more but I have a feeling he couldn't get it cleared with the CEO.
At this point I'm not sure what to do. I think I will probably keep an eye out for other opportunities, but unfortunately I live in a small city with hardly any accounting jobs (except for some in public accounting, which I'm not interested in). Also I just bought a house, so moving is out of the question until the market gets better. My significant other is in college and we are planning on moving to a bigger city so that he can get a good IT job once he gets his bachelor's finished up in 2014.
I'm actually thinking about enrolling in school to become a math teacher… Sounds silly, and I know the pay won't be as good. But maybe then i could actually enjoy my work. I feel like I need to make a difference, and preparing financial reports for a company just doesn't feel like enough. Anyone have any input?
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