[T_T]

Hello Everyone,

Long story short, I’m a Maryland resident graduated Fall 2012, and have been working 3 years for a State and Local Government Organization as an Auditor. I have been presented with 3 job opportunities. My current salary is $60k, and I will be a licensed CPA soon after the state board’s approval. I’d like to know which one you would choose with no other facts given besides what I am mentioning in this post. If you were in my position which one would you chose? Please let me know what you think or are speculating .

Option A – Auditing job for the State of Arizona – $55k

Option B – Auditing job for the Federal Government in Washington, D.C. – $72K

Option C – Auditing job for a top 50 CPA firm in Bethesda, Maryland – $65K

B-76
A-47, 69, 61, 60, 73, 82
R-73, 75(expired), 78
F-66, 72, 69, 72, 79

[Myredstapler]

I guess it all depends on what you really want to do later. If you want to be limited to Government audits then go government. If n the other hand you want a broader experience I would go for the Top 50 (Reznick?) and gain some valuable experience outside of governmental audits.

[Andyred04]

That Fed Gov’t job would be the cat’s ass in my opinion (not to mention the pay raise). However, you should know that if you continue in gov’t accounting you’ll probably be stuck there. So if you like gov’t audit I’d take Option B, if you want to broaden your horizons, like Myredstapler said, go with the CPA firm. I definitely wouldn’t move the whole way to AZ to take a pay cut.

FAR: 80 (Gleim, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs)
REG: 87 (Gleim, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs)
BEC: 87 (Gleim, Ninja Notes, Ninja MCQs)
AUD: 8/27/16

PA Candidate

[Anonymous]

hahaha cat's ass… is that a good thing??

[ncjm304]

yes the cat's ass is a good thing. one of my dad's favorite things to say lol

AUD- 71,79
BEC- 72,77
FAR- 83
REG- 63,71,83

DONE!

[monikernc]

the fed and state jobs will probably always be there. great benefits with govt and retirement after many, many years. the fed job could open up to other fed jobs in different areas of interest. the top 50 job is for while you are young. ltd work/life balance maybe with top 50 but maybe more diverse work. could lead to more interesting and competitive positions in that and other public acctg firms.
i say do the public acctg for 5 more years and then federal. skip the state because state legislatures are hell to deal with and auditing can become quite political. state auditing will not lead to much else in my opinion.
always save for retirement no matter where you are. have fun!
does AZ have personal income tax?

FAR 7/25/15 76!
AUD 10/30/15 93
BEC 2/27/16 82
REG 5/23/16 88!
Ninja Book and MCQ and the forum - all the way!!!
and a little thing i like to call, time and effort!
if you want things to change, you have to do something different

[Anonymous]

Before thinking further, the first thing I would do would be a cost-of-living (COL) analysis for the places that I'd be living for each of the 4 job options (staying at current or each of the 3 new options). $55k in AZ could be a lot more than $72k in DC, if the AZ job is based out of a smaller town, or if AZ COL is enough lower than DC's in general. For me, my salary is lower than any of the OP's options; however, my COL is super-low, so if I took any of those options, it'd probably require a reduction in lifestyle and/or savings. My family lives about an hour or so outside of DC and their COL is substantially higher than mine; when they moved from where I am to where they are now, they were surprised by how little the dollar-change meant after the COL adjustment, and I imagine DC itself is even worse. However, I don't know what the COL is where the OP is currently in Maryland.

So, my advice to OP is to try to find some COL information and do a COL-adjusted salary comparison. Then it might come out that after adjusting salaries to be comparative to his current COL, maybe DC is equivalent to $56k/yr (so small pay cut, but I think as a Fed job it's supposed to have better benefits?) and maybe them AZ is equivalent to $65k/yr (so small pay increase, but just doing the same thing – is that worth moving halfway across the country for?). The Top 50 job maybe is in the same area OP currently lives, so stays $65k after adjustment, but is a lot more hours – if your equivalent hourly wage is going down by 25-50%, is the experience worth it?

Probably if it was me, and wanted to move, I'd go for either the AZ or DC job, depending on the COL analysis and if I would be happy with the lifestyle and savings that the salary afforded (I'm not high-maintenance, but having grown up poor, I don't want to go backwards – being able to save a substantial portion of my pay every month is very important to me). If the equivalent wages were the same for both after accounting for COL, I'd probably be more inclined to the Federal job.

[Author]

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