Putting things into context:
I am currently a teacher making $40k while working 9.5 months, summers off, winter break, spring break, etc. I was offered an fp&a analyst position at the sugar mill in my town. The problem is the pay. They want to start me off at $42k. A family friend of ours worked their for 21 years, became a director, and left at $89k before going elsewhere. Although this could be my break into the business world, the pay sucks. I also have a school (on the Seminole Reservation) about 45 minutes from where I currently live that is expressing interest in me. My friend works there, and is getting paid $50k, alongside $500 gas checks every month, without any teaching certifications nor a bachelor degree. I researched some salaries and saw that the median pay is $68k. So I'm looking at, at the very least, $50k for a 9.5 month gig. To top it off, Florida State University, the school I graduated from, has a one year master's in Applied Economics program. While an undergrad, I expressed interest in the program, and the program director told me I'd get in with no problems [econ major, math minor, 3.99 fsu gpa, honors in the major, garnet & gold scholar]. Just recently, this program published some salary statistics. The median starting salary is $60k, with 34% of graduates earning between $100k - $350k after 5-9 years of graduating.
Plan?
* tell the Sugar Mill no thanks, and take the teaching job out at the Reservation
* finish this year teaching while I study/take the GRE and apply to the master's program
* finish the program the following year
* at the very least, land an economics consulting position, work there for a couple of years while I study/take the GMAT
* go to a credible MBA program and attempt to enter the MBB world
What do you guys think?
Nice plan but I would aim for more prestigious programs. Columbia, UT Austin, Duke, LSE, Oxford. What math courses did you take? regardless, pick up R, Stata & Python and you'll easily be a good candidate. Those programs also place well if you're looking forward for a Ph.D.
I actually used Stata a lot during my undergrad. As a matter of fact, it is the statistical software that I used for my honors thesis. Why would you suggest picking up R in conjunction with Stata? Florida State's program focuses on using SAS. Also, why Python?
I really didn't take much math. Pre-calc, business stats, business calc, calc 1, calc 2, & calc 3.
Although I may apply to more prestigious programs, I just don't have the money to go out of state. Unless I get scholarship money, I'll make the best out of FSU's program.
Main reason would be versatility but also the ability to create your own functions. R and Python also can also aid in data manipulation and wrangling especially R as well as data scraping.
didn't you already start a thread for this?
I made a similar thread about trying to negotiate with the sugar mill. I made a new one because, last night, as I was considering all of my options, I received a message about the new salary report; thus, making me think about the possibility of getting my master's from FSU and going into consulting. I felt like this was different enough to warrant a new thread. I wanted this new thread, that although utilized some of the same information I talked about in my negotiations thread, to focus more on the reality of me being able to pursue a plan like the one spelled out aforesaid. I decided to ask this question on the consulting thread since this new idea focuses on a consulting path.
Why would you take the $50k teaching job at all when the finance job pays slightly more than $50k after your bonus and gives you industry experience?
Also, getting a Sr. Financial Analyst job is virtually guaranteed. There are dinosaurs at my company who are Sr. analysts making $70k-$90k and they still think excel only calculates plus and minus equations. After you land a Sr. Analyst job, if you get a good GMAT you can get into a credible MBA program.. and you never wasted time money on an MS, and you also got industry experience that is important for landing a MBB job.
Take the FA job. Finance experience in any capacity is going to help a finance career more than teaching experience ever will. You are getting enticed by $2k-$3k short term higher pay in the teaching job, but you are "putting off" your finance career by two years.
Think about it this way. You are delaying your finance career by two years for the sake of making $3k more each year for the next two years. I think a reasonable valuation for two years more of finance experience is about $10k-$15k. What I'm saying is that with 0 years exp, you can expect to make $50k. With 2 years exp you can expect to make at least $65k. 4 years, you can expect to make $70k-$90k. Each time you add 2 years more of experience, your "market value" goes up by $10k-$15k.
If you delay getting finance experience by 2 years, your income will always be about $10k-$15k lower than what you could expect if you had started right away. SO, for that to be a good move, this teaching job should pay you $10k-$15k more than the FA job in order to make up for it.
Thank you for your informative responses, but check this out:
According to the sugar mill, I can have the title of "junior financial analyst" for many years (a financial analyst has to leave before I can become one; and the HR lady informed me that they don't leave often), but although the title doesn't change, the salary and responsibilities do. By how much? 2-4% each year. This salary increase, apparently, isn't contingent on the job title either. For example, that dude that was working with the mill for 21 years experienced a steady 2-4% salary increase, regardless of his new responsibilities. The whole thing just feels weird.
Assuming the mill gives me another offer at $45k, I will only be earning ~$48k after 2 years. When trying to lateral to another firm, would they be willing to pay $65k given that I only earned $48k at my previous gig?
It sounds like the sugar mill is a pretty stagnant pool for promotions, so you might not be able to move up there, but it is absolutely true that once you get 2 years of FA experience under your belt, you are qualified to get a Sr. FA job anywhere else. And legally you do not have to tell an employer your previous income. When you are interviewing for that SFA job, tell them that you are looking to make $70k (or whatever) and you believe that is a fair market salary. It's pretty widely accepted theory that one of the best ways to supercharge your career and income is to hop to a different company (or a different division in the same company) every 2 years. Promotions in-place are not as common as getting a promotion as an external hire, and looking externally allows you to negotiate a new salary that doesn't have to be based on your old salary. I've gotten the opportunity to talk to two CFO's- one of a >$20B company, the other of a >$3B company, and both said that they got to their role by changing jobs every two years. The first guy was in a huge company, so every two years he found a promotion in some other division of the company. The second guy company hopped and got a promotion each time. Bottom line: the sugar mill is a stepping stone, the first step into your finance career. If they hit hard times, they wouldn't hesitate to fire you, so you should take the same approach- if they won't promote you, you go somewhere that will. One last example: one guy was a FA for two years at my company and was about to be promoted, but thought he could do better elsewhere.. so he found a SFA job at Amazon making $95k. A 50% raise!
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