 Finance versus accounting. Should you get a finance degree or an accounting degree, that is going to be the topic of this video. Many students find themselves choosing between finance and accounting and a lot of the time they actually lead to similar jobs as well. So in this video, we're going to be going over some of the most important things like salary, satisfaction, job growth, flexibility, respect of the degree, brand name recognition of the degree, difficulty, as well as X factors. Now a lot of people have been asking me this question. They've been wanting me to make this video. So if you appreciate videos like this, go ahead, let me know by gently tapping that like button and commenting down below. And if you haven't done already, go ahead, subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell so that you don't miss out on content like this in the future. All right. So let's start off by defining what exactly these two degrees are. So according to Google, a finance degree offers students a thorough understanding of banking, trading, and economics. Finance is the study of acquisition and management of money and investments. The field includes banking, credit, debit, and capital market activities, which are all driven by economic principles and practices. And according to Google, a degree in accounting can set students on a path to a strong career in business and finance, accountants work for corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and small businesses. They create financial reports, review income and expenses, prepare tax documents, and assure regulatory compliance. So I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds about the differences between these two. But in layman's terms, a very simple way of comparing these two is to think that finance looks into the future, whereas accounting looks to the past. Another way of saying it is in accounting, you count people's money and in finance, you predict how much money that they'll make. So now let's move on to the section where we start comparing them. And the first thing we're going to talk about is the salary. So according to payscale.com, those who graduate with an accounting degree can expect to make about $54,000 a year starting out and $93,000 in mid-career pay. Those who graduate with a finance degree can expect to make about $60,000 a year starting out and $105,000 in mid-career pay. One career path you might go down with an accounting degree is becoming an accountant, and they make around $73,000 a year. One career path you might go down with a finance degree is becoming a budget analyst, and they make around $78,000 a year. But actually, there are a ton of career paths where you can go into them with an accounting degree or a finance degree. And one common example of an upper-level career that a lot of people that have accounting or finance degrees go into is financial manager, and they make around $134,000 a year. So you see with both of these different degrees, there are many different career paths you can go down, and they do tend to make really good money. Now, when you look at the degrees that create the most millionaires, both of these degrees are in the top 10. Accounting came in at number six, and finance came in at number seven. But to be fair, more people graduate with an accounting degree than a finance degree, so it would make sense that there are more people that have an accounting degree that become millionaires. Now, when you look at the types of careers that are in the top 90th and 99th percentile of earning, you see a ton of representation of finance-related careers. So starting with the top 90th percentile, you see accountants and auditors, and you also see accountants and auditors in the 99th percentile. Then you see financial managers and other financial specialists. Now, if you look at the degrees that create the most super-rich people or ultra-high net worth individuals, which is people who have over $30 million, you see that finance is actually represented even better. These are the people who work at the very top in finance like hedge fund managers. And these are high-risk, high-reward type careers. You might start off working at Goldman Sachs, and you can make $200,000 to $300,000 a year. But it is a super competitive, super exhausting environment where you're probably going to be working 80 hours a week routinely. Now, one thing that's great about both of these degrees is I think that they are a great segue for you starting your own business later on in life once you've got some life experience and some work experience. Both degrees are really great for learning personal finance skills as well. So if you're familiar with reading companies financial statements, then you are probably going to be better with your own personal financial stuff as well. Things like investing, budgeting, et cetera, are going to come pretty naturally to you. But overall, I am going to give finance a slight edge in this category because you do see a little bit more opportunity, especially at the very top. If you're somebody who's extremely like a type personality, very competitive, there's going to be more opportunity for you at the top if you get a finance degree. And by the way, if you're wondering what career would be best for you, I get this question all the time. It's probably the biggest problem that people have on my channel. You know, they look at all these degrees, but they don't even know what career they want to go into. So I made a six step guide to choosing your dream career. It's going to be available completely free down in the description below. Clicking that link will lead you to be able to download the six step guide. And I'll also be providing additional resources in the form of a newsletter. This guide will probably not be available for very long. I usually keep these up for maybe like a few months at a time. Eventually I will probably make it into like a full length video or even a course. Next, we're going to be talking about satisfaction. So when you look at an accounting degree, you see the meaning score is about 42% and for a finance degree, the meaning score is 42% as well. So they're tied. And when you look at different types of jobs you might go into, you see that accountants and auditors have a meaning score of 38% and a satisfaction score of 71. Whereas financial analysts have a meaning score of 39% and a satisfaction score of 68. So again, very, very close. And meaning is how much you think your job positively impacts the world. Whereas satisfaction is just how much do you enjoy yourself on a day to day basis. Now what separates accounting, in my opinion, slightly from finance is the fact that it's going to be a little bit more of a flexible degree. And the truth is many different finance related jobs you can actually get into with an accounting degree as well. So an accounting degree is more flexible than a finance degree. And because of that, because of the fact that plans don't always go the way you want them to, I think that accounting is slightly better when it comes to job satisfaction. And so I'm going to give this one to accounting. Next one on the list is going to be job growth. And this is basically how much we expect these different career paths and degrees to grow within the next 10 years. So I created the newest version of the college degree ranker. It is available in my course. I think I also put it in my Patreon as well. And you see here that finance actually has a slightly higher demand score than accounting. So overall, the demand score of a finance degree is 133 and the demand score of an accounting degree is 127. Now, if you look at the job outlook for accounting, it's expected to grow at about 7% over the next 10 years, which is average. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that finance careers in general are expected to grow at about 8%. Now, when you look at the risk of automation, I personally think that accounting and finance are relatively low. But if you look at willrobotstakemyjob.com, financial and investment analysts have a 46% risk of automation, polling shows 46% as well. And accountants and auditors have a 50% chance of automation and polling shows 65%. So I've kind of gone over in detail why I think some of these automation studies are kind of BS. I don't think you need to be very afraid of automation unless you're at the very lowest level jobs when you're just doing like data entry and stuff like that. But with that being said, finance typically looks to the future, whereas accounting typically looks towards the past. And looking towards the future is something that is unique to human beings. We're pretty much the only animals on the planet that can kind of like imagine things happening in the future. It's one of the things that makes us unique. Whereas it seems a little bit more obvious that you can program things to sort of model what happened in the past, which is sort of what accountants do. So for that reason, I do think there is a slightly higher chance that accounting gets automated versus finance. And on the same note, I also think there's a little bit higher of a chance that accounting gets outsourced. Now not all accounting jobs will get outsourced because you have to be a licensed accountant in the United States, but some of the basic tasks may be automated or outsourced. And you're probably going to see that affecting accounting a little bit more than finance. But like I said, a lot of the time when these new technologies pop up, they destroy certain jobs, and then they end up actually creating more jobs than the ones that they destroyed. So all these doom and gloom people that are like, Oh, everything's going to be automated. There's not going to be any jobs. I think that's probably going to happen maybe like 100 years from now. But right now, it's not something you have to worry about that much. Next, we're going to be talking about flexibility. And I already kind of touched on this a little bit when it came to job satisfaction. But the truth is most of the careers that you can do with a finance degree, you can also do with an accounting degree, but the reverse isn't necessarily true. And there are many different accounting related careers that you've probably never even heard of. Like controller is a career. For instance, I actually interviewed a controller, Bill Hanna. He's the financial controller on this channel. So if you're really, really good at planning, then flexibility doesn't matter all that much. But if you're not good at planning, you're not 100% sure that your plan is going to work, then flexibility becomes super, super important. So typically when I'm giving people advice, I tell them to go for the more flexible plan, because that's just going to give them more options in the future. So for flexibility, it's going to go to accounting. Next, we're going to be talking about the respect of the degree, right? So there are some degrees that are just more respected than others, whether it's right or wrong, when a hiring manager or a business owner sees certain degrees, it's going to impress them or maybe they're not going to think much of it. So in general, finance degrees and accounting degrees are probably about the same when it comes to respect. The difference is in finance, especially if you're going for a top level job at a place like Goldman Sachs, it does matter the school that you go to, right? So getting a finance degree from like a top five business school is going to give you a huge advantage if you're going for those high level jobs. Whereas with an accounting degree, it usually doesn't matter all that much what school you go to an accounting degree from just a normal state school versus an accounting degree from an Ivy League school. There's not going to be all that much of a difference. So if you're going for like a normal job, a decent accounting degree versus a decent finance degree are going to be about the same. But if you're going for a top level job, a good finance degree from like an Ivy League or maybe a top 10 business school is going to give you a huge advantage. So for that reason, I'm going to have to give finance the slight edge in this category. Next one on the list is going to be brand recognition. And this is basically how easily recognize your degree is. I talk about this quite a bit when people ask me about these really like niche degrees. So for instance, people will ask me about mechatronics engineering. And yes, it's a really cool, you know, new degree. But the truth is most business owners and hiring managers have never heard of mechatronics engineering. However, many people who hire engineers know exactly what mechanical engineering is, and they've hired tons of people who've gotten a mechanical engineering degree. And so subconsciously, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, they're going to give the nod to the mechanical engineer more times than not. And the reason for that is because they know what they're getting. They're not taking any risk there, whereas they've never hired a mechatronics engineer before. So they don't really know what they're getting themselves into. Now, these are both brand name recognition degrees like a lot of people are going to know about an accounting degree versus a finance degree, but accounting is the more common one. So they're more common and they're also more flexible. And for that reason, I am going to have to give accounting the edge here. Next, we're going to be talking about the difficulty of the degree. So the difficulty of getting the degree when you go to school. Now this one is extremely subjective for some people, you know, math might be really difficult for other people. Science is really difficult for other people. You know, for me, for instance, the hardest class I took in undergrad was an English class. And then the second hardest class I took in undergrad was an anatomy class. So this is extremely subjective and it really just depends on your strengths and your passions. But with that being said, finance involves a lot of prediction and abstract thinking, right? So like we talked about before, in finance, you're basically trying to predict what's going to happen in the future. And that is incredibly difficult to do. And the math and finance does tend to be a little more complicated, especially when you get to the higher level classes. Accounting, on the other hand, is more rooted in laws and memorization. Basically, it's knowing what to do in one situation versus another. So if you're stronger in math, then maybe finance might be easy for you. If you're really good at memorization, maybe accounting would be a little easier. But funny enough, when it comes to difficulty, according to the tab.com, accounting and finance are number 21 and number 22. So they're very similar. And there was another survey that looked at difficulty as well. And accounting came in at number 15 and finance came in at 16. So overall, these two are neck and neck in every single category. So for that reason, I'm going to have to call this one a tie. Next, we're going to be talking about X factors. And this is basically anything that I think is important, but wasn't mentioned in the other areas. And X factors are usually trends and intangible events that are outside of our control. And oftentimes they're very difficult to predict as well. So this is a very subjective section. Now, like I talked about before, when it comes to outsourcing, automation and streamlining of processes, accounting and finance both have some risk. But with that being said, accounting and finance are both heavily regulated. So it's often illegal to outsource tasks that accountants or finance professionals would do. So even if those tasks could be outsourced and done really well by somebody outside the country, it's actually illegal to do that. However, there is a lot of software coming out that is designed to take away a lot of those entry level jobs. But that being said, there are stories out there of accountants that actually outsource their own work on Fiverr and other websites. And then they basically just check over it to make sure everything's good. And then they submit it. And I believe this is technically illegal, but I'm not a lawyer. So, you know, don't take my word for it. So out of the two, I think it's a little bit more likely that accounting is going to be outsourced. However, because of the huge overlap in jobs, I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. And so they both typically have basically the same exact X factors. And for that reason, I'm going to call this category a tie as well. So depending on the type of person you are, you want to look at these different areas, figure out what's most important to you, and that's going to help you decide which degree you should go for. So I think very generally speaking, accounting is a little bit more stable. And it's probably slightly better for the average person. And the reason for that is because if you want to just get a normal accounting job, you don't have to go to a fancy school. You can just go to pretty much any state school. However, if you're a super ambitious A type personality who wants to become like a hedge fund manager in the future, I would say finance is going to be the better degree. And again, finance tends to look towards the future and sort of try to predict the future, whereas accounting is kind of looking towards the past and taking an inventory. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, et cetera that you have on the video. And I will see you next time.