Accounting Degree Vs Finance Degree (Which Is Better?)

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

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in the future alright 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

non-profits 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 seventy three thousand dollars a

year one career path you might go down

with a finance degree is becoming a

budget analyst and they make around

seventy eight thousand dollars 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 ten

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 dollars 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 know you might

start off working at goldman sachs and

you can make 200 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 etc are

going to come pretty naturally to you

but overall i am gonna 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

gonna 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 gonna 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 seven percent 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 eight percent now when you look

at the risk of automation i personally

think that accounting and finance are

relatively low but if you look at will

robotstakemyjob.com

uh 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 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 hannah

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 um

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 gonna 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 recognized 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 uh brand name recognition degrees

like a lot of people are gonna 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 gonna have to give

accounting the edge here next we're

gonna 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 uh so for that reason

i'm gonna have to call this one a tie

next we're gonna be talking about x

factors 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 with

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 and 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

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