In case anyone cares (hired)...

As some of you may recall, I quit my front office (FO) finance job in municipal finance about 6-7 weeks ago and I’ve been in the hunt since then. In case anyone cares, I’m back in business in the FO of a Low Income Housing real estate finance (apparently it’s a gargantuan industry) arm of a national CPA firm. The real estate firm was acquired by the large CPA firm as a complement to the CPA firm’s valuation practices. Anyway, in case anyone was interested. Oh yeah, in case anyone was wondering about comp and hours for future reference, the comp is 35k base + 15k bonus (guaranteed), plus most promotions occur every 6 months (assuming you don’t get the hatchet–it’s a weed out firm, but I’m damn good with this stuff we’re doing). Hours are 50-60 per week. BTW, I cried after my first FO offer in May. This time, it barely phases me–talk about jaded.

kkent, congradulations.

Congrats kkent. If you don’t mind me asking, what was the rationale behind quitting a job before you had another lined up? Was it really that bad?

Congrats, always nice to be working again.

skillionaire, location. I wanted to move back home (yep, I’m a wimp) and I couldn’t recruit back home when I was 200 miles away. FWIW, I will NEVER EVER quit a job before I’ve got another one again, as God as my witness.

Yeah, it’s not the recommended way to go about things, that’s for sure…however, it worked out for you, so again, congrats.

I’m a lucky SOB, that’s what I am. Thanks, man.

congrats - where are you based kkent? i now work in RE and find it very interesting indeed.

BTW, what’s the deal with base and bonus? Do companies avoid some employment taxes by giving you a huge proportionate bonus or something? $50k total comp isn’t bad for 50 hours of work per week, but I wonder why the bonus is so large in proportion to the base.

Seb, Washington, DC suburbs.

Whoops, did the math wrong. The bonus is 19,000, so total comp is $54,000. It’s not great, but low cost of living and it’s the front office; can’t complain.

Nice kkent! Interesting question about salary/bonus taxation. I’m good with personal taxes, not so much business taxation.

> BTW, what’s the deal with base and bonus? Yes they might be able to dodge FICA and/or unemployment (which is pretty small, something like 1-2% IIRC). They can’t dodge the employer’s and employee’s SS contributions (something like 14%) however. The IRS naturally has their nose to the ground on this, so if a firm tries to shift too much comp from salary to bonus they might get spanked. Relatedly, SS stop above ~150k but not the smaller payroll taxes (even though employee receives no incremental benefits), which I expect is part of the reason why that’s frequently a salary ceiling in many industries, anything above that coming in bonus.

Very interesting, Darien. Yeah, you don’t see a lot of $160k base.

Congrats Kevin

You cried??? There’s no crying in the front office!!!

I thought companies dangle the huge bonus at the end of the year to keep the attrition rate high? If I had to work for $X per year distributed over 52 weeks, then I get around 0.5X to 1.5X on one day towards the end of year, I’ll definitely stay for the whole year no matter how $hitty the job is (unless there’s another job with guaranteed bonus).

Congrats.

kevin0118, let me clarify. “Guaranteed” means “assuming you stay.” Doesn’t mean guaranteed money (stupid English language). My bad.

Mr.Good.Guy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You cried??? There’s no crying in the front > office!!! LOL. Come to find out, there’s a lot of pain in the FO!