well this thread sure degenerated quickly. OP, I think you need to have more patience. you were the one asking for help after all.
We get new help me stories all the time, and people get tired of reading novels. So they simply don’t respond or ask you keep it brief
Wow, dude has a short fuse, bromion didn’t even say or ask for anything that egregious, he was trying to help him get more responses.
I smell troll.
If not, sorry to say, but OP will have a very hard time in the financial industry.
didn’t we have another really short fuse guy not too long ago? I think he asked about L3, and he blew up so fast, greenman made a whole new thread on it
Bad day at work? Take it out on AF!
You asked a very loaded questions. Sounds like you don’t know what you want. If you are so finance nerdy, you should go for a PHD in something related. There, my best advice for you.
you a big baby Silver Bull. What are you gonna cry? Come on cry baby cry!!
TL:DR: Figure out what you want to do, and focus on that.
So you graduated in 08… and since then worked at a Grocery Store and then became a retail sales assistant. Now you are concurrently pursuing CFA, CAIA, CFP and studying for the GMATs to get into business school and get an MBA… All the while not knowing what you want to do.
With all respect, you sound aimless. And without some sense of direction you will spend the next few years getting designations and degrees in hopes they will open a door that will present you with the ultimate answer to the real question you have of 'What do I want to be when I grow up".
If you hate sales, why are you going after the CFP?
If you don’t know what analysts do, why are you going after your CFA?
You don’t specifically mention the types of accounts you facilitate, but since you mention it’s retail, and later talk about seniors on a fixed income, I’m assuming it’s not high-net worth individuals, and more likely a larger book of small-medium sized clients. If that is true, is there that much of a demand for alternative investments in Mom-and-Pop accounts that you need to get CAIA?
You say you are described as more quantitative, and yet you want to get a MBA? Why not an MS. in Finance or Financial Engineering? What doors do you think would open when you got an MBA and had no relevent “Finance” experience other than being a sales assistant?
And in all honestly, letters and desinations won’t make you a better Financial Planner if thats where you end up… success in that game is about forming trusting connections with people, not about impressing them with a title.
My advice to you is to get some direction, any direction. I’m not going to poo-poo on your hopes and dreams of working in “Finance” and say outright you are not going to acheive greatness , but at your rate you are making it harder on yourself. And asking such broad strokes on an anonymous internet message board is not the way to go.
The first thing to change is your attitude toward networking and socializing. You hate them? Yeah, change that. ALL YOU HAVE is your network at this point. You may not think you have one, but you do… talk to them. Ask them to introduce you to people. Those Wholesalers that come to pitch mutual funds/reits/etc? Talk to them. See if you can get some contacts on those funds’ research/investment side. A lot of marketing material you receive has the author’s contact info on it as well, Reach out. Ask some questions. Do you have an in-house investment team? Talk to them. Sales conferences always have random guest speakers… economists, research guys, analysts… go to them and reach out. Get a feel for what they do and see if anything sparks your interest. See if there are alumni events at your school that you can attend. Reach out to the professors you had connections with to pick their brains and see if they have some advice. You say you don’t want sales, but once you figure out what exactly you want to do, you’re going to have to sell yourself somehow… might as well start now.
In my opinion you are wasting the most valuable thing you have, which is time. If you graduated at 22 in 2008, you are 27/28 now. If you get into an MBA program you will be done at 30. 30 years old, with a bunch of letters after your name and no experience… not exactly “Top of the resume pile”, is it?
Figure out what you want to do, and give it EVERYTHING. “Work in Finance” is not a valid life goal. You work in finance now… technically so does the guy running credit checks at verizon wireless… So does the person who files loan applications at furniture stores…So do bank tellers…
Thank you AF for making me laugh on a hard day. Much love to all posters above.
I’m the humblest person you’d ever meet!
Ha, in all seriousness, don’t give up, I waited tables for years while in school and maybe a year after that, but I still managed to find a job at a fund about two months ago. Agree with posters above who say networking is everything.
And speaking of networking, if you can’t ask for help nicely on an anonymous forum where you can easily hide your non-verbal communication, you may have trouble convincing people to help you in person… The older, more experienced and successful professionals that can give you insight to the jobs that you want won’t get anything from you–I guess they’re just paying forward whatever help they’ve received (I know I received and am receiving tons of help from people all over, and I hope I can pay it forward one day too). But, my guess is they won’t be too motivated to help someone with a chip on his shoulder and a sense of entitlement.
I get it–I was angry too that I had to wait tables through school to pay for college and no time for internships and therefore not enough contacts or experience etc. etc., but honestly who cares. No one wants to hear your sob story and certainly no one wanted mine, and no one cares what your mother thinks of you.
And I also did that awful FA route, though I wasn’t an assistant and it was worse. If you hate golf why would you pursue CFP?
Silver Bull…youre an almost 30 year old secretary b*tch…so you do eat shit…and no, you probably won’t make it. Loser.
LOL
@Silver Bull, With your odious attitude and mental make-up that is the only option you will ever have. And lighting the torch repeatedly may not be as easy as you think as the twister you would be creating with this repulsively offensive attitude of yours will extinguish it many times more than you can even imagine!
This thread is amusing.
Nearly choked on my coffee
Yeah that was brutal, haha.
Just read this now as well… LMAO
silver bulli’d reccomend you look for a job where you work with people. Sales should be right up your alley, you really have a gift for wining people over
I also like how he said “I work on the buyside”…HAHAHA
Don’t laugh, I am also a buy-sider.
*logs in to his PA*
lol OP seems like a short tempered and defensive douche.
Silver Bull, you are the one that is asking for advice here. Nobody owes you anything to read your long post or take the effort to skim through and find out what the “real questions” are. If someone asks you to re-write or summarize then it would be smart of you to actually fucking do it. Unbelievable.