How I Would Become an Accountant in 2026 (if I had to start over again)

0:00I get asked this question all the time, especially by college students, people just starting their career, and people considering switching careers. The question is, how would you become an accountant if you were starting over today? I've also been getting a lot of comments and emails from people who are confused about degrees, the CPA, and which accounting path makes sense long-term. So, in this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly how I would become an accountant in 2026 if I was starting over today. Knowing what I know now, having worked in accounting for over a decade, and the career path I would personally choose again. Before I

0:39get into the steps, I want to quickly explain why accounting is such a great career. Number one, if you want to earn six figures, you can definitely do that in accounting. There is strong long-term earning potential, and in fact, you could earn multiple six figures. Number two, accounting offers a lot of job security. And number three, there are a ton of different career paths and opportunities in accounting. I've covered this in a lot more details in other videos that I've made, but high-level, those are the three reasons that accounting is an extremely great career path to consider. So, you've

1:15decided you want to be an accountant. So, now what? If I was starting over today, the first thing that I would do is get a bachelor's degree in accounting. This part is an absolute must. If you want to be an accountant, you need an accounting degree. I get this question asked frequently as well. The question is always, well, what if I have a finance degree or another type of

1:36degree? Can I still be an accountant? The answer is yes, there's always exceptions to the rule. However, you are going to have a much stronger and better opportunity to be an accountant if you have a bachelor's degree in accounting. So, I would highly recommend, if you are interested in being an accountant, get an accounting degree. In addition to an accounting degree, I would also recommend trying to get an accounting

2:00internship if you are still in college. That will look really great on your resume and when you're applying for jobs, that will help a lot having some form of accounting experience. But, if you've already graduated and you did not get an accounting internship, you don't need to panic. It is not the end of the world. You can still get an accounting job. What I would do is avoid staying in school longer than you have to. This is a huge mistake that I see a lot of students make. I see a lot of people assume before they can get their accounting job, they need to get a

2:33masters in accounting or they need to get their CPA. I do not recommend this at all. What I recommend is getting your bachelor's degree in accounting and then finding a job because the most important thing is going to be starting to get experience. So, you want to start applying for entry-level accounting positions like a staff accounting position, general accounting position, a corporate accounting position, really anything that's going to get your foot into the door. When I first started my corporate career, I graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting. Unlike many of my peers, I did not have an accounting internship because I was actually working in a bar when I was

3:13going to college. And because of that, when I was applying for various accounting positions, I kept getting passed over for students that already had some experience through an internship. After getting rejected from a lot of accounting positions, I decided I just need to get my foot in the door and take any type of position that was sort of accounting related. So, I ended

3:40up taking an accounts payable position. But, because I did have an accounting degree, one of the first things that I did when I started working for the company was I started to network with the accounting team. I introduced myself to the accounting manager and I did let them know that I'm currently working in accounts payable, but I do have a bachelor's degree in accounting. So, if a staff accountant position opens up, I

4:02would really like to join their team. And so, over a year went by. One day, a staff accountant position did open up and the accounting manager let me know that the position was available and I was able to switch from my accounts payable job into a staff accountant role on the cost accounting team. That is all to say, if you are also struggling getting an accounting position, definitely don't give up. Now, I make well over six figures and I am a financial reporting manager. The sooner you start working, the sooner you understand what accountants actually do in a real-world setting. The sooner you learn accounting software like SAP, HFM,

4:45or whatever general ledger and consolidation system the company you are working for is using. And the sooner you learn, you build experience and gain the confidence necessary in order to get promoted. For example, the sooner you're a staff accountant, the sooner you're a senior accountant, the sooner you're able to get promoted to that manager level. You just need to start. From there, the accounting path I would choose again and the accounting path that I often recommend is financial reporting. So, I know this might confuse some people because a lot of times in college, all you hear about is going to big four company and working in audit or

5:23working in tax. However, those are not your only options. There are obviously some pros to starting in a big four, but I also think there can be pros to starting in industry as well. And that is what I did in my career. Like I previously mentioned earlier in the video, once I moved from the accounts payable position to the staff accountant position, from there I moved into corporate accounting, working for the corporate controllers group at a Fortune 500 company. Then, I later transitioned to a Fortune 200 company working in financial reporting. Financial reporting also falls under the corporate

6:00controllers group at most companies. I've worked at both private and public companies, and this is actually the very short and version of my career history. Out of all the accounting areas that I have worked in though, financial reporting has always been my favorite. In financial reporting, you are responsible for preparing the company's quarterly and annual financial statements. This includes the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, statement of equity, etc. The accompanying footnotes, management discussion and analysis. You also have a very high visibility role. You are working with internal audit, tax, investor relations, treasury, business units across the company, and external auditors. I see working in financial

6:45reporting as seeing the entire puzzle being the company's consolidated financial statements instead of working in one granular area, which would represent just one piece of the puzzle. Financial reporting gives you a very strong technical foundation. It is high visibility, and in my opinion, it also opens up almost any other door for your career that you would potentially be interested in. For example, if you continue in financial reporting, you could ultimately become an assistant controller, a controller. These positions may lead into a chief accounting officer position for you, or you could even be a CFO if that was something you aspired to be. You could also move into investor relations. You

7:32could become a business unit controller, or you could pivot into other senior leadership roles as well. The options really are endless with what you could do with a very strong financial reporting foundation. Personally, if I was interested in working in financial reporting, what I would do is start in a general accounting position. However, if possible and if you are able to start in corporate accounting working in a corporate controller's group, then that would be the ideal start. But sometimes those roles require a little bit of experience to get into and if that is the case, then I would start in a general accounting role and then

8:09transition into corporate accounting for the corporate controllers group. In addition, if possible, I would recommend working for a public company. So, a public company is going to be a company that files on the SEC. For example, it's a company where you could buy their stock. It will have a ticker symbol. That's how you know a company's public. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I think it's best to start working for a public company earlier in your career because often times these companies already have very strong solid processes in place. So, they are really good to learn from. Working in corporate accounting is going to help your

8:45transition into financial reporting be much easier because you are preparing corporate transactions. Corporate transactions typically are transactions that are going to ultimately be in the financial statements from a consolidated basis. For example, you could be preparing debt entries or you could be preparing equity entries, hedges, derivatives. You're typically touching an accounting area that is going to have a footnote associated with it. If I was starting my accounting career over, I would not worry about getting the CPA right away. I would first focus on getting experience in accounting and deciding if I actually like accounting enough to commit to it long-term and if it's where I want my career to be. Once

9:29I decided that I like accounting and actually do want to pursue my CPA, I would be very intentional with how I ended up getting the 150 hours required to sit for the CPA. And I would not recommend getting a master's degree in order to do that. The main reason is because you most likely already have quite a bit of student debt from getting a bachelor's degree. So, I would not recommend taking on additional debt just to pursue your master's degree. There are much more cost-effective ways to become CPA eligible, and I personally would recommend that you go to your community college. Many community colleges have programs designed for

10:09accounting students that need to make up the 150 hours to become CPA eligible, and that is exactly what I did. In addition, once you start working for a company, many employers actually have a tuition reimbursement program, which is when a company will reimburse you or pay for a certain percentage of the cost or certain amount of the cost for you to take these courses to become CPA eligible. By going to a community college and using a tuition reimbursement program, you are going to be saving yourself so much money, and you're still going to be hitting that 150 hour credit hour goal and be CPA eligible. In addition to the tuition

10:52reimbursement program, many companies actually offer to pay for your CPA completely in its entirety, 100% in addition to paying for the CPA exams. They will often pay for your study material as well, which is awesome. So, if you want a career with solid pay progression, strong job security, and lots of opportunities, accounting is a really great option still in 2026. The key is to choosing a smart sequence being degree, experience, and then credentials, aka the CPA, instead of trying to do everything all at once. If you are a student or early in your career, feeling overwhelmed, that makes a lot of sense because accounting does have a lot of career path options. If

11:39you have any questions about the CPA degrees or various accounting roles, definitely let me know in the comments. A lot of my recent videos have directly been coming from the questions that I have been receiving. If you like this video, definitely give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.