My career in money ... what I've learned.

This post was inspired by Cassie of Tales from the Trenches comment on my Getting to Know Me post.

I mentioned that since graduating from University almost all of my jobs involved money. Here's a list:

• bank teller at a major bank (part-time)
• bank teller and back office admin at a Credit Union
• mortage promotions telephone rep and then telephone banking rep at a different major bank
• customer service for self-directed brokerage for yet another major bank
• back office admin at an independant mutual fund boutique (also started selling mutual funds)
• investment rep assistant
• pension fund admin then pension analyst for a major Ontario pension plan

I would say though that since most of my career involves sales I think that I didn't learn very much about finance from any of these jobs. Sounds strange, right?

In the early portion of my career, I had to push credit cards, loans, and mortages down everyone throats. Except at RSP time (around now) then it was pushing RRSPs down everyone's throats ;P But most people told me they had nothing left to save because of all that debt that we had pushed on them. I never once helped someone budget or had a conversation about lowering expenses (I had the ocassional desicsion about bank fees, of course) the rest wasn't part of my job.

I was never in the role of giving advice until I worked at the mutual fund boutique (and even then it wasn't my major role). I asked some friends and family if I could work on an investment profile for them, with the end goal of getting them to invest with me (so I could make commissions). If I helped anyone make decisions with what they do with their money (budgeting, cutting expenses, etc) it came more from the influence of Gail Vaz-Oxlade than my job.

It wasn't until I was 27 (and already had worked at 3 different banks) that I started looking at my money seriously. I was still quite deep in student loan debt (about $10K) had credit card debt (about $5K) and no savings. One of the fringe benefits of getting my mutual fund license is that any commissions earned from my own investments I get 100% of them. This is what actually triggered me to start saving in a RRSP. Not looking towards the future, not wanting to save for a house (I just started dating T at that time, I had no idea we'd be where we are now), I did it for the commissions :)

If anything, I learned more about finance from Gail and the Wealthy Barber (which I read in high school) than any of my jobs. Yes, I know quite a bit about investing and once we buy the house I look forward to purchasing some ETFs, but budgeting and saving, no I didn't get that from my career.

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

Where did you learn about finance?

TTFN,
Morgaine