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What Americans Are Most Afraid of Discussing at Thanksgiving · The Accounting Podcast

• There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript. Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] Companies predict 2026 will be the worst college grad job market in five years. Yes, employers expect just a 1.6% increase in hiring for the class of 2026, while job postings have dropped 16% and applications per job are up 26%. The problem isn't just fewer openings, it's that recent grads are now competing against laid off workers, and those workers are willing to take entry level positions. And at the same time, executives are openly discussing how AI can eliminate many entry level roles entirely. David Leary: [00:00:40] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:48] Hello, and welcome back to The Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:54] And I'm David Leary. And Blake. I see you put the little turkey on our Live stream here because this is the Thanksgiving episode, if you want to call it that. Blake Oliver: [00:01:03] Happy Thanksgiving to you, David. It is Tuesday, November 25th and we are here as always, never missing a week doing our best to catch up actually because I was sick. So we're going to get caught up next week. This week we're doing listener mail and news. So a mix of mail and news. And David, you have gone into the mailbag and you have chosen some of the top messages, emails that we have received from our listeners over the year. David Leary: [00:01:28] And I can't get to all of them, but I pulled down around 30 and I starred a good 11 for us to possibly. Blake Oliver: [00:01:33] Oh my. David Leary: [00:01:34] God, a couple of them. I'm going to group together and summarize the vibe of a chunk of emails and let you respond. But we have a we have. It's great. I hope more people email us in 2026. Blake Oliver: [00:01:46] And if they want to email us, they should email The Accounting Podcast at me. That's The Accounting Podcast at earmark Me. And welcome to our live stream. Viewers. Great to see you boring accountant and Jeralyn and BJ. Bj great to see you all today. All right, um, before we get to the mail, David, I have a story relevant to Thanksgiving. Are you going to a Thanksgiving dinner, David? David Leary: [00:02:14] Not well, I guess it'll be dinner, but I'm going to Mexico doing my shrimps. Blake Oliver: [00:02:18] Giving here. What? David Leary: [00:02:20] Shrimps? Giving. Giving, giving. Not turkey, but I'll do shrimp. Blake Oliver: [00:02:23] Uh, Rocky point. Rocky. Rocky point. Mexico. David Leary: [00:02:25] But family will all be there. So yes, there will be a dinner, a family dinner. Blake Oliver: [00:02:28] Okay, so there will be a family dinner. And at family dinner. David, do you typically avoid certain topics? Are there certain things that you would rather not discuss with family at dinner. David Leary: [00:02:39] In previous years? Yes. But I saw something that said, if you offend people at Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, you can buy less Christmas gifts. So I'm thinking about a budget investment this time. Blake Oliver: [00:02:50] All right. Well, apparently, David, if you want To make people uneasy. It's not what you might think in terms of topics that does that. Americans would rather talk about politics than money. That's according to a bank rate survey. Yes. A survey by bank rate reveals that Americans find money conversations more uncomfortable than discussing politics or religion. More than half, far more than half. 61% of US adults are uncomfortable discussing bank account balances with family or close friends, but only 24% are uncomfortable discussing political views. Only 18% are uncomfortable discussing religious views. Nearly half, 47% are uncomfortable discussing their credit card debt, and 45% are uncomfortable discussing salary. So it's like half of Americans or more are uncomfortable talking about their salary, credit card debt, their bank account balances. But the vast majority are happy to talk about politics. Like three quarters will talk about politics, and 80% or more will talk about religion. David Leary: [00:04:05] And I always felt like when, back when I was at Intuit with personal finances and stuff, that there's a taboo about money. Like, people are ashamed of the money they make. They're ashamed about how they spend it. They don't want to be judged like politics is fine. Like you're so disconnected. It's not. It's not you, right? But the the finances are you when you discuss these things. But there's a big taboo, and it probably hurts people financially by not sharing and discussing it openly. It probably hurts a lot of people. Blake Oliver: [00:04:34] Yeah. I mean, to me, I feel like we would be better off if we did talk about money because that's how we get educated. And actually, that was one of the things that was hard for me growing up was my parents didn't like to talk about money. It was sort of one of those things you just don't discuss in polite company. And so I grew up also in a, in a, in a, you know, relatively well-off family, upper middle class kind of lifestyle. And so I never really understood, like, what things cost or how budgets worked or how to make ends meet. And so when I got into the real world and I had to, like, make a living and pay rent, I didn't know how to do it. I had to learn as a 22 year old what I was doing. And that's actually what got me into accounting. That's what got me interested, was just the struggle of like, personal budgeting. I was doing my own bookkeeping. David Leary: [00:05:24] I think for me, it's it's the. Because people don't discuss it and people don't learn from others. That creates that generational and socioeconomic barriers. They just exist forever because nobody discusses it. And maybe rich people discuss it with their kids and keeps them rich. But in general, families and you don't pass this from parent to child, these money values, they just don't exist. And it's because like, it's like it's a taboo topic for whatever reason, it doesn't make any sense. Blake Oliver: [00:05:56] For whatever reason. Maybe we can overcome that a bit, uh, this Thanksgiving. So accountants talk to your family about finances if you want to make them uncomfortable, if they're bothering you, if you want them to leave you alone, talk about money. Apparently, that does it. David, let's get to our first listener message who is writing in. David Leary: [00:06:17] So I'm going to first just jump. There's a lot of career stuff, but I'm going to jump to two back to back emails because they really are related. So the first one is from Blake Naylor, CPA. Hello David and Blake, I'm a fan of the show. I am a CPA accounting analyst, basically an accountant at a manufacturing company in Indiana where I live and work. It seems that that to get a CPA license one one's experience must be verified by a CPA familiar with one's work and practical terms. This would be my boss. The problem is my boss is not a CPA, and I probably just can't switch to a CPA firm without risking a pay cut. This is less than ideal with a mortgage, a wife and a son. So my real question is this if I'm not planning on working in audit, does it really matter where I get the license as a CPA? It kind of seems like it's just another piece of paper that people like to see in the vast majority of Non-audit job postings. If I got a license in Illinois, Colorado, or Kentucky, my experience can be apparently verified by any CPA. David Leary: [00:07:21] And there's apparently companies based around this service. Now, I'm going to go right into the next email before I let you jump in on this. Blake. This email is from Emil Virani. Hi, David and Blake. I'm a CPA candidate. Foreign audit past. I listen to your podcast weekly. I was wondering if you could look into something for me. All 50 states require that a candidate get a CPA to sign off on their work experience before becoming licensed. Naspa had a workaround for this called the Naspa Experience verification, where you would pay them $599 and a CPA would interview. Then you would get the experience to qualify for the license. However, Nasba abruptly canceled this program with no explanation. Users on Reddit have said that CPA in charge of the program has left. I was wondering if you could look into this. It helped a lot of people who weren't able to get the sign off to get the CPA. Thank you. So really, this is about the CPA process and getting signed off from a CPA. How did you do it, Blake? Did you? You didn't work for a firm at the time, right? Blake Oliver: [00:08:21] I did, you did. I, I, I was, so I sold my firm and the CPA who bought my firm signed off on most of my work experience. And then I went to work for a larger firm, and I got my I think the rest of it signed off there. So I did get the full 12 months that I was required to have in California under the direct supervision of a CPA. However, my co-founder of my firm, Maria, my partner in crowdsourced accounting, which was the name of my firm, she got her CPA before me and she was in Illinois and had to get her experience signed off. And we thought this was going to be a problem because neither of us were CPAs and we owned our own firm. Well, the beauty of the system in Illinois is that they allowed me to sign off on her work experience without my CPA at all. Not a CPA at all. So she was able to get her license in Illinois with me signing off on it simply because she was in a role that required that work, that that type of work. So she was doing she was getting the work experience and I could sign off on it. But it is really interesting because states have very different rules about this. Blake Oliver: [00:09:36] Some require direct supervision of a CPA, like it has to be directly supervised. So even if that CPA is like one layer above, that may not qualify. And um, uh, but some states don't. So to answer our first listener's question, if you are not going to be utilizing your license in practice in the state that you are in serving clients, then it may be worth getting your license in the easiest state to get it in. So could you get licensed in Illinois, even if you don't live there or work there and just have the CPA after your name? Yes. Well, there might be a problem though, which is that whatever state you are living in may not look kindly upon you calling yourself a CPA, living in that state, working in that state, if you are licensed in a different state. And that is the challenge that you have. It just depends on what state you're in. If they care about that and if they're going to like make problems for you. So one thing you could do is get licensed in Illinois and then through reciprocity, get your license in your state. That won't allow you to get it right now because of the work experience requirement. David Leary: [00:10:57] Because once you have the letters, the other state will recognize that you don't have to go get a sign off in that new state. Blake Oliver: [00:11:04] Generally, yes. And so that was interesting. I figured this out when I moved to Arizona and I got licensed in Arizona. I already had a California license. California didn't require me to have any attest hours. I didn't have to do any audit to get a CPA in California. I I'm pretty sure they might require that here in Arizona. I don't remember, but I didn't have to worry about it because I just got my license through reciprocity. So that's like a workaround is go get licensed wherever it's easiest to get licensed and then transfer your license essentially through reciprocity. And I forget what. Was there a question in the second email? Or it was just. David Leary: [00:11:44] No, it was like, can we research what happened to this Nasba program? Apparently. Nasba. Blake Oliver: [00:11:48] Oh yeah. David Leary: [00:11:48] You could just pay 600 bucks. Somebody would interview you, say, yep, you got experience and sign off. And what was it called? Vanished. They called it the Nasba experience verification. Blake Oliver: [00:11:59] And the Nasba experience verification program. Yeah. I'm curious what happened to that. Um. All right, David, let's go to some more news, and then we'll come back to the listener mailbag. But actually, before we do that, let's thank our sponsors. David Leary: [00:12:14] Our sponsors this week are on pay and cloud accountants staffing. Forbes and CNBC rank on pay number one for small business payroll on pay really knows how to get payroll done right for every client you serve, no matter how complex their software is, easy to use and backed by outstanding service levels, they handle new client onboarding for free and have experts on call to keep you and your clients on track. The system includes multistate payroll, local filings, integrated HR tools, and more with no hidden fees. When you join Anp's partner program, you get a custom dashboard to easily manage all clients in one place. Plus, you can gain exclusive perks like revenue sharing or discounts. Free payroll for your firm, co-branding opportunities premium. Premium, premium swag and more helps you run your practice efficiently while while providing exceptional payroll that your clients can count on. Learn more about using on pay for your firm and clients that may be farms, startups, restaurants, bars, doctors, nonprofits, gyms, franchisees, or dentists. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That is The Accounting Podcast promo. Oh. Blake Oliver: [00:13:22] Thank you. I'm Pei. Here's some good news leading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Audit partners feel more optimistic about the economy. I spotted this in accounting today. According to a survey of Audit partners. Economic pessimism dropped from 44% in the spring to just 22% today. But here's what's really interesting. It's that companies aren't chasing growth. They are focused on building resilience and managing risks instead. And the biggest concerns have shifted as well. Regulatory uncertainty and trade tensions now top the list and recession fears have faded. So that's some good news. We went from 44%. David Leary: [00:14:07] Of their own firm or the companies they're serving. Blake Oliver: [00:14:10] Now. This is of the economy in general. David Leary: [00:14:12] In general at a high level. Gotcha. Blake Oliver: [00:14:13] Yeah. And I find this interesting because, um, you know, uh, you think audit partners have a little bit of a, um, well, they have a view into the economy through the companies they're auditing. And so if you survey them all and ask them about the economy, right. They're looking at these nonpublic Financials they're seeing inside these companies, maybe that can tell us something that can be a leading indicator. David Leary: [00:14:41] A leading indicator. Blake Oliver: [00:14:42] So the fact that they went from being 44% pessimistic to only 22% is like, that's a big shift. Um, and I'm encouraged by that. All right, David, let's do some more. Listener male. David Leary: [00:14:56] Listener mail. So this is kind of a follow up mail. Do you remember when you you talked about the article where the person was creating reports based on the Nasbe data and apparently it was wrong, or you discovered a problem in the Nasbe data. Correct? Blake Oliver: [00:15:11] Correct. I mean, so, um, it was that, uh, like there's issues with the data for the latest year and they couldn't produce this report on CPA exam pass rates. David Leary: [00:15:22] So Joe Ugrin, he is the PhD, CPA from the University of Northern Iowa, Wilson College, Northern Iowa, Wilson College of Business. He emailed us about after hearing that you covered this on the show. Blake and David, somehow I missed your show discussing my article in Accounting Today regarding the Nasba data. There was a question about past Success Index ratings rankings. I didn't find large discrepancies in the undergraduate data in the past years based on what I could reconcile. I also didn't see community colleges in the data, so I don't believe that past rankings are inaccurate. I should note that the 2024 data that appears erroneous is the first year of data under the new CPA exam structure, so it is conceivable that there was just an error in Nasba process compiling the data in a new format, Nasba has offered to track down the data for all the uni students, so we could figure out where the errors are and where their scores are reported. I sent them a list that I'm waiting to hear what they find. I'm I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful they will glean something from the exercise and we'll see better data in the future. We use it in education as one way to gauge how we're doing. Please note I didn't write the article to poke at Nasba. I just wasn't getting any response when the data was clearly wrong. I will, however, say that I don't like that Nasba ranked schools. The ranking is completely misleading since it is based on a single part. Pass rates and doesn't measure passing all four, and it doesn't take into account the types of universities that are ranking and the associated inputs, like incoming student aptitude. I just wish they would report the data and stay out of the ranking business. It's not good for the profession. I'd like to be out of the ranking business too. I only publish the success index to prove more accurate information. Thanks for highlighting the article on your podcast. Joe Ugrin. Blake Oliver: [00:17:10] All right. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for listening and thanks for putting out that index. Uh, it's it's always been interesting to to read those numbers, uh, over the years. David, some political news leading into Thanksgiving. Trump has rolled back tariffs on over 100 food items, including beef, coffee, fruits and nuts. After voters hammered Republicans on cost of living issues, it's a pretty big reversal from the no exemptions policy just a few months ago. It's retroactive to November 13th and comes after Democrats swept GOP candidates in November with an affordability message. What's interesting about this is that the administration is now admitting that lowering tariffs will lower prices for consumers, which seems to also acknowledge that increasing tariffs raised prices, which the administration was denying the entire time it was implementing tariffs. No surprise here from me. It doesn't look like, David, based on the expression on your face, that you are surprised, more amused than anything. David Leary: [00:18:21] I'm surprised they did anything. I mean, I thought eventually they would. But the fact that they're admitting That prices have increased and they want them to go down, like you said. Is it basically admitting that tariffs raise the prices? Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:18:38] Which they do, which everyone agrees that knows anything about how tariffs work is the situation. And so here we are another reversal of policy. So what's that two. In a couple of weeks we got the Epstein reversal. And now we got the tariffs reversal here. Both of those. Um all right David let's do another email. David Leary: [00:19:03] Another email. Um, so let's do there's a bunch of student career emails and I'll just kind of small. So we'll knock out a couple of them. And the first one actually addresses your book. So I'll read this one first. This is from Rob Walker. Hi, Blake. I'm an accounting student at UVU. One of my professors recently introduced me to your podcast. One of your episodes led me to your book about building a sustainable accounting firm. I've heard of people starting bookkeeping businesses using QuickBooks and I want to learn more. Would your book be valuable to somebody in my position in parentheses, trying to start a business like that while finishing my degree? I'm a junior in my accounting undergrad right now. What advice would you give me? I love your podcast. Thanks for everything you do. So, Blake. Should accounting students get your book and start a bookkeeping business while they're still students? Would that be helpful to them? Blake Oliver: [00:19:52] I that was my experience. I got so much value out of it, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Start doing freelance bookkeeping. Start, uh, working in a practice. Get a job in accounting. Do do something that involves debits and credits while you're in school. There is no better way to learn the material. That's what I did. Um, and I do think it is very valuable to get experience working in a firm before you start your own. Don't necessarily go straight into owning your own business like I did, but I was also a career changer and I had been a entrepreneur as a musician before I started my firm, so I had some experience. David Leary: [00:20:38] I didn't know musicians said they were entrepreneurs. I always thought you were unemployed. Blake Oliver: [00:20:43] I was, uh, somewhat gainfully employed some of the time. Yeah, but I had experience working with clients, and I think that's the thing. That's the thing that you really need to know before you go into practice, before you go into business for yourself, is like, how do you win contracts? I mean, I used to do string quartets for weddings, so I would talk to these brides and um, I would, you know, work out the deal and send the contract and get paid and pay everyone else. So, like, I knew how to do that. And if you've never done that before, trying to do that and do the work is really, really hard. So I would recommend go get experience either get a job part time doing bookkeeping, accounting work. Go work for a firm while you're in school. There's no better way to do it. And by the way, if you want to get my book, you can get it on bookbaby. Search for building a sustainable accounting firm. You can also just go to Blake@blakeoliver.com. And I'm going to put the link here in the chat. If you want to go directly there and get it, it's only $20 and it's it's basically a combination of my experience and the experience of firm owners who have I've interviewed on the podcast and who shared their expertise with me. And it's I think of it as the if you're a fan of Ron Baker and his philosophies, it's sort of the how to of Ron Baker's ideas. So take his ideas all about subscription pricing and transformations and outputs instead of inputs. And then this is like the actual like, how did I do that in my firm? David Leary: [00:22:19] So this leads right to the next email because you said to go get a job at a firm. Don't just start your firm first, right? This is from Ralph Jamal, subject line. Can we speak? Message. Hi. I did some research and saw you worked at a large firm. I just started working at Deloitte entry level. My ultimate goal is to open my own firm. Is that possible working at such a large firm? Maybe I would learn more at a small firm. Would love to hear your guidance and experience. Thanks. So should you get a job at a big firm or small firm? What's better? I think on the resume the big firm is. But if you want to have your own bookkeeping practice, probably not. Blake Oliver: [00:22:55] Well, if you want to have your own small accounting practice, then I'm not sure that the firm is going to give you the experience you need. But you can take that big firm experience. You can then go to a regional firm. And by regional I mean a firm with say, you know, fewer than like a few thousand employees, not tens of thousands, right? You go smaller And you're working with Main Street businesses you're working with, not fortune 500 public companies, that sort of thing. You're working with Main Street businesses and that gets you the connections you need, the experience you need with those types of businesses so that you can run your own practice someday. Um, I think that would be a great way to go. Um, but, you know, like this whole you have to go to Big Four thing. I don't buy it. I think that's really old school advice. And the resume used to be a lot more important than it is now. And what's more important is that you know what you're doing. And here's a really good reason why you need to have experience, and you need to have more than just a brand name on your resume. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. The headline is that companies predict 2026 will be the worst college grad job market in five years. Blake Oliver: [00:24:11] Yes, employers expect just a 1.6% increase in hiring for the class of 2026 26, while job postings have dropped 16% in applications per job are up 26%. The problem isn't just fewer openings, it's that recent grads are now competing against laid off workers, and those workers are willing to take entry level positions. And at the same time, executives are openly discussing how AI can eliminate many entry level roles entirely. Over 60% of 2026 graduates already feel pessimistic about their career prospects, and some are applying to hundreds of jobs just trying to land one offer. That's a big decline. 16% full time job postings declined 16% year over year as of August. That's a lot and 26% more applications per job compared to the previous year. This is going to be a big challenge for college grads and the traditional education pipeline. Jobs at the entry level are changing so fast and being automated so fast that colleges universities are not going to be able to keep up. They are clueless. I'm not saying all of them, but I'm saying a lot of them. And if you want to get a job in that kind of market, you really need to have marketable skills. Employers don't want to bring you in and train you. Blake Oliver: [00:25:38] And how do I know this? Because I graduated into the worst job market in generations. When I went into the workforce in 2007, in the Great Recession. I could not, with a degree from a top ten university. I could not get a job at Barnes and Noble. I ended up working at Starbucks and it was because I had no marketable skills. I had this fancy degree that costs a lot of money, but I couldn't actually do anything for anyone, and nobody wanted to invest in training me at that time. So what did I do? I taught myself how to do bookkeeping and QuickBooks. And so if you are entrepreneurial and you are willing to be a self-starter and learner, there are opportunities because there are firms that need to hire. There are companies that need to hire. They just don't want to teach you. So you got to learn it on YouTube. You have to learn it from online courses. You have to learn it from AI. And there has never been a better time to teach yourself how to do something. Now with YouTube and ChatGPT. You can literally learn almost anything. I mean, there's no excuse at this point and I didn't have those tools. David Leary: [00:26:54] This ties to an email we got from Eric Stanley, and you kind of just answered it, but I think it's important to read his email because I think this is what's going through a lot of students and career switchers right now that are looking to accounting as a career high. I follow you guys on YouTube, and I'm considering a career change to become an accountant. One consideration is the impact that AI will have on the profession, as some AI experts are saying, accountants won't exist in five years. This seems wrong, but things will definitely be different once artificial superintelligence stands up. We love to hear your would love to hear your thoughts on the future of the profession in an AI driven world. Blake Oliver: [00:27:34] Yeah. So as I shared last episode, there's a big difference between what AI can do on TV and on YouTube, and when influencers showed off versus what it can do reliably in the real world. And the metric to pay attention to is the ability of AI to complete long tasks. So I didn't share this last episode, so I want to share it now. This is the website. It's from meter. David Leary: [00:28:12] You're not sharing the screen just yet, Blake. Blake Oliver: [00:28:14] Here it is. Okay, so this is from meter. Okay, this is there. Uh. David Leary: [00:28:20] We kind of showed this last week a little bit, but. Blake Oliver: [00:28:22] Maybe a little bit, right? So you look at the success rate of these models and they are only like GPT five. Oh there's a new one up here. So GPT 5.1 Codex Max achieves 80% success on tasks that are 31 minutes long, 31 minutes for a human, they're 80% successful. They get 95% at ten minutes to one. Okay, I see. Nevermind. Ignore it. I just said so. Think about that, right? So a task like a task would take a human 31 minutes. It's 80% successful at now. 80% is not good enough in most jobs in accounting. So if you want like really high success, like close to 100%. It's actually only a few minutes. That's where we're at right now. And that's why we haven't seen dramatic AI, you know, in firms like it's just there aren't that many tasks that you can delegate to an AI reliably. If you only get 80% success, you end up having to rework and check everything and do it all over again. David Leary: [00:29:30] I think the AI experts that are not doing accounting work are the ones declaring accountants dead. But we have emails. There's actually emails. They're long, like soapbox emails. We have two of them. I'm not going to read them, though, about how bad AI is causing more problems in their firm than the work it's solving and doing. But I digress on that. I have a parlor trick for everybody to show off to their families on Thanksgiving. Open up. Open up your favorite GPT tool and say, draw me three wristwatches with the time 638. It will draw you three watches with the time 1010. Every single time. It just it will always do it, because all images of watches when they're in magazines and advertised are ten, ten in the second hand, fully down like a Y. Right? Right. It just can't do it. And I'm sure it's going to do our taxes. Come on. Blake Oliver: [00:30:19] So so here's where the AI is useful. It's when you use it to get yourself 80% of the way there, and then you do the other 20%. Yes. So what kind of tasks can you give to AI to do the first 80%? And in accounting they're often like that's difficult. Maybe with like a creative writing task I can give it I can give an AI the job to write a page, which would take me 30 minutes and it can do 80% of it. And then I go clean up and do the rest of the 20%. That's an effective use because I've just saved myself 80% of my time. Um, but when it comes to like a task where you need 100% accuracy, everything needs to tie out doesn't always work. So you have to like these these these models really have to be monitored. You have to really use them. And so that's why they're not automating our jobs yet. Now will that happen? It's doubling every seven months. So even though AI can only do tasks take a few minutes now it's going to be, you know, go from two to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to an hour to two hours, four hours, eight hours, 16 hours. That's going to happen. But there's six months in between all of those leaps. But it is kind of scary because that does. If that trend continues, then AI will be able to do day long tasks reliably with like near 100% accuracy in like 5 to 10 years. But I don't know if that trend will necessarily continue, because I feel like a lot of that, a lot of that processing is very expensive, and right now it's being subsidized. So all these billions of dollars that are being poured into these AI companies are going to compute that we are not actually paying for right now. We're paying $30 a month for ChatGPT. But how much is it actually costing OpenAI? It's a lot more than we're paying. David Leary: [00:32:12] So eventually all ride in Ubers for $6, right? Blake Oliver: [00:32:15] Remember when Uber was like, yeah, ten bucks. So it's being subsidized now. Eventually that has to end. And so the cost is going to rise. And we might be surprised at just how expensive it is to have an AI do a task. It might not be necessarily cheaper than having a human do it. At least we don't know. David Leary: [00:32:36] Any cheaper than an entry level new hire out of college. Blake Oliver: [00:32:40] Yeah, or somebody offshore. So we'll have to see. But also, there's just no guarantee that the trend will continue, that these models can scale up to be able to do more advanced tasks, I don't know. I mean, so far it seems to be working. We seem to be going on this vertical trajectory here, but it's really difficult to say. I think the one thing that we, we do know is that regardless of whether or not these models can do these tasks, somebody's going to have to review that work and to sign off on it. So get away from doing the grunt work as soon as you can and use these tools. All right. David Leary: [00:33:22] That's the trick. The more you use these tools, you understand the things they suck at. And then if you get in a position to review, you're just going to be that much more efficient and better at reviewing because you're going to know where they trip and where they where their faults are. Blake Oliver: [00:33:35] Let's go ahead and thank our next sponsor. And that is cloud accounting staffing. If you're thinking about increasing your team using remote team members, but you want to avoid the high pressure sales calls and commitments before you even review those possible candidates, there is good news. Now you can review potential candidates without having sales calls or any commitments. Cloud Accountant Staffing is just launched their candidate portal where you can browse resumes, intro videos, assessment and personality test results any time of the day or night. No sales call. No pressure, no commitment. The candidate portal is updated daily and all candidates are available for an interview within 24 hours. You can browse candidates by both roles and experience what a bookkeeper that knows QuickBooks and has experience with nonprofits, you can drill down to find those candidates. How different would your firm look in 2026? Or how different would your life feel if you could instantly add 40, 80, or 120 hours of extra capacity every single week to explore the new cloud? Accountant. Staffing. Cloud. Accountant. Staffing. Candidate portal. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast forward slash. All right, David, more listener mail. Or should I keep going with the news here? David Leary: [00:34:49] I got some listener mail. Um, two conflicting points of view in these three emails. And just to set the table for this, you interviewed people about and you've been on a soapbox a little bit about how the colleges aren't educating and preparing the students for accounting jobs. Blake Oliver: [00:35:11] I feel like the issue I have is that traditional accounting education is still focused on a lot of memorization of rules, and it's a lot easier now to, like, look up those rules, figure it all out. Right. We should be teaching concepts, not memorizing for the CPA exam. And I have the same complaint about the exam, which is that it's so much memorization of rules and not enough teaching the concepts. David Leary: [00:35:40] So I have an email from a student career switcher and then two college professors that are due two points of view on how what somebody's being taught and how they're interpreting what they're being taught versus what's being taught by these other two professors. So the first one is from Bob Stone Blake. I first want to say thank you to you and David for your. I first want to say thank you to David and yourself for your podcast. I'm relatively new listener, but I learn a ton every week I listen. I recently I recently restarted an MSN accounting program this summer and wanted to dive into the subject. So when I listened to your show weekly, you have a recurring theme about the lack of new accounts in the industry and the problems in the education system that drives some of this. Please excuse the length of this note, I but I agree wholeheartedly that the education is a driving potential. Accountants away, and I'd like to share my thoughts. Quick background on me I'm a 45 year old career Army officer. In the midst of a retirement process in 2019, I knew my career would be coming to an end and eventually in the Army and wanted to obtain a hard business skill. My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in education from Oklahoma State University, and holds an Ma in history from Wayland Baptist University, and a master of Military Arts and Sciences from the Army Staff College. David Leary: [00:36:56] None of those. None of those are prestigious degrees, but I'm accustomed to graduate level work. I began using what was the remaining of my GI Bill in 2019 to attain a master's in accounting from a southern New Hampshire, from southern New Hampshire University. I chose them because they have both a brick and mortar school and a healthy online program that caters to the military. When I started the program, they offered several degree tracks with specializations like forensic accounting, tax accounting, general accounting, and a few others. Because of my lack of background, I had to take a few introductory courses, which I fully expected. I'm currently in a position where I've completed 39 graduate credits, and still have another 18 to go before I can graduate. I took a break from 2022 until this summer due to my GI Bill running out and competing and competing requirements on my time. My frustration is this what is being taught is nothing relative to the student, or the way you and David described the accounting world today. I recently finished a course on federal taxation of individuals, and I'm currently in advanced auditing. Both of these classes are beyond frustrating, and the tax course we are forced to complete tax calculations by hand or build our own spreadsheets manually filling out a 1040. David Leary: [00:38:05] What accounting firms do not have software that does this for them? And why are students researching US tax code when there are programs for that? And now in auditing, it's the same thing. We're giving a bad attestation memos and told to figure out what's wrong. All of this may be something accountants do today, but in the future it's not in the future of accounting. As a 45 year old looking at career transition, I am not looking to start over again at the bottom. I'm going to finish the degree I began because it's what I do. But I will likely never work as an accountant. This is because I know I'm not prepared for the industry, even with an MSC in accounting. Rather than prepare students for the future by teaching them to maximize software options and think critically how to gain efficiencies. Professors are stuck making students learn the same way they did 20, 30, or 40 years ago. That is why there is so little interest. Engineering students are learning the latest drafting programs. Mba students are learning how to leverage automations, and AI and accounting students are still using calculators and Excel spreadsheets and feeling underprepared to enter the workforce. At least that's my experience and opinion. Thanks for all you do. I will keep listening to your show while I'm in the program at least another year. Bob. Blake Oliver: [00:39:16] Bob. Well, thanks for listening. Sorry for your frustration, but it doesn't surprise me. And it's incredible how some of these programs are still teaching the same way they were teaching 20 years ago. And that was my experience when I was at UCLA extension doing my credits. The advanced accounting courses were taught by a professor named, uh, who was it? Sam Boutari. And I swear he was using the same, uh, photocopied guide or manual or homemade textbook that he'd been using for like 20 or 30 years. And how did I know it was that old? Because the exercises in cost accounting, where we had to do flowcharts like we they had they had icons for like tape backup drives. David Leary: [00:40:07] I was gonna say VCRs was the kind of. Blake Oliver: [00:40:09] And we had to, you know, one of the requirements was we had to get us, like, one of these plastic. I don't even know what you call them there. These, like, plastic floppy disk. It was it was like it was a plastic sheet with cutouts so that you could make the triangles and the squares and the circles and draw the flowchart properly by hand. David Leary: [00:40:32] Stencil, stencil, stencil. Blake Oliver: [00:40:34] Yes. We had a we had to buy stencils. Here we are using stencils instead of like whatever there is in and online. That was not that long ago. David Leary: [00:40:44] Yeah you're relatively young in the grand scheme of things. Blake Oliver: [00:40:46] Yeah. David Leary: [00:40:47] That's amazing. Blake Oliver: [00:40:48] So, um. David Leary: [00:40:50] So to be fair and balanced, we have two professors that have emailed us about the quality of educations based on some interviews you've done in your stance, Blake. Blake Oliver: [00:40:58] All right. Let's hear the next one. David Leary: [00:41:00] This is from, uh, Jackie Wukich. Hopefully I didn't mangle that name. Blake Oliver: [00:41:04] Hi, David. Before you start, is this a long one? You might want to take a big sip of water. I could tell you were getting raspy. All right. Really? All right. I'm gonna give you. David Leary: [00:41:11] It's not super long, but. Blake Oliver: [00:41:12] I'm going to give David a breather here. We're both losing our voices. Hopefully. Hopefully we'll get them back when we come back after Thanksgiving. All right, go for it, David. David Leary: [00:41:22] Hi, Blake and David, thanks for all the work you do to provide such a helpful and engaging podcast. I recently listened to your interview with Nicole Wetter and appreciated hearing about the innovative efforts at her community college. It's always valuable to learn what other programs are doing to support students and adapt to changes in the profession. That said, I wanted to offer a bit of perspective. I'm currently teaching at my third university, and while I don't want to discount the good work of Nicole's program. I wasn't convinced that many of the efforts described are especially unique. In fact, with the exception of the QuickBooks class, all of the strategies she mentioned have been part of the programs I've been involved with. I completely agree with the value of pushing accounting education forward, but I hope the future episodes might give more credit to the many accounting programs that are already doing thoughtful, student centered, and forward looking work. Occasionally, the show makes broad generalizations about the state of accounting education that don't align with my experience, and I know I'm not alone. Thanks again for the discussion and for continuing to spotlight important topics in our field. Best regards, Jackie Wukich, PhD, CPA. Blake Oliver: [00:42:26] Thanks, Jackie for listening. David Leary: [00:42:28] And another one from David. Wait, so we know David, he does the Utah Valley University Accountants program. Blake Oliver: [00:42:35] That was and that was where what's his name was assassinated. David Leary: [00:42:42] Same. Same college. Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:42:43] Same college. The Charlie Kirk. I couldn't believe it when I saw that in the news. I was like, That's David's school. David Leary: [00:42:50] Yes, it's his school. And Dave came down to Tucson and we kind of told he was wondering what students should learn. And we laid out like cloud accounting and the APS and QuickBooks, and now it's a whole program. You can find YouTubes on it. Intuit's made some videos on it. And but he also wrote in mostly has a beef with you because you tend to bag on the accounting professors a little bit more. Uh, David, it was first, it was a little piece of me. So Intuit connect just to frame this up, he brought students there from his class to Intuit Connect. So I got to meet these students that are the future accountants, which were great. It was great to meet them. Uh, David, it was great running into you. Intuit connect. I always enjoy our conversations and especially appreciated you spending time with the students while we're waiting for our flight. I asked them about their top moments and that time with you made the list. Thanks again. Blake, this is a follow up to an earlier note. I'm hoping you'll consider making college and university education. A part of the solution to the accounting problem, I realized teachers can be difficult to deal with. David Leary: [00:43:49] Many actually believe that researching a topic makes makes them more of an expert than one who practices pretty dumb. This said, I do believe we have something to offer. Your comments on the podcast seem to be focused on how to get around us versus working with us. For example, you've mentioned more than once that the degree itself doesn't matter as long as someone passes the CPA exam. I agree that there's a small group of people who can succeed in almost any field with minimal training. But for the most of us, myself included, those classes and repeated lessons built both confidence and competence. And a recent episode, you described the profession shift from a pyramid to a diamond. I'd ask you to consider how universities might help rebuild those points that can turn it back into a pyramid. Yes, we have to make some changes, but many of us are already working to do that. I'd love to see the same energy you've brought against the 150 hour rule, channeled towards challenging educators to adapt and support the profession's future. I will end there. Do you hope both of you made it home safe? David Stratton wait, CPA, Utah Valley University. Blake Oliver: [00:44:49] Thanks, David. Thanks for listening. And, um, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I don't lump all accounting educators in together. But you have to admit. Right. There's there's there's a lot that can be done and there's a lot of, of education that is just totally backward. David Leary: [00:45:09] The entire industry exists to teach people what they need to know to pass the CPA exam. To me, seems crazy. A whole industry exists around this multimillion dollar companies. Blake Oliver: [00:45:18] Yeah, you'd think that after getting an accounting degree, you would know what you need to know. Um, but that setting that aside, it was my, uh, experience going to the American Accounting Association conference that really just hammered it home for me. And I'll stand by my previous comments on the education conference. David Leary: [00:45:37] How long ago was this? Blake Oliver: [00:45:38] It was this year I was invited. American accounting association. Okay. And it's a lot of professors like PhD is presenting papers. And you would not believe how obscure some of these topics are. You have these PhDs writing papers about accounting topics that like, would I mean, literally, I think you could honestly like replace, um, you know, like if you're having surgery and they need to to put you under, I think you could just read one of these papers and probably save a lot of money. David Leary: [00:46:11] All right. Send all emails to Blake. Blake Oliver: [00:46:16] Send all emails to The Accounting Podcast at earmarked me. David will send them my way. Um, here's a fun story. David, a Georgia accountant, has been arrested after allegedly tearing down a Trump sign shooting at a North Carolina man's house. Sometimes you see some really dramatic headlines in CPA Practice Advisor, and this is one of them. The incident occurred on September 6th, 2025, in North Carolina. Benjamin Michael Campbell, 38, uh, and Mark Thomas, 62, a Trump supporter and business owner. So Benjamin Michael Campbell is the Atlanta accountant. Campbell apparently spotted a Trump 2024 sign while driving on the highway. He stopped his jeep and entered Thomas's property. Security footage captured him stretching to reach and tear down the flag. Thomas described it as Campbell having a political trigger moment. Thomas's response was to fire two warning shots in the air. After grabbing his rifle, and Campbell's reaction was to throw the torn sign on the ground like it was proud, he returned to the Jeep and opened fire from his sunroof. At least one bullet hit Thomas's refrigerator on the porch. Additional bullets struck dirt in the front yard. The refrigerator was only yards away from Thomas. Campbell fled before police arrived, and a YouTube video uploaded by Thomas helped to identify the suspect, who was arrested on September 30th, 2025. David Leary: [00:47:54] So he runs back, gets in his Jeep, the sunroof is open, stands up out of the sunroof with his gun to shoot, and then gets back on his Jeep and drives away. This is crazy. I'm just imagining what you're what you're reading here. Blake Oliver: [00:48:05] So, you know, every now and then there's a Florida man story. Every now and then there's an accountant's story, and we have to cover it on the show. We have no choice. It's like part of our bylaws. So I hope you all enjoyed that. Um, David, I'm going to let you take it out with, like, 1 or 2 more emails. Uh, maybe one actually, because I got to get going. Let's do it, I will. David Leary: [00:48:25] Okay, let me decide which one of these two. I'm going to read this one. This is a good Thanksgiving one. Um, we met this, uh, Eric, who's the writer of this next email we met him at when we did The Accountant two movie. Do you remember the accountant we met that was so excited to meet us and he actually started crying a little bit. So this is his email and his story. Blake Oliver: [00:48:47] Okay. David Leary: [00:48:48] This is from Eric Averett. Hey, David. First, thanks again for hosting the screening last Friday. It was incredibly generous and a lot of fun. I flew out from Berkeley to attend and it was 100% worth it. Meeting you in blanket person was totally surreal. I was definitely nervous and starstruck, but I really appreciated how approachable and welcoming welcoming you both were. More broadly, I want to thank you for all the work you do on the podcast. I listen to the accounting podcast every day on my commute, 13 to 15 minutes at a time, maybe at 1.2 x speed, and it's a massive impact on my life. I used to own a salon, but had to close it when I couldn't bring back traffic after the pandemic. Around the time I happened to tell a bookkeeper friend how much I enjoyed reading tax form instructions in IRS publications. She encouraged me to consider becoming an EA. That led me to seriously consider an accounting as a career, and that's when I discovered the accounting podcast. I've been inspired ever since. Last year, I received a certificate of proficiency in accounting from Berkeley City College. It's not a CPA license, but my wife maybe frame it anyways. Listen to the show has made me feel like I'm not just on the right path, but already a part of the profession. David Leary: [00:49:55] It helped me feel hopeful, motivated, and like I belong. I also wanted to add that your advocacy for access to the profession, your support of underdogs, and your tech forward insights ChatGPT helped me edit this email and your openness and sharing industry challenges all matter a lot. I don't take for granted how much work it must be required to put together such a consistently smart and well edited show. It's one of the reasons I love accounting now. Thank you again for fostering the kind of community, and I want to be a part of it. I'm really grateful and can't wait for the next event. Thanks, Eric Everett. It like this is why we do this like it's what we do. Blake is important. This show is important. It's changed a lot of things. It's changing individual lives. It's changing all these students careers. It changed 150 hour rule. Blake. Like we look back in history like we gave that a voice. A voice so much that the AICPA hated us. And then they wound up. Now half the states in the country have created an alternative pathways. That's what we do is important. I think that's a good way to wrap this up today. Blake Oliver: [00:50:55] David, always great to chat with you. Thanks everyone who joined us live. Don't forget you can earn free CPE for listening. Go to earmarked and register. Create your account for free. Earn a free CPE every week. It's time. Do it before the year end and you can get the free app on the App Store as well. Uh, we will be back here next week with yet another entertaining and educational episode all about what's new in the accounting profession. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you around. Bye, everyone.