Five Tips To Break Into Finance
Former Goldman Sachs Junior Alan Li shares five valuable tips to help you break into the world of finance.
Whether you are starting your first job or have an established career, check out his podcast The Vampire Squid, to bridge your finance knowledge gap and get an insider’s look at many of the myths and rumors that exist today.
1. Trade Stock
Start with any amount, most brokers don’t require a minimum
Once you have your own money in the game, you become that much more focused on things like earnings reports, SEC filings, company financials, etc. that are core to the understanding of finance and valuation. You will start paying attention to industry news, M&A deals in the sector, and Initial Public Offerings of new and innovative businesses.
2. Watch and read depictions of Wall Street
The Wolf of Wall Street, Margin Call, Too Big to Fail
These are all movies that depict Wall Street in an outlandish yet entertaining light. While these movies are hardly accurate in their portrayal, I have found that many of my interests have indirectly resulted from media like books and movies.
3. Start your own business
Lemonade stand, blog, website
By starting your own business, you will be forced to learn and manage your finance. Now foreign line items on the income statement and balance sheet make much more sense. Revenue, COGS, Operating Expense, etc. these are common across all businesses, even your very first lemonade stand.
4. Talk about money
Finance and money is seen as a taboo subject
Bring up a conversation with your family and friends about finance and money. Remove the connotations surrounding the subject so that you are comfortable with it. Money inherently is just a medium used for exchanging goods and services, there’s nothing taboo about the subject unless you make it so.
5. Listen to The Vampire Squid
I started this podcast to bring transparency and education into the world of Finance by providing my own experiences and interviewing my friends who have worked in finance.
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