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Great article. Mark.
Being 67 and still love the business, I can relate to the problems and high points of age.
I have only one problem and that is HMRC. They are low on technology where they should be high and high where they should be low. E-mails and quarterly accounts are two that spring to mind. HMRC don't want to use e-mails (not really high tech these days) yet they think business have apps that will send quarterly accounts at a flick of a button. HMRC are a contradiction and cause more problems than they should. The answer is to let us Accountants look after the admin and they investigate and collect.
Although I have seen a lot of changes the basics are still the same. Online banking yet they still take 3 days to clear a cheque. The problem we are going to have is that low tech business will not be catered for in a few years as HMRC use high tech to force one man bands onto PAYE. When that happens I will sell up.
That's a very insightful comment
Thanks for that, John. It's always interesting for me to read insightful comments like this from experienced accountants.
And, yes, great piece Mark!
Dum spiro spero
While I breathe I hope! Just turned 50 and along with my business doing really well I shot my first ever sub-par round of golf last year, having played the game since I was 12.
There is life in us old dogs yet.
Idiotic
So some idiot in ICAS suggests that anyone possessing considerable experience acquired over many years qualifies as being "over the hill." It sounds to me like the author of such nonsense was over the hill before he or she ever got started.
I'm mature?
Well, I had seriously never considered myself as "mature" until reading this. The nerve! I feel I am only just approaching my professional prime, having been in practice for many years. Last year I won an award for Cloud Accounting, have launched a new company which has created software for the smallest businesses to cope with the new DTA, I am on the HMRC panel shaping the DTA and I find that I am thriving on the changes and the opportunities that new technology is creating.
Actually, I haven't found many 'youngsters' who can stand the pace! I find that many my age are bemoaning the 'youth of today' and how easily distracted they are with an unnerving lack of concentration and what appears to be an inherent lazy attitude.
I see my generation as the go-getters. Jolly poor show by the ICAS and if I was a member I would be busy writing my resignation.
Over the hill at 50?
Where do I start to contradict that myth? Perhaps by pointing out to these young things that they might look at things differently when the government have pushed up retirement age to 68, 70 or more. Will they feel over the hill at 50 with another 20 years of work looming? Those of us who are 50+ (I'm not going to give my actual age away) have actually coped with more change in technology than these youngsters will probably ever do. Some will have started their careers using only adding machines or just seen the start of the calculator, never mind computers and smart phones. Mostly we have embraced the changes with relish, only the arthritis making our fingers less nimble causes us to find some of technology difficult, nothing wrong with our mental capacity. As @johnjenkins said our main problem is HMRC. The lack of understanding of how small businesses work and how technology should be used is depressing.
Well said Mark !
I started my own full time practice at age 53 and am one of those accountants who told Mark I wished it was 20 years earlier. However, I may not have had quite enough experience back then.
The internet has made it much easier to start a practice, including Accountingweb, which I started reading long ago and inspired me.
Over the hill at 50
I'm sure my clients don't see me in that light as they bring along new clients on a regular basis despite my being mid 60s. I'm just starting to use cloud based technology (having given it a fair while so any issues should have been ironed out) and have found my way around the auto enrolment recently my first client staging last month so feel I am up for any innovations whether forced on us by HMRC or taken up through choice.
Clients appreciate the fact that you have been around for a long time and as a result have the experience to advise from a knowledgeable position. I may not be a computer whiz kid but I'm the practice expert when it comes to the programs we use and I value the technology in the same way a craftsman values his tools.
63 and going strong
When I got to 50 the company that I was working for got taken over twice within six months and jobs started leaking, so I decided to take the plunge and go back to my accounting roots. I wanted to be in control of my own destiny, rather then being flung on to the jobs market where there is no age discrimination, (honest).
I was looking for a point of difference with the typical high street practice and came across the emerging cloud systems market in 2004, which was all I needed. Constantly looking for new technology to stay ahead of the game and constantly meeting the challenges arising from keeping up to date with each change thrust upon the profession have required a dynamism that by all accounts shouldn't exist once you get to 50.
How wrong can ICAS be? Very very wrong and it is a wonderful article that Mark has written exposing such bias from those who should be working with their members rather than putting them prematurely out to grass.
and Mr Wallace Hartley played on...
Reached 54 last year and graciously concede I am all but done... having semi retired at 48.
(For me) it was the unprecedented scope and accelerating rate of change, dictated by a dehumanizing bureaucracy which, I know, will lead us all... not to the garden of eden, but to an iron cage, number: nineteen eighty four.
I think for most people the impetus to retiring and handing on to a younger generation would be a sudden windfall. However, as that young chap "Lunchmoney Lewis" sings "I got bills I gotta pay" and "I got mouths I gotta feed".
I'm not quite 50 yet, but like many people of my generation, I will still have children at school when I am 50. Is the writer of the letter aware that final salary pensions ended quite a few years ago? (But money purchase schemes are so much easier to account for! hooray!)
Brain Surgery
If we were ever in the unfortunate position of needing brain surgery would you prefer A or B;
A) the whizz kid age 27 year old who knows computers like the back of his hand
B) the aged 62 with 35 plus years experience in the game.
brain surgery?
(my) experience suggests most will opt for:
C) the Cheapest butcher.
...and the age & experience litmus test? The average age of a FTSE CEO is around 49.
Desperately sorry... the trend is for youth not age...
http://www.europeanceo.com/business-and-management/why-are-more-ceos-ret...
C indeed
(my) experience suggests most will opt for:
C) the Cheapest butcher.
...and the age & experience litmus test? The average age of a FTSE CEO is around 49.
Desperately sorry... the trend is for youth not age...
http://www.europeanceo.com/business-and-management/why-are-more-ceos-ret...
your right most will go for C, never thought of that.
No worries for me yet then, 68fw, as I'm only 44, with 26 years experience so will aim to pack up by age 49!
.
If you are a high profile CEO you will probably have built up enough wealth to make retirement appealing.
Equally, getting to grips with auto enrolment isn't exactly brain surgery. Small business owners are expected to comply whether or not they have outside help.
I think most people find that technology makes accounting easier. As somebody who started work in the late 80's my mind boggles at the idea that accounting was once done without the aid of even a calculator. Change may have its challenges, but it would be far harder to change back.