The Big Thing That’s Going On

Back at the beginning of August, the Iowa City office was informed that national firm (hereby after referred to as CG) was no longer going to have an Iowa City office. We are now affectionately calling it “being fired”. It’s not just happening to us, CG is closing all one partner offices, but that didn’t make it less of a shock.

There’s a possibility I could have had a job up in the Cedar Rapids office, but they didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask. I’ve spent seven years building a reputation and visibility in Iowa City – if I went to Cedar Rapids, I would have had to start all over again. Fortunately, I’m going with another option. The three senior employees of Iowa City are purchasing the Iowa City practice from CG, and I, along with all the rest of the office, are following them to the newly formed company.

One of the things I liked best about working here was the people I worked with, so I’m glad they’re taking this on and giving me the option. I’ll still be working with all the same people, with pretty much the same clients. We won’t be doing audits anymore, but I’ve been trying to get out of auditing for three years now, so that won’t be too much of a sacrifice, though I’ll miss my audit clients. As soon as the Children’s Museum found out I wouldn’t be working on their audit anymore, she asked if I’d be interested in serving on their board, so maybe I won’t have to miss all of them.

So for the past six weeks, we have been preparing. Notifying clients, wrapping things up, negotiations, starting a new company. Well, I’ve been mostly wrapping things up, other people have been doing the rest. October 1st is the day we officially begin as a new company. CHG, for short.

Even though I’m in the same office with the same people doing the same work, I’m still switching jobs, with most of the implications. Dealing with COBRA and rolling over my 401(k) and signing up for new health insurance and all that. My brief financial crisis a couple weeks ago involved paid time off. Only in an accounting firm would they make you pay back time off that you’d taken and not yet earned. Due to a misunderstanding on when vacation time was earned, I thought I was going to have to pay back $1400 of vacation time I took to go to Alaska and I panicked. I’m lucky enough not to be living paycheck to paycheck, but that’s an awful lot of money to give up over vacation I took in good faith that I would be around to earn it. I was wrong about owing that much, and I’ll be breaking evenish. Poor Jeannette is in worse shape, though. She’s within two months of being fully vested in her 401(k), so she’s losing 30% of her employer contributions.

We’re pretty excited about going out on our own. We won’t have the support of the firm behind us, but they won’t be looking over our shoulder anymore, either. Plus, one of the partners is still planning on retiring in 3-5 years, and I’ll have the option of buying him out if I want to. There was no way I was going to have that option that soon with CG, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go that route with them. The idea of a bigger share of a smaller firm is a lot more attractive. In the meantime, I’ll still have the option of more responsibility sooner with CHG. I was feeling pretty stagnant, career and personal growth-wise with CG, so this really is a blessing. I have a feeling I’ll be much less frustrated with my role at CHG, since I’ll have more of a say in shaping it.