Week 1- How did I end up here? Number cruncher, bean counter, dealer in debits and credits

Nov 16,2020 Taxes, Accountant, Adulting, Tax Help, Benson, Dunn, Four Oaks, North Carolina

Ann-I was never able to go to college right out of High School, as it was unaffordable.  I met my husband and we married while he was in Pharmacy School and I worked while he completed college and got his Pharmacy License.  Then as I was 25 and he was 30, it was time to have our children.  We have 3 wonderful children and I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home Mom, which was very rewarding but I needed more in my life after the birth of my 3rd child.  It was not feasible to work and pay daycare for 3 children so my husband told me to go back to school, which had always been a dream of mine.  I started part-time while my kids were in preschool and elementary.  I started out thinking I would be a nurse but then I changed my major to accounting because I seemed to have a lot of strength in math and loved working with numbers, they made sense to me.  It took me 6 years to get my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting.

I started out my career as an employee keeping books for different businesses to get the experience that I needed to further my career.  I worked for a company that when I left for a higher paying job, they wanted me to continue to keep their books on the side.  I did that for a year while working full time and during that time picked up several more businesses.  I then took the leap and started my business in my dining room at home, which was closed off as my office in 1995.  I continued to build up my business and in 1998, my daughter Angela, joined me working while she was in college.  By then we had built a separate building at my home for my office.  

In 2000, my husband opened his own pharmacy and the building we rented and eventually purchased, had enough room for my accounting office.  We have grown significantly since then, we had to add an addition in 2005 and do a renovation in 2007.  We had more growing pains in 2013 and added on the last addition to our offices.  My daughter is now my full partner and we have 3 full time employees all year and 1 or 2 part-time during tax season. 

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Angela- Fall 1997, excited to start college, finally out of high school, time to start working on adulthood….. how did I end up here? I ask myself this often and I tell people all the time that people “HAP” into their jobs more often than they plan them. My freshman year of college I had all these plans to be a teacher of elementary education…I thought yes, this is what I want to do. 

And then the world decided to shake things up, in the spring of my freshman year, I had a huge surprise when I found out I was expecting my son. I was working 2 jobs and in college full time and I thought OMG how am I going to make this work. 

My mom, Ann, had already started A.L. Wood Accounting and was dedicating herself full time to it and her and my dad said you will not drop out of college. So in December 1998, I welcomed my son and started working for my mom, while still in college full time to be a teacher. The more months I put intoworking at the accountant office, the more I realized that I just got the concepts…they made sense… they felt easy to understand. By the Fall of 1999, I changed my major to accounting and completed my Bachelors with a double major in Accounting and Business Management. So until I figure out what I want to be when I grow up (LOL), I think I will keep doing what I feel like I am good at!