I’ve been curious, do accountants think about their own personal money, possessions, etc. the same way they would about their line of work? (i.e., here are my assets, liabilities, cash flow, depreciation)
Yep. I think more people should, as it helps filter a lot of nonsense you hear from employers nowadays, especially high-profile billionaires demanding employees be “hard core.”
I have mostly worked for investor owned companies (i.e. the managers are mostly agents of the stockholders or PE investors).
I often have to remind my colleagues that they wouldn’t do XYZ if it was their own money they were using. A VERY unpopular position to take as resource allocation in a large enterprise is very political, not simply a numbers game.
The biggest assumption underpinning many decisions is that we have some secret sauce that will enable us to make a profit out of an enterprise even if we overpay up from for the resources.