Going to school for a finance degree, is a Financial Analyst a good career?

I have a couple of caree choices in mind when im done with college and have a finance degree, one of my choices is a Commercial Real Estate Analyst and ive been looking into becoming a Financial Analyst. Do they get a base salary and commision? i dont want a job with commision only, how much does a financial analyst make? what specifically do the do?

Going to school for a finance degree, is a Financial Analyst a good career?
There are a few careers that are known as "recession proof", teachers, police officers, doctors, etc. They are basically anything that people will need to use regardless of the health of the economy. I would argue that a financial analyst would fall into that category... a Real Estate Analyst, on the other hand, would be a risky gamble at this time.





Basically financial analysts help people decide how to invest their money. They work for banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, and securities firms. They often meet with company officials to learn more about the firms in which they want to invest. After the meetings, the analysts write reports and give talks about what they found out. Then, they suggest buying or selling that firm's stock.





Financial analysts usually work in offices. They may work long hours. They sometimes work on evenings or weekends. Analysts usually face many deadlines. Their day is filled with telephone calls and meetings.





The median salary for a financial analyst is about $60,000/year. The starting salary is usually around $35,000, depending on your location.
Reply:All the financial analysts in the bank I work in are not on commission. Persons with a CFA designation are usually the ones most likely to get an interview. So you will get in faster or move up (promoted) faster if your work habits are good. In the beginning you start at the bottom like everyone else until you have experience.
Reply:Consider this: 76 million people in the US are babyboomers and will be retiring in masse. That means tons of rollovers and these people need somebody to invest their money. You can help them do this and get paid well for it. As far as base pay and commission, depends on the company.
Reply:First, the 'financial advise' industry is pretty much a scam.





http://www.saveyournestegg.com/scam.html





People don't need 'financial advisors' with serious conflicts of interest selling them under-performing, high cost products. That ruins their retirenment dreams. And that's what's happening:





"1. Do advisors give clients access to funds that are harder to find and evaluate? The answer is yes, but as you will see, as a whole, advisor-selected funds underperform funds that investors select on their own.





2. Do advisors help clients find funds that are lower cost (excluding distribution costs)? After analyzing several trillion dollars worth of transactions, the answer is no.





3. Do advisors give clients access to funds with better performance? The answer is a resounding no. I know this is shocking--and it may not apply to you. But the scientific evidence shows that many of the other advisors in America not only underperform indexes--they underperform what most people do on their own if they don't have an advisor. (read this twice!!)





4. Do advisors provide superior asset allocation? After years of research covering trillions of dollars of asset allocations, the finding is that advisors do not provide superior asset allocation. Even without this study, one only had to look at how advisors overemphasized technology fundsin the late 1990s and how many advisors are overemphasizing energy, gold, and foreign funds today.





5. Do advisors help correct bad investor behavior such as chasing fads and chasing performance? The sobering answer is no. In fact, the evidence shows that advisors even contribute to such behavior. Again, look at all the money advisors are pouring into energy, gold, and foreign funds.





It is important to note that the authors are not anti-advisor. Remarkably, they had the cooperation and support of some of the largest and most respected industry groups and research organizations in America in working on this study."





http://www.wrfinancialconcepts.com/pdfs/...





Go here to see what YOUR life will be like:





http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB...





Consider that there are now target retirement date funds that do ALL the work for people. Vanguard has them and the cost is VERY low. We don't need to spend huge amounts of money on 'advisors' and products that ruin our retirement dreams.