EFG Consulting, LLC

One of the things I most often run into when talking to people about their careers is the statement “I can’t do any training.  My company won’t pay for it right now.” or the slight variation – “I don’t have any budget for training.  My company is cutting back everywhere.”  

Well, guess what – your career is your responsibility, not your company’s.   I am strongly in favor of taking advantage of any training and tuition reimbursements a company provides, but the lack of such a benefit is no excuse for not making an investment in yourself.   And the cost of giving up responsibility for your career to a company when you get hired is extremely high.  

The company’s first responsibility is to it’s owners/stockholders.   It cannot look at investing in your career unless it is also in the direct best interest of the company.  And unless training is properly managed and supervised very carefully to make sure that all training chosen directly relates to the employee’s job and is immediately applicable, it does not usually offer a positive ROI to the company in the short term.  It has the same impact that most employee benefits have and is usually treated the same way – i.e. cut back in a bad economy.

Let’s look at an example.  Let’s say that you make $60,000.00 right now and you are 35 years old.  You take a class or get a certification that costs $5,000.00, but increases your earning power by at least 10% annually.  That means that you will make at least  $281,362 in the next 25 years at 5%.  If you invested that same $5,000.00 at 5% now instead of spending it,  you will only have $17,406.   Now let’s say you are 55.  Even with only 10 years, the difference in the numbers is still staggering  $70,467 versus $8,235.  

(FYI – these amounts were calculated as future value of an ordinary annuity versus future value of an amount. )

The point is this:   Your career is by far the best investment you can make!