A STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH
Natalie Adele, senior accountant, Invicta Law Ltd, ACCA member
In search of change
When I was young, I always thought accountancy was boring. I liked films and watching TV, and I was interested in the way that people behave, so I decided to study media and film with psychology at university. It wasn’t a vocational course, I just wanted to graduate at 21 with a degree.
When I finished, I worked for a year with people with learning disabilities in a residential home. Then I took a postgraduate diploma in occupational therapy and worked for the NHS. At times it was really satisfying work, but at other times less so. After seven years, I felt disillusioned and needed a career change. I got a job in customer services in a pharmaceutical business. It was supposed to be a four-month maternity cover, but I ended up staying there for five years. And that’s when I began to change my opinion about accountancy.
Falling for figures
I just fell into it. My work ethic means that if something needs doing, I’ll take it on, so I started doing the sales ledger and purchase ledger, coding all the invoices when they came in and supporting the accounts manager. I covered her while she was on holiday, and I thought, “actually, this is something I can see myself doing”. I really enjoyed it. I liked working with numbers and I’m very much about attention to detail, so I liked how everything balanced.
After two years, I decided to go for my AAT qualification, and I started studying at home and at weekends and during my annual leave. My manager was incredibly supportive and the company funded me. It took me three years to complete levels 2, 3 and 4.
Something is wrong with dad
During this time we started to notice that my dad was becoming more and more absent-minded. We’d be having a conversation around the dinner table and the topic would move on, but suddenly he’d say something about what we were talking about before. It took him a long time to think about what we were saying and to come up with a response. One day, when we’d taken him on holiday, he couldn’t make a sandwich. He was just sitting looking at an empty table. That was the first real sign that something was wrong.
Once I’d finished my AAT, I made the decision to go for the ACCA qualification. My AAT tutor told me I had the academic ability to go all the way and become chartered. I thought potentially I could have my own practice, and that was my goal at that time. Accounts are the heartbeat of a company, and without the financials, a business wouldn’t exist, so I liked the idea that I could bring huge value to a company. It seemed like another way of helping people, which is what I’ve always wanted to do.
I needed a full-time accounts role to do my ACCA qualification, so I moved to a construction company as an assistant management accountant. It was around this time that there was more bad news about my dad. A routine medical test showed some of his levels were abnormal. It turned out that he had two tumours, one in his prostate and one in his bladder. He had an operation, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and within six months of finding the tumours he was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease—the reason he’d been having trouble before.
Mixed emotions
It was incredibly stressful, and during this whole time I was working and studying. I recall when dad had an operation on the day I had an exam. I passed all my ACCA exams the first time apart from my final one, which I failed by 4%. That was around the time the neurologist had said there was nothing more they could do for dad because the Parkinson’s medication was making his confusion worse. He eventually got the all-clear from the cancer, but he died as a result of Parkinson’s in June this year.
I retook my last exam and got my ACCA qualification in January. I think it was a real achievement given everything that was going on. I now work at a law firm as a senior accountant and I’m the number two in the finance department. I’ve doubled my salary in four years as a result of my ACCA qualifications, and I certainly don’t think accountancy is boring anymore! I enjoy the responsibility and the variety in my job and learning new things. My dad was proud of my achievement. I remember him giving a cheer down the phone when I got the final pass for my qualification.