Actuaries of Reddit, considering how far you are in your career or studies, would you say that it's worth it? Why or why not

It is hard to say. I really love my job, I'm paid great, have great work-life balance, etc. I work in commercial insurance which I find interesting, and I like the mix of business and math/quantitative reasoning in my job - I have to think, but I don't have to think so hard that tasks feel daunting and impossible.

At the time, the exams were a pain but felt doable (I'm done the exams now). But looking back, I spent a lot of time studying and working in my 20s and sacrificing my personal life. I never knew anything different, so I thought that's just what working full-time was like, but now that I'm not studying and stepped back and stopped chasing promotions, I realize that I was not spending enough time on myself outside of work for several years. The exams do require a lot of commitment and personal time.

If I were starting over, I might become an underwriter. But I also know when I graduated college, my people skills were not the best, while my ability to pass math exams was much better, so I might have had more difficulty getting an underwriting job and doing well in it initially - underwriting usually requires more people skills than actuarial, and while I have those skills now, I didn't early in my career. But I would have grown into it, and maybe enjoyed my 20s more.

/r/actuary Thread