How can cold-callers know about my general financial status
The cold caller is just a different way to contact you compared to the junk mail that they send. The business  gets information from the credit rating companies for households that meet a specific set of criteria. It could be town, age, home ownership, low credit utilization...Or the exact opposite depending on what they are selling. Some business do sell your data. Grocery store know who buys certain products: parents buying diapers may want to start saving for college; ones buying acne medicine may want to talk about lower rates for car insurance.  When they call via phone they have a different success rate compared to junk mail, but for that business that may be acceptable for their needs. There are multiple social engineering ways. Just a note about cold callers: I own a phone which I use solely for software development purposes. It has a SIM card that I bought for £0.99 on eBay (needed to activate the phone). Nobody knows that there is any relationship between me and that phone or it's phone number. I have never paid any phone charges, and I cannot make phone calls with that phone. As I said, it is just used for software development purposes.  I get phone calls from cold callers on that phone. Not only do they not know anything about my financial situation, they know nothing and cannot know anything about who I am. They tell me that I was recently involved in an accident and I am likely to get compensation. Yet they don't know my name, my address, anything. Lucky enough, my real business mobile phone is so far not on their radar.  It is most likely that they know absolutely nothing about you, but have a lot of practice in being convincing if they get you to talk to them.
"Better financial analyst on paper or to improve your own ability?  In my opinion what makes a good analyst is a thorough understanding of macro and financial statements, intellectual curiosity and ability to think independently.  To be able to look at a dataset and come to your own conclusions without outside bias.  To not just want to learn ""how"" but also why.  You can't improve if you don't question the status quo.  Everyone lists Excel as a skill on their resume but it is amazing how few people really know it.  More employable, what I would want to see is experience in Bloomberg, Factset and Thomson Reuters.  And how you have utilized the tools.  I want to see that you can think independently.  Show me you are capable of completing a task just by being given the starting point and the ending point without needed to be told every step in between.  As I said previously, everyone claims to be Excel experts, show me that you really do have advanced knowledge." nope, wouldn't. it's probably true. it would be a stereotype. like saying black people like chicken. is it racism if 98% of my black employees eat chicken every day or talk about how much they love chicken?   it's like saying Italian employees are lazy, if I hire 1,000 people and 50% are italian and they're generally always slower than the other 50% how is this racism?   if I don't want to hire women between 20-28 because I'd very likely end up having to pay for 12+ month for an employee that isn't at work, is it sexism not to hire?   women tend to gossip, that isn't sexism that is a fact. you know it, I know it, your girlfriend knows it, but because it's a public discussion point it is now sexist.   I can just say out of my experience the probability that a women brings a bad vibe into the office caused by drama or gossip is incredible higher than a man. am I sexist now? I don't think so, I'd still hire women, I just focus more on specific character features than in the past. similar as googles HR would focus on problem solving skills.  I say this out loud because it might be sexist in the public eye but everybody knows it's true in the majority of cases.  I have female employees and I value them as much as my male employees. doesn't mean I can randomly hire people. has very little idea about how much we earn and how high up we are in terms of income percentile. The first part of this sentence is tough to understand. My daughter was 12 when she told us what she estimated our income to be. She looked up the price of our home, worked backwards using conservative numbers, and was pretty close. Here you are saying your wife doesn't know the family income?  Percentiles are meaningless. There are $60k couples who donate 10%, and there are $300k earners who are not charitable at all, and don't even save.  It's time to have a general budget conversation with her. Perhaps starting with the rate of savings, and show how there's room for charity. If your charitable desire is based on a religious compulsion, share that as well, the 10% is what many feel commanded to share by their maker, and feel that it comes off the top regardless of their income level.  In reality, this issue is not financial, it's about open dialog between 2 people. Money is difficult for some to discuss, but you need to start somewhere. As somebody working in Equity research for one of the top ranked ER producing firms in NA, i'm a little surprised to see so many people down on sellside ER.  It absolutely has value, although it is not as directly tangible as somebody sitting at a desk cold calling and closing sales. Every day we are sending out a huge amount of advisory information to our sales and trading guys, as well as our clients. Our MD and analysts are on the phone constantly with guys on the other end looking to make decisions and wanting clarification.  My group in particular works in a sector where differentiating between a huge number or relatively similar firms that all require incredibly high capital investments is the name of the game, and as such finding ER analysts who can really pick out the important subtle details is very important for identifying real value.  I'll agree that being able to sell is important, but that's always something you have to be good at no matter what it is you're doing. Even in interviews with a hospital you have to sell yourself.  This got a bit long but is SS ER dying? Absolutely not. Is there going to be a concentrating focus on a smaller number of quality analysts? Possibly.  I'm a junior guy, so who knows where this industry is going. All I know is that compared to my friends in entry level roles in S&amp;T and IB, the technical knowledge i'm picking up with regards to my sector is leaps and bounds ahead of them and will give me a great deal of optionality going into the future as to where I want to take my career.  I really like being in ER, and i respect the people I'm lucky enough to work with and I don't think that the guys who really know how to pick the winners are going anywhere. "The IRS gets notified when you: (Note this is not a comprehensive list) As littadv mentioned, banks are required to send a CTR for any transactions over $10,000. They also are obligated to file a SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) for transactions deemed ""suspicious"" by bank policy. These filings are primarily for law enforcement purposes. The IRS may or may not have access to this information. The IRS isn't all-seeing or all-knowing. But -- In the event of an audit, checks do provide a paper trail documenting the origins of your deposits. So if you fail to report income from an ""off the books"" job, or do not fully report self-employment income, deposit records could be used against you. You are particularly vulnerable to this if you are in a profession where ""off the books"" transactions are routine -- plumbers, auto repair, vending machines, etc. At the end of the day, give Caesar his due, and you'll have alot less to worry about." You are correct, I didn't understand that at all. Apparently us consumers don't need to know when our financial information is susceptible to being compromised.   One question: Is your username based on the Redwall book series? I loved all those books. Yeah his card doesn't explain much, but I'm guessing he'll explain everything at the interview. Im more so interested in if there was anything that could be known universally amongst financial jobs that would be beneficial to know. I'm extremely organized and my interpersonal skills I think are what got me the opportunity in the first place, but I'm jw if there are any key financial terms/ processes that would help me go above and beyond. US bank deposits over $10K only need to be reported to FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network- a bureau of the US Department of Treasury) if the deposits are made in cash or other money instruments where the source cannot be traced (money orders, traveler checks, etc). Regular checks and wires don't need to be reported because there is a clear bank trail of where the money came from. If your family member is giving you money personally (not from a business) from a bank account which is outside of the US, then you only need to report it if the amount is over $100K. Note, you would need to report that regardless of whether the money was deposited into your US bank account, or paid directly to your credit cards on your behalf, and there are stiff penalties if you play games to try to avoid reporting requirements. Neither deposit method would trigger any taxable income for the scenario you described.