Actuary?

[Special At Specialist]

I'm considering becoming an actuary, just a few things that are holding me back:

1) What sort of maths is it? I love pure maths, but I hate statistics. If it's maths like calculus, differential equations and linear algebra, then I would love the course, but if it's all statistics and financial maths (like calculating interest), then I will probably lose interest very quickly.

2) How much money can I make whilst I'm at university? And how long does the university course go for? I don't want to be stuck at my parent's house for the next 10 years. I intend to move out before I turn 21 (possibly even next year), so I'll need to be able to support myself whilst studying.

3) What is job security like? If I get the job, am I likely to keep it? Will the salary still be high in a few decades? Will actuaries still be highly sought after in the future?

[Greatness]

1) From the course structures and what I've seen so far, it's a bit of everything in that you need to have knowledge in other areas of math. It's a lot of probability, statistics and calculus, but TT can probably go into more detail.
2) At Melbourne, 3 years Undergrad (Comm) and 1 year Honours which gives you parts 1 and 2 qualification out of 3 parts. Then you can work while studying for part 3 independently. I'm not sure what kind of jobs will be available for you while you're at uni, most probably some office job, filing, data entry or something but there would be very limited jobs I'd imagine, you're probably better off sticking with some other part time job. If you're serious about getting parts 1 and 2 qualification during uni then you'd have to study pretty hard, it's not easy considering the scores you need to get in certain units to pass and certain scores in exams.
3) Very secure. There were 2094 qualified actuaries in Australia in Jan 2012 http://www.actuaries.asn.au/Sitefunctions/faq.aspx so you'd be in pretty high demand at that stage. I'd say the salary would remain relatively high unless there is a huge influx of qualified actuaries, even then you'd have a very nice salary.

Have a read here: http://beanactuary.org/ and http://www.actuaries.asn.au/

[tram]

1) What sort of maths is it? I love pure maths, but I hate statistics. If it's maths like calculus, differential equations and linear algebra, then I would love the course, but if it's all statistics and financial maths (like calculating interest), then I will probably lose interest very quickly.

It's a combinations of statistics and probability and using that in a financial context. If you don't want to work with interest (in both senses of the word, ba doom tsh, actuary jokes!), then doing actuarial would be a pretty bad idea. There is definitely scope for utilising pure maths, models for insurance and finance (despite the name) is virtually all pure maths and you can do a diploma of maths on the side if that's your thing.

[paulsterio]

financial maths (like calculating interest), then I will probably lose interest very quickly.

since when was financial mathematics "like calculating interest" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_finance - google is your friend

[TrueTears]

financial maths (like calculating interest), then I will probably lose interest very quickly.

since when was financial mathematics "like calculating interest" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_finance - google is your friend

To add on what Paul said, even IF it's just "calculating interest" there is certainly much more to finance than just calculating simple interest and compound interest, it is not that easy to just "calculating interest", sometimes various mathematical tools are needed.

[tram]

In Special At Specialist's defence, the early years of actuarial is pretty heavy on just using interest in it's many shapes and forms (which granted, as TT says, can still include some interesting maths). Heck, our second year text book is called "compound interest and it's applications".

In the first two years of coursework we've been pretty much restricted to the calculations of cash flows of different financial instruments. It definitely is a far cry from pure maths number theory.