What are some careers that can come from majoring in business and finance in college?

Check out O*Net, a good overview of occupations and skills: http://www.onetonline.org/find/quick?s=business+finance

Since you're interested in owning your own business, make sure to learn about entrepreneurship in school or in your job. See if there's a small business or a start-up business you can join part-time while you're still in school. You'll see the craziness and excitement that comes from creating your own job.

I'm curious: Why are you thinking about majoring in business and finance? Something must have given you the idea... What was it?

I majored in finance in college, and when you graduate, there are basically two big options available to you. The first option is to work in the finance department at a company or nonprofit organization. If you select this option, you will be helping your employer to make decisions about how they manage their money, and you will help them to ensure that the money they handle is properly tracked (in close cooperation with the accountants, whose job is to account for the money). An example job title might be "financial analyst" at the bottom, and "Chief Financial Officer" (reporting directly to the CEO of the company) at the top. The second option is to work in the financial services industry. This is an industry which uses financial concepts or the financial markets to provide services to companies, nonprofits, and governments. The range of services they provide is quite large, but I'll give you a few examples, along with the relevant jobs:

Research analysts: Typically working for large investment banks, analysts are paid to become extremely knowledgable about certain industries, and provide advice to large investors about those industries. You have to become a true expert. There's a lot of researching, writing, and phone calls involved in this job.

Sales & trading: When a company or investment fund wants to make a trade, they often call a salesperson who works at a bank to execute on that trade. The traders are people who actually buy or sell investment securities based on either their bank's clients or for their bank directly. It can be a very high stress occupation. Read the book "Liar's Poker".

Investment bankers: Bankers help their clients get money, buy companies, sell companies, or figure out novel financial solutions to financial problems the company faces. At the bottom, the title is usually "Investment banking analyst", and at the top the title is usually something like "Managing Director". It's a very demanding job. Read "Monkey Business".

Investors: Several of my friends became investors. This includes analysts at hedge funds, private equity funds, pension funds, and a whole bunch of other funds. Generally speaking, this job involved researching investment opportunities, discussing them with colleagues, and managing a portfolio of investments. It's rare to go straight into investing after college. Usually you've got to work in another field first, such as investment banking.

I'm not listing all of the careers, but I hope this helps. You should also note that you can switch between the finance function (option 1) and the financial services careers (option 2), but it's not always very easy. In general I would say that finance is a pretty interesting field, filled with lots of smart people! Keep exploring. The next question you might want to ask could be about a specific sub-career in finance, or maybe about what you can do now in high school to get ready for a certain finance career...