Posts Tagged ‘CFP Exam’

Clearing the CFP Exam…

February 3rd, 2011 Vijaianand

The wait was over last month when I finally got my CFP Exam result. It was a mixed feeling when I opened the result. I wasn’t so sure about the result because of the performance. I was told by many that I will pass but I myself wasn’t really sure. It was a tough exam and I was told by instructors that nobody can be sure about passing after taking the exam.

It took almost 8 weeks to get result because of the special grading process carried out by CFP Exam board to take every possible situation to grade the exam. It is little robust but it seems to work in favor of candidates in many conditions. To know more about the grading process, check out this article. Also they won’t annouce the results publicly instead send out the result to each candidate via post mail. I wasn’t here to see it immediately as I was in vacation in India. I paid visit to the mail box as soon I got home.

I opened the mailbox and saw loads of letters and ads. It took me a bit to find out a envelop from CFP board. I found and opened up to see the form to send my experience proof. So I turn it around and found the Congratulation letter. I just wanted to yell out loud which did as soon I got home. It was a surprise for sure. There is no score or percentage. It was just merely a comparison of my performance with the threshold level.  I scored 4 modules little above threshold but 1 module just about and 1 module just close to the level.

Anyway, I am happy to pass as one among 51.3% people who passed the Nov 2010 CFP exam. It was an amazing feeling. I never worked so hard after my bachelors and never had to wait so long to see the result. It was worth the wait for sure.



Special Thanks to my wife who always supported me on this adventure. Thanks to all CFP Course Tutors, CFP Dalton Review group of instructors.



The journey is not over yet. I just reached one more destination in getting my CFP. I still have to get through the last hurdle of showing my work experience for atleast 3 years. Let’s see how it goes and will keep you all posted.

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My CFP Certification Quest – Part 2

December 6th, 2010 Vijaianand

This year is almost over as December is upon us. It has been 2 weeks since I took my CFP exam and 4-6 weeks remaining for the sit and wait game to be over so I can get the results. 

When I posted a blog last June about my CFP Certification quest, I just completed the CFP Online Course and crossed the first hurdle(education eligibility requirement of the CFP board) towards getting the CFP Certification.  Next I wanted to take on the biggest challenge to appear for the CFP exam in Nov. I want to face the exam well prepared because I kept hearing it was a tough one. In the last post, I promised to share my experience about the CFP course from BU, so let me talk about that before going to the review classes.

Boston University CFP Course

I signed for BU course in Nov 2008 when they ran very good special of $1737 to celebrate their anniversary or something. I just happen to come across while I was searching for CFP course providers. I quickly did comparison with other providers and their offerings for the course. It came out BU is the least expensive with some good history of passing rate. So I signed up for the Online Self study course hoping to study myself which will be vaild for limited time of 18 months only.



—  Course Content

No predesigned study material from BU. You can pay extra $500 for the books they recommend and they will send to you or you can buy it yourself. I bought most of my books myself online at half.com and amazon.com for better price and saved few hundred dollars. I first took few weeks to review the course material and made decision to continue otherwise I had the option to discontinue within a month and get refund.

I started studying more religiously by finishing the reading assignment from the book followed by reading online material. It took me almost 4 months to finish my first module. I was bit disappointment but I don’t know how to speed it up because you only got limited time to spend after full time work and family time. I was doing my level best and moved along.



— Assignments

There is no particular home work or assignments given by tutors since there is none for the self study route. You are your own teacher to gauge yourself. So I just tried to keep up with the reading assignments they had for each module for atleast 2 modules. For the rest 4 modules, I skipped the reading assignments and only concentrated on the online materials because I felt most of them are covered in the online material. So its up to each individual capability and time availability to select their path.


— Course Support

As I told, I skipped the reading assignmens and started going thru online material only for rest of the 4 modules to go faster. Even that took almost 2-3 months for each module. I felt the time period is short for self study if you want to do both books and online material. I only need tutor clarification few times in the whole of my study time. It wasn’t bad. Once you send the email, you get reply with clarification in 1-2 days. They only answer the questions on the topics not on the exam questions directly. They made sure I understood the problem first and always asked my opinion about possible answers and explanation before before giving directions to find the answer myself. That helps to go through the material again and find the answers.


— Course Exams

They had exams for every module. It contined 50 questions, 42 multi-choice questions with 2 case studies that had 4  questions each.  I had to get above 73% to pass the exam. I was allowed to take as many times as possible to pass and improve my scores. It was a big bonus so I took exams multiple times and improved my score as much as possible to almost “A” to most of the modules. But I had to go through wrong questions and analyse them deep enough to find their answers so I can try another time to score better. It seems like they have set of questions and never gets repeated often so it’s different most of the time.

I was able to complete all the module just 10 days before the end of the expiration and got the CFP course certificate in August 2010. If you want my referral to get some course discount with BU, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Signing up for Review Class

I waited for my course certificate to arrive before signing up for the review class. Just to be sure that I have completed it successfully and no issues. Meanwhile, I started doing my research to find out a good Review class which has more options and avenues to get more exposure to all topics necessary for the exam.  Since I took the self study course, this time I want to take choose the class that gives both Traditional and online classes if possible so I can get the feel for the topics personally from the instructor. There were lot of review classes available starting from $1000 to $1500 and will talk more about in the next post.

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My CFP Certification Journey

June 18th, 2010 Vijaianand

This week I am so happy and mentally relaxed, feeling a big sigh of relief.  I finally completed the CFP course and I am so excited about it.  Yes, I did it after all!!

Many of you know or might have saw it listed as one of my goals is to get CFP Certified by 2010. Completing 6 course series is one of the education eligiblity requirement to sit for CFP Certification.  While I am thrilled about finishing the course, I know my journey is not over yet. I just crossed half of the ocean. I need to cross another half and hope to make to the other side soon!!

Like my friends you might ask, what is CFP actually? What is the big deal in getting CFP certified? Let me explain a bit if you didn’t google about it.

What is CFP?

Many say CFP certification has reputation similar to ceritifications like CPA and tough to pass close to bar exams. It is recognized as standard among those who seek the knowledge and skills necessary to objectively assess their clients’ current financial status, identify problem areas, and recommend appropriate actions–in short, to provide comprehensive, client-based financial planning. With trouble economy, consumers are looking for trusted and authority advisors. CFP is a symbol of authority for planners to show their expertise in financial planning to help guide clients in the right path of financial well being. 



What is CFP certified means?

CFP ceritification is administered by CFP board which enforces strict rules and ethics to be followed by the planners. This gives great level of comfort to consumers who wants to talk about their personal financial matters and their future growth. It is difference as simple as asking advice from nobody or certified plumber to fix your faucet.

The Certified Financial Planner® or CFP® Professional Education Program has defined the financial planning profession since 1972 and has been the basis on which many other financial planning education programs have been developed.  


To become a CFP certificant, you must get thru (5 E’s):

  1. Eligibility – To start with, certification will require an undergraduate bachelor’s degree from an accredited college.
  2. Education – Satisfy an educational requirement taking CFP board-registered program if you don’t have finance background.
  3. Exam – Pass the CFPCertification exam: a 10-hour test that takes 1.5 days (four hours on Friday and six hours on Saturday), conducted three times during the year (typically on the third Friday and Saturday of March, July and November).
  4. Experience – Acquire three years of qualifying full-time work experience (or equivalent). Qualifying work experience is defined by the CFP board as “the supervision, direct support, teaching or personal delivery of all or part of the personal financial planning process to a client.
  5. Ethics – Agree and adhere to the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility

As of now, I just got through 2 E’s and need to get pass another 3 E’s.

Motivation and Experience

I even asked myself, Why am I doing CFP? Being a software guy by education and profession, what is the need and motivation to take on this leap effort?  The answer in short, I am passionate about money management. At the same time, I want to share my wealth of every day successful experience about money and help guide others. In the blog flocked internet era, anybody who has small experience are also posting and sharing their experience. How can I differentiate myself and show authoritative. A person is only considered as an authoritative source only when he has formal education and experience.

Today, I share my knowlege and experience through this money matters website and other avenues as ordinary individual. But I want to be an authoritative source. I have motivator that’s Mr. Ray Lucia, CFP who can talk and answer almost any type of financial questions. I want to be like him, may be work for him some day. Whether I make money or not, I want to help middle class individual with their money and financial issues. 

One more thing, I like to challenge myself now and then. I get bored if I don’t do that. I took the challenge to run a marathon in 2002 just after starting to run in 2001. I completed in 3 hrs 41 mins. So this is another challenge which can help others too. I feel this is even bigger than Marathon. I have done many Microsoft certifications in the past and I thought it would be a breese.  I was proven wrong. I signed up for Self study course with Boston University CFP program. The program was well explained and also got good support from tutors. I paid only 60% of fees compared to other insitutions charge because I signed up the right time to get a very good offer.

 
I started at Dec 17,  2008 and took me till Jun 15, 2010. There were hundreds of topics discussed in detail manner. I thought of completing well in advance but once I started it took me 4 months to finish my first course and another 3 months to do the next one. I realized, I won’t be able to complete all of the course in 18 months time period given by BU. I have heard many people took 3-5 years via self study path and I don’t want to take that long. So I decided to speed it up and start to put more time and completed one by one in every 2 months by skipping the reading assignment.

I am so glad it is over and my long study hours are done for now.  It took around one and half year while working full time and having another baby along the way. It is well worth an experience to learn and connect every aspect to the real life scenorio. But it wasn’t an easy task. I am happy to have accomplished part of my 2010 goal.

For all these, I owe a Big Thank you to my lovely wife. She stood behind me, pushed me by reminding and encouraging me all the time to get this course completed.

Next Step

I am taking a break for couple of months. I am so close in getting my 2nd rental property and need to  work on it to put up for rental. After that, I plan to sign up for review classes in August to prepare for the Nov exams. I have confident and hope to clear the exams in the first attempt and plan to write about it. 
 

Image source from bionicturtle.com

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