Passed CFA L2 -- Thank God, Can't Wait to Get my Life Back
Fellas
Honestly this is just a shameless self-plug but just to get it off the chest, passed CFA L2. Cannot tell you how relieving it feels, after L3 this yr I am done & can get to enjoying my 20s to the fullest. To those out there who are not 120% committed to AM / WM, DON'T GET THE CFA. It is a massive time sink & if you fail (which thank god I never have or otherwise I likely couldn't have mustered up the motivation to study again) you just lost a stupid amount of your life.
That's all folks
P.S. For those who are hard committed to those careers, best of luck. CFAI and Schweser were the tools I used for L1 / L2 and they worked like a charm
Congrats!
Thanks big dog
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Sitting L2 in August. Starting prep now. Blows. In hindsight, is there anything you wish you did differently to better prepare, or would recommend doing for those of us yet to sit? Congrats homie, mad stoked for you.
Appreciate it man. So I studied 2.5 months but studied like a dog during that time. Must've clocked ~250hrs on that time alone. If I could do it again though, I would NOT recommend that. Would've started with 4 months and clocked ~300hrs to feel fully comfortable. Had a feeling I passed or failed within a margin of 10 questions (of 88 total) when I left the exam, just didn't know which way it would swing -- you don't want that. You want to feel good after leaving the testing center & to do that it really is what people say -- put in the 300hrs. That said, I dunno about starting 6-8months early because you might just burn out / lose steam. For L3, I'm thinking about starting 5 months prior the Aug exam (maybe even 4). Just depends on your level of motivation & personality type
On L2, other thing that really helped was focusing most of my time of practice q's. Read the Kaplan stuff once and then just practice. Eventually you'll memorize the formulas & pick up the flow of questions
Appreciate the advice here. When you say read the Kaplan stuff, did you just go through the Schweser online shit or actually read through every page of the paper books? Feel you on the burnout thing... might hit pause... great advice, thanks bro.
1) Congrats
2) dont sleep on level 3 many people ride the high of 2 and get complacent
Congratz. Sitting L1 mid-Feb, did 235h in 5.5 months to go through the material. Still got just under 1 month to do the 4 mocks and memorize more formulas. I'm just using the CFA Institute's online study center - haven't read any of the books or anything. My experience with their online study center is that the material is 99.9% good, the questions 90% of the time match the relevant topics (the remaining 10% is the main problem that a lot of people have with it - shit being asked before it's covered, e.g. 1 thing I remember is diluted EPS calculations).
Im in IB and my fucking dumbass then ambitious self decided to take L1 and L2 on Dec and May respectively, prior to starting IB in June. Fuck me so much it was so pointless for me and im so burned out now i want to live my life bruh, if only there was no covid i would have travelled the world prior to starting IB but instead dumbass me decided to grind and take the CFA!
for me best cfa prep materials was mark meldrum he goated
Hate to hear this....man do you have a strong interest in AM / WM? I assume you're also looking at HF / PE (which don't give a crap about CFA at all, some HFs actually look down on getting the CFA)
My two cents as someone who was a senior in college a few years ago, that time is priceless. I would kill to go back to my senior year and relive that time like a degenerate. Let me be clear because I don't want you to lose this -- you will NEVER get back this time. Ever. Period. Even if you do grad school, while it'll be somewhat of a break from work it will never be like your undergrad. This is why even though initially after graduating I was a bit envious of those who finished CFA L1 before graduating, now a few years removed I realize that was a dumb move. You have the next 5+yrs to do the CFA before you even have to worry about other obligations in your life (maybe 10+). That can wait.
I know IB kids are prone to maximizing their optionality (hence going into IB!) but this is a massive time waster if you are not 120% sure you want a career in AM / WM. Every other part of finance it is not necessary at all, can be a nice to have in some parts and it is denigrated in others. So please for the love of god give this some serious thought
I hear you for sure (to clarify I'm an AN1 in IB), the longer I'm in IB the more I value time and happiness (at whatever cost!!). Man I wish I could go back and do so much more things differently than just grinding and what not.. you really do never get back time like what we had in Uni and high school especially, wish I could go back in time and yell this at myself x100
I actually did enjoy learning the CFA materials and do enjoy investing, but ended up in IB due to converting from my SA stint and never really looked around at other roles after getting the offer since I was joining a BB (I thought to myself what's not to like right?) Ha if only I could take a glimpse at what work and life's like now (but i guess grass always greener on the other side anyways)
To whoever's in Uni reading this who has an IB role lined up and is looking to be proactive by studying CFA or taking financial modelling courses - go spend time getting drunk, travelling, with friends, wasting time, or whatever you want to do cause I promise the knowledge you lack from NOT studying CFA or taking financial modelling courses will not compare to the experience ( and happiness!!) you'll have gained. And besides you can always just study CFA on the job or if you're in IB you'll learn all modelling on the job anyways, but you can't relive experiences you could've had with the amount of time you had (unfortunately for me it was during COVID so couldn't travel :()
Contemplating pursuing the CFA and I have to ask why did you try to jam a level in 2.5 months? The way I see it is if you spend 1hr/day that's 10 months which isn't that bad and 1hr/day is far from "losing your 20s".Being delayed by a year or two to get the charter is not that big of a deal in decades long career. Most online courses will pace your learning as well to adjust for the exam date you specify.
I did this and there is no absolute good reason for doing it this way, and infact doing it this way the materials don't even really stick with you in long-term. I spent around 2.5 - 3 months studying L2 and I really honestly couldn't even tell you half the shit I read in Fixed Income or Derivatives lol (and I passed above 90th percentile in L2!)
Why did I cram studying into 2.5 months? Because I'm a lazy bum is the honest answer, couldn't work up the motivation to do it until around that time. Also only started studying for L1 one month before the exam (so it's a pattern lol), probably put in 60-80hrs (luckily came from a finance background). Which in hindsight, I realize after 1 hard week of studying, you're past 80% of the hump after after the second week you're just cruising on studying so definitely start earlier
It wasn't absolutely awful, did a lot of studying during work time (shhhh) and worked out regularly, but had maybe half an hour to myself Mon-Fri. On Sat / Sun, I still regularly hung out with friends but never drank heavily during that time (casual drinks here and there). With Covid it was easy to justify not going clubbing / bar hopping (lost most of my taste for it anyway with Covid & now being in my mid 20s). Instead just went out to nice restaurants / played video games / watched movies with friends which tbh I just enjoy more these days. That said the run up to Thansgiving sucked as I was cramming hard during that time
I will warn you against the 1hr/day for 10 months -- that is a terrible, terrible study plan for two reasons. 1) Your motivation will flag after 4-5 months knowing the end is still nowhere in sight and 2) you will forget a lot of the material studying so slowly. There's a happy medium which I estimate is starting 4-5 months before the exam which I will definitely do for L3
Agree with this, 4 months is a sweet spot. 1hr before work 1 hr after little bit more on the weekends. Retain the material without burning out.
Oh boy you haven’t seen Level 3 contents
In what sense do you mean?
Good stuff. If you're re-taking any of the exams more than once though, you're not cut out for this field. I know it's a hot-take but I stand by it. Don't understand the people who are taking it 3-4 times, like wtf would you nuke your life that much
Can someone summarize the study materials and study plans they used? For example was it CFAI first then Schweser? Did you read all the pages on CFAI or just go straight to the questions and vocab flash cards?
Thanks!
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