[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I have mixed feelings about learning that I’m now eligible to start studying and sitting for the exams. After 3 years of college classes and 2 years of working full-time, I’m exhausted but also excited about being another step closer to the goal.

1. I’m hoping to get some feedback about my strategy. I start studying REG and FAR or AUD together with the plan to take them a few weeks apart shortly after busy season (about 8 months away – I don’t want the pressure of having to cram while working 55-60 hour weeks; been there, done that). While waiting to find out if I pass, I’ll continue studying both at about 50% intensity. If I pass them both, then it’s on to AUD/FAR with almost 18 months to pass 2 exams. If I fail one or both, I’ll retake them knowing I probably won’t need to bump up my scores more than 10 or 15 points. Saving BEC for the end will give me a needed rest from “accounting” in the home stretch. How does this sound? Any suggestions/tweaks? I don’t want to kill myself studying and want to take each exam only once; this was the best strategy I could come up with on my own.

2. The other area I’m looking for feedback in is REG. My tax experience is limited to one intro course and volunteering to do about a dozen simple tax returns about 3 years ago. I did well in my recent Business Law 1 course but my other business law course was about 8 years ago, not relevant, and now I’m feeling behind in that area too. About how many hours should I expect to spend to basically learn REG from scratch?

Here’s a little more background about me: The “AccidentalCPA” name comes from the fact that I only decided I wanted to go for the CPA about 18 months ago, after having worked in other, non-accounting related areas of business for 5 years. I’ve been auditing for over 2 years now, originally starting because it seemed like a good path way into other accounting (read: stable) careers and pays well. My experience in auditing and other areas of business has boasted my confidence pretty high for AUD, FAR, and BEC – maybe to the point of overconfidence. However, I’ve “winged” some MCQs in those 3 areas and get about 55-75% correct.

I look forward to the feedback. Thanks!