@RackedRacing – I studied FAR for a few hours a day for 8 weeks (July 15 thru Sept 15 of last year while collecting unemployment weekly) and then got a new job, thus reducing my study time. From Sept thru Dec I just did an hour or so every day…I burned out on it in early December and *FOOLISHLY* rescheduled my exam until 1st week of January. I didn't pass. I let 30 days go by and forgot even more stuff. I learned some very valuable things from that experience though and the main one was taking too long to study for a part. If you work full time, you can still pass these exams but you have to be religious about studying every day for a few hours. If you are unemployed/self-employed, you should knock each part out in 8 weeks MAX (maybe give yourself a little more time for FAR, as it is very dense with testable material). The stuff has to be at the very front of your brain. My boss, a very long-time CPA (licensed in early 1990s), told me that studying longer than 30 days per part was foolish. I don't agree, that's too short unless you're a genius. But by the time I was in Month 2 or 3 of studying for FAR, I'd forgotten most of the finer details (things not taught in school) of most of the earlier sections. And, to top it off, I knew absolutely nothing about Government, Nonprofit, Partnership accounting or Troubled Debt Restructuring (amongst other smaller topics) and had to read other textbooks in order to really master those topics because my review course (Roger) was not making any sense to me. The best thing to do is skim your review course textbook – not sure which one you have – and identify the topics you're weak on or know nothing about, and then budget your time so you can learn those topics in addition to studying them for exam purposes.
Anyhow – that was probably a much longer answer than you were bargaining for. Nutshell: Finish each part as fast as you can. Don't reschedule your exams unless you have a life-threatening emergency or something. You said you last took your courses 15 years ago…in that case, I'd *really* set aside some time to go back and review stuff before conquering these exams. I took my last courses about a year before starting my CPA exam studies and even then, I'd forgotten a big chunk of stuff.
Keep us posted on how you're doing!
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