I failed the CFP® exam the first time.
When I was going through the CFP coursework, my class used to get together on Friday nights after class. There was a place in Pittsburgh called the Red Ring. It’s not there anymore. They had $1 Duquesne Pilsners. We’d grab some drinks and food and talk through the coursework. At one point, over some of those drinks, my class actually voted me the person most likely to pass the exam. I knew the material cold.
And I failed. I’m still not sure why I was so confident in my knowledge of the material. I just took it a second time. I didn’t even really study after the first attempt. I passed.
I tell you that story for one reason. The person most prepared, the person who knows the material best, can still fail this exam. This is not a simple exam. So if you’re sitting down to take it, the question isn’t whether you’re smart enough. The question is whether you have a strategy. Here’s mine.
What This Exam Actually Is
The CFP exam is not hard in terms of the material. It’s an inch deep and a mile wide. As a financial planner, you’re being trained to be the primary care physician of personal finance — a general practitioner, not a specialist. You’re expected to know enough about every area to recognize what’s going on and bring in a specialist when you need one.
This is not a test to figure out how much you know. You can’t memorize your way to success. Instead, it’s a test to see if you can apply the knowledge you have. That is the most important sentence in this entire post.
The majority of people who take this exam do not pass it. About 60% of first-time test takers pass, and the second-time pass rate actually drops — because the people who fail the first time usually never put the work in, and most of them don’t put the work in the second time either. We have a person on our team right now who took the exam five times and passed the fifth. He knew the material the first time. He just couldn’t get out of his own way.
So the first thing to know is that it’s okay to fail. Don’t put pressure on yourself to pass the first time. But also, don’t think you can just walk through the coursework, sit for the prep course, and pass this thing. Hard work alone doesn’t pay off. It’s focused hard work. If I ask you to dig a ditch, that doesn’t mean you can build me a foundation. Without a plan, you’ve just got a ditch. So let’s talk about the plan.
Train Like a Marathoner, Not a Crammer
Your brain is a muscle. When you cram for this exam, you’re doing the equivalent of running four practices a day with no water. Cramming has been shown in just about every study to lower scores, and the more complex the exam, the more cramming hurts you. The CFP exam is complex.
Think about marathon training. A training plan starts really small — your long run week one might be one mile — then stair-steps up while giving your body time to repair. Your longest training run before the race is usually 20 miles, not 26, and you taper for the last few weeks. But CFP test takers do the opposite all the time. They sit down and take full-length practice exams multiple times. They’re running 26 miles before they get to the start line, shredding the muscle they’re going to need on game day.
So translate that into a study plan. Pick one long study day a week — for most people that’s Saturday. Monday through Friday, study 15 minutes a day. Fifteen minutes is small enough that you have no excuse to skip it. Saturday becomes your long day — start at one hour. Sunday is rest, and you take it. As the weeks go on, slowly grow the weekday sessions (15 → 20 → 30) and stretch the Saturday long run. Then taper. The week before the exam, back off significantly — either no studying or a very light amount. That rest week is when your brain actually consolidates everything. It is not laziness. It is part of the training plan.
Study in the Morning if You Can
Once 8 a.m. hits, other people’s priorities start invading yours. If you study at night, you are studying tired, after a full day has already drained you. If you study in the morning, you’re sharper, the house is quiet, the phone isn’t ringing, and you’ve already won the day before most people are out of bed. That said, know yourself — find the window that works for you and protect it. But if you can, do it in the morning.
The Q-Bank Is Your Best Friend
I teach Kaplan, but Brett Danko’s program is the one I’ve seen the most success with on our team. Dalton and Zahn are also popular. Whichever program you pick, all of them have some version of the Q-Bank — the question bank of old exam questions. That bank is the single most important tool you have. Anything you study without the Q-Bank is half the work.
The Q-Bank is your pads-on practice. It’s the closest thing you can get to the real exam without being in the exam. You are not training your brain to read paragraphs or highlight definitions. You are training it to take a fact pattern, recognize what’s going on, and pick the right answer. So in those 15-minute weekday sessions, you’re doing one thing: Q-Bank. Reading your textbook for the third time gives you almost nothing, because there is no textbook on exam day. Exam day is answering questions.
Don’t Delay. Sign Up. Tell People.
I had a former student who finished the coursework and then didn’t take the exam for six years. Life got in the way. When she finally took it, it was much harder, because by then she’d lost most of the material. Her biggest piece of advice for new test takers: don’t delay. Don’t be me.
The longer someone waits after the coursework, the more often they fail. The biggest reason people delay is fear of failure. The second is life — there is never a good time. Something is always in the way. Just go.
The process is simple. The moment you decide you’re sitting for the exam, go to the CFP Board’s website, find the next testing window, put the dates on your calendar, and sign up the second registration opens. Pay the roughly $900. Then tell everyone — your spouse, your coworkers, your classmates. Post it on LinkedIn. Public declarations pull you forward.
Learn the Why, Not the How
I passed the CFP exam without using a calculator. I am not recommending you do that — I’m telling you that you don’t need it the way you think you do. Every time I’ve mentored someone who failed, I ask how many times they used their calculator. The most I’ve ever heard is twenty. If you’re having to do that much calculation, you’ve already lost — you’re going to run out of time and make mistakes. This is a test of application, not knowledge. Memorize less. Understand more.
Positive Self-Talk Starts the Day You Sign Up
Once you sign up, change your language immediately. Don’t say “I’m taking the CFP exam in July.” Say “I’m passing the CFP exam on July 17th.” It sounds cheesy. It works almost stupidly well. Every time you say “I’m passing,” your brain treats passing as the assumed outcome. Start the day you sign up. Don’t break the habit.
The Day Before and the Day Of
Some of what follows sounds trivial. It is not. I have watched smart, well-prepared people tank this exam because of choices in the 24 hours before they sat down.
- Eat fish in the days leading up — there’s research it helps your brain. Don’t try a new food the week of, and don’t eat something the night before that doesn’t agree with you.
- Hydrate, but do not overdo it. So many people fail and tell me afterward they spent half the test running to the bathroom.
- Get seven hours of sleep. No drinking the night before. The exam window is two weeks long — figure it out.
- Drive the route to the testing center the week before, during your actual test-day hours, so a flat tire or a wrong turn isn’t the first time you’re navigating there.
- Use all your time. There is no prize for finishing early. If you’re not a fast test taker, slow down and read every question carefully.
Question Strategy on Test Day
- Read every question carefully and reread the last sentence before you answer. The last sentence is almost always where the actual question lives.
- Watch for the words not, except, and best. When I see a negative word, I say “negative, negative, negative” three times in my head to slow down. It sounds dumb. It works.
- Don’t add facts to a question. Answer it as written. The information given is the only information that matters.
- Use the two-rights, two-wrongs structure. Almost every question has two answers you can eliminate quickly. Get down to a 50/50 and your odds jump.
- Trust your gut. Your first instinct is usually right. Don’t talk yourself out of it without a real reason.
- When you have to truly guess with nothing to go on, pick C — a last resort, not a strategy.
Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit First
If you walk into a question that’s three paragraphs of setup with a complicated calculation buried in it, skip it and come back. Bank the easy points first. Build momentum. Build confidence. Then turn back to the heavy lifting. The other reason this matters is the negative self-talk spiral — grind on a hard question for ten minutes, get it wrong, and you walk into the next one already defeated. Skip, bank wins, come back. I would never answer one of the long, heavy questions until the end of a section.
Mnemonics and Stories Stick
Mnemonics don’t work for everyone, but they work for a lot of people — build silly memory anchors for the rules that won’t stay in your head any other way. The dumber the better. There’s a great book on this called Stories That Stick by Kindra Hall. Music and stories stick. Bullet points do not. If there’s a concept you can’t remember, build a story around it. Make it weird. Make it specific.
Know Yourself
Are you a morning person or a night owl? Study within your hours. Are you a fast test taker or a slow one? If you’re fast, you may need to deliberately slow down; if you’re slow, practice pacing in the Q-Bank. Are you a nervous test taker? Don’t try to white-knuckle it. We had a guy on our team who hired a psychology coach just to deal with his anxiety, and that’s the year he finally passed. There’s no shame in that. Know yourself and address the actual obstacle.
Get an Accountability Partner
A classmate, a spouse, a mentor — anyone who knows your study schedule and will text you once a week to ask how it’s going. That single text will dramatically increase the odds you stay on track. Public commitment changes behavior. Find one person and let them hold you to your plan.
Stop Telling Yourself the Lies
This is the one that takes more people out than any lack of intelligence. I’m too busy — every CFP® Professional I know is busy. I have kids — so do most who pass; I’ve coached three women who took the coursework in their third trimester and all three passed the first time. I’m a career changer — most people who take this are. I’m a bad test taker — how did you get where you are in life? You took tests. You passed them. The CFP exam is not the moment the universe finally exposes you as a fraud. It’s just an exam, and it can be passed with the right preparation and the right strategy. Get out of the head trash.
Why This Matters
When financial planners get better, the world gets better. The number one cause of divorce is money. The number one driver of stress is money. We’re sitting in a profession that gets to walk into people’s worst days with the tools to actually help. So put the work in. Train like a marathoner. Trust the process. Sign up, commit, tell people, take the exam, and pass it. And if you need help along the way, find me on LinkedIn.
Live Intentional.
Greg Furer, CFP®
Founder and Visionary, Beratung Advisors
Generational Planning for Yinz | #ForYinz
Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Beratung Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Beratung Advisors and LPL Financial are separate entities.