I have no finance back ground at all and am mom to a then 4.5 year old. I did not want to put my life on hold for CFA, so I started a lot in advance . I did the CFAI texts, QBank (only a couple of months prior to the exam) and 2 CFAI sample exams. I did not log the actual hours, but I usually woke up early most days to study (4:00 a.m) . Couldnt really use the commute (i drive) or the luch hour productively (i mostly work thru lunch to finish stuff since i generally do not work late). I started sometime in Feb/March, but i doubt all my hours were productive. I got 51-70% in derivatives, but i got > 70 in all other sections.
About 300 should be enough…Do questions more than anything else.
Studied about 125-150 hours and started in early October… I realize Level 2 will take quite a bit more time, but I found having a background in accounting (I hold a CPA license) and finance helped quite a bit. Only had to skim over the financial statement analysis which saved me a good chunk of time. I didn’t score to well, but a Pass is a Pass.
About 100hrs or less. But that said I felt that I’d fail after I finished writing the exam since I had problems with about 35%-40% of the questions, so don’t learn from me. 
supersharpshooter Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am curious as to how long it took people with no > finance background (or a limited finance > background) to get prepared for the exam. It took me 600 hrs approx to pass the LI. I literally come from a 0 finance background.
Sounds intense. I am familiar with about 40% of the material on the exam (math major, a lot of finance/econ electives.) Hopefully I can get away with around 400 + video watching time.