Hi everyone, I found this forum by chance and found a lot of informative information. I’ve been in the financial services industry for over 5 years. Advancement has hit a ceiling for me here and I’ve decided to pursue the CFA designation in hopes of obtaining a new job and advancing in a new sector. I have no direct investment analytical experience and a CFA will not help me advance on my current job. For those who have their designation or know people who has, how likely is it that you will find a good job after you obtain your CFA with no direct investment experience? I spent a lot of time reading over the different threads on the different study materials and have come to the conclusion of using either Schweser or Stalla. I know it has been gone through many times before but any input is appreciated. I am leaning towards Schweser especially since the cost is much cheaper. If I go this route, is the Qbank worth the extra $300? What about the instructor, final exam? Anyone know any places that we are able to share the cost with someone? I will be taking the Level 1 in June 2012 but wondering when the new materials will come out if any for both CFAI and Schweser/Stalla? I do not want to purchase something now and a new edition comes the next month. As far as studying, I will still have to continue working full-time 40-50 per week. I am afraid that there will not be enough time to study. My other fear is studying too early and not retaining any of the information closer to test date. Any recommendations on this end? Since all this material is probably new to me, I’ve decided that my study schedule will look like this: is this something that is recommended or feasible? October 2011 - December 2011 - Read all CFAI books and materials (Should I even bother wasting my time reading these? Is it possible to finish in 3 months while working full-time?) January 2012 - June2012 - Read all Schweser and Q bank Lastly, I expect this to be an intense exam and passing the first time will only be a blessing. If we fail the first time, what is the cost to retake the exam? Will you have to repurchase all the materials from CFAI? I’ve told myself I will allow myself two attempts for each level, so that would be a maximum of 6 years. Hopefully it doesn’t come to this… Thanks everyone for your help and advice.
FYI: You don’t obtain your charter without the experience…You can pass the 3 exams, but that’s it. You need the 4 years of relevant experience first, and in this economy it may be very difficult to get a position that counts just by simply passing the first or 2nd level… I suggest using the ‘search’ function in this forum (located in the toolbar area) before all the people on this site rip into you…this is such a common question that people will get very rude so just use the search function and you will find hundreds of threads on this subject…!!! best of luck.
Yeah, these types of questions are pretty common, so use the search function (it’s hard to find, because “search” is in a tiny font). Just because you need four years of experience to be a charterholder doesn’t mean that passing the exams doesn’t help. You can say “charter pending” if you don’t have the 4 years, and employers know that that means you’ve put in a lot of work to learn about this stuff. The charter definitely helps for establishing credibility, but there are a lot of other things that are working against you these days, such as large numbers of unemployed or underemployed people with experience competing against you. That doesn’t make the charter and exams worthless, by any stretch, but it does make it less helpful to those without the experience than it was during in the boom years. One can still hope that things will one day get better, and if you plan to spend a lot of time managing your own portfolios, the CFA can help you there. Financially, if it saves you from one $3000 mistake over the course of your lifetime, it’s probably paid for itself (though technically you’d have to do some kind of time-value-of-money calculation to be sure). For figuring out how much it costs, you also have to factor in the value of all the hours spent studying, which will probably amount to about 600-1000 total, depending on how effectively you study and whether you have to retake anything. That’s roughly between 1/4 and 1/2 a year of a full time job (or maybe two months of investment banking work with bankers hours).