Finally took my first attempt at the CFA Level III today after a gruelling six months of preparation. Honestly came out of the exam not feeling too good about whether I will pass, but I think the knowledge that I took away was a lot more important for me. All I can do now is to wait for the dreaded results.
After going through all three levels and putting in probably close to a thousand hours of part-time studying while holding onto a full-time job and not forgetting parenting, I can say this much – working probably takes 50% of our brainpower as compared to studying, which requires full concentration and focus for new content knowledge to be fully understood.
I would probably have found it slightly easier if I had done this as a student, because a student’s full-time job is really to do just that – study. But I guess everything has its place and time and I’ve only just recently found my interest in finance and decide to pursue this further.
So now that the exam is over, I feel a great load taken off me. Suddenly my every available time is not taken up by automatic desire to “hit the books because if not got no time study”. But it’s no time to rest on my laurels, with many property consultation appointments and meetings to discuss side hustles coming up in the next couple of weeks.
A short post just to mark this milestone this time round, but I’ll come back with meatier topics in future!
Making Cents 
Very admirable indeed!
Reminded me of what my wife and I went through in our younger days. With two young kids, we each took turn to do our Masters degree part time, attending lessons at night after work each day. I did my part time masters at NUS while my wife did hers at NTU, after I completed mine. It was really tough those days. I recall having to skip lessons quite frequently because of work commitment. But we pulled through it and after that we went to the US to pursue another masters degree. The NUS part time masters was in a way a preparatory one to get my brain tuned to studying and recalling all the technical knowledge from my bachelors’ degree days. It helped me greatly in my US masters degree.
Am glad all this is behind us now.
My wife has already retired more than two years ago. And I am not that far behind. We are 62.
Good luck on your journey.
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Thanks Nick for sharing your story. Will take inspiration to push ourselves while we are younger so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labour in the later years!
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Congrats on completing the CFA Level III exam. When will the result be announced? Wishing you all the best!
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I think they said 4-6 weeks. Honestly not too sure but will keep my fingers crossed meanwhile!
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Nice Handwriting 👍🏻
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Thank you!
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