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Morningstar Announces FCSI Acquisition

MSToday I learned from Financial Advisor Magazine’s breaking news email that Morningstar announced an agreement to buy FCSI, the makers of dbCAMS+ software.  This is important news to me as my firm is a current user of dbCAMS as mentioned here, here, and here at FPPad.com

Click here to see the article on Financial Advisor Magazine.

Click here to see a similar article on Business Week.

We also received an email from Chris Boruff at Morningstar’s advisor channel that provided more specific details on the timetable of the acquisition and what it might mean to current dbCAMS users.

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How Good is Ken Zahn’s Live Review?

Ken Zahn Live Review materials

The Ken Zahn Live Review study materials are massive, but they will help you pass the CFP® Certification Examination

 

Ken Zahn is a leading provider of live review courses for the CFP® Certification Examination. Learn about my experience as I went through the Ken Zahn Live Review.

Originally published in August 2008, this article was updated in March 2014.

In June of 2008, I traveled to Los Angeles to attend Ken Zahn’s Live Review course to prepare for the July 2008 CFP® Certification Exam. As luck would have it, Ken Zahn himself was the instructor for my four-day review course.

Ken Zahn’s territory covers most of the United States with courses in 15 major cities, but each exam cycle Ken Zahn offers instruction in two east coast locations and one west coast city.

Ken Zahn isn’t the only live review provider for the CFP® Certification Examination, as the compay competes with similar offerings from Kaplan, Dalton, Keir, and the College for Financial Planning.

As of early 2014, Ken Zahn’s review course fee is $975 (increasing by just $50 since 2008 when I took the course), which is comparable to what most live review programs charge. You can find Internet-based courses for lower cost, but they’re less expensive because they’re not in-person classes.

So how good was the review course?

In a word: excellent.

Pre-study Materials

About two or three months before the scheduled class, Ken Zahn mails a box containing over 800 pages (400 double-sided!) of pre-study material. The pre-study material is organized into the six main topics of the financial planning process:

  • General Principles
  • Insurance
  • Investments
  • Income Tax
  • Retirement
  • Estate Planning

Each topic is divided into 10 sections with a short review test at the end of each section. Topics are followed by a mock exam that contains multiple choice questions and one or two sample case scenarios.

In all there are over 1,800 practice questions covering the 78 principal topics established by CFP Board effective in 2012. Difficult concepts or those featuring many alternatives (e.g. retirement plans, anyone?) were simplified with Ken Zahn’s “roadmaps” or graphs and charts aggregating the data into one easy to navigate reference.

Connect with Local “Zahnbies”

Form your own "Zahnbies" study group to increase your odds of exam success

Form your own “Zahnbies” study group to increase your odds of exam success

 

This is the first important thing you should do to increase your odds of passing the CFP® Certification Examination!

Prior to registering, I connected with five other colleagues in a local Ken Zahn study group we affectionately called the “Zahnbies.”

We called ourselves Zahnbies because we basically ate, breathed, and slept the Ken Zahn pre-study materials for seven weeks. On our own, we typically averaged between 15 and 20 hours of study time each week (and many of us had the weight gain to show for it!) 

Then we met each Wednesday evening for two to three hours to address our questions and discuss any difficult topics in detail.

So yes, when Ken Zahn says you should study about 120 to 140 hours prior to the Live Review class, that’s what you should expect.

This is the second important thing you should do: Follow the schedule provided by Ken Zahn. Deviate from the schedule at your own risk!

Comprehensive Live Review

As one of my colleagues so eloquently said, attending Zahn’s Live Review is like making four non-stop flights to Europe. You’re basically sitting in a room with 65 other people reviewing scintillating study material for 11 hours each day.

All the while, Ken Zahn strikes down the occasional “what-if” question from the students by responding, “If you start asking ‘what-if’ during the exam, you will fail!”

StudyOur pre-study material was replaced with a consolidated (read: distilled) Live Review book of about 300 single-sided pages. As the class progressed, I realized that the Live Review covers just enough of the material to help you pass, not to help score 100% on the exam.

This is reality: once I accepted the fact that I was not going to ace the exam and all I needed was a passing score, studying became more palatable.

This is the third important thing you must remember: Ken Zahn’s idiom is, “If you start to fight the exam and try to be perfect, you will fail!”

Despite the agony of sitting in a windowless hotel conference room for four straight days, Ken Zahn manages to keep the review course moving at a decent pace and retains attention by interjecting practical stories relating to the material.

One thing’s for sure, I won’t forget about taking losses on Section 1244 stock due to one of Zahn’s failed company experiences back in the 1970s. And by the fourth day, we were all experiencing Pavlovian responses at 2:00pm in anticipation of the sweet treats delivery for the afternoon break.

Finally, Zahn left us with his last words of wisdom.

This is the fourth important thing you must remember: “Know the truths, as the truth will set you free,” says Zahn.

As clichéd as it sounds, it’s completely true. If you understand what is true for each question (especially the roman-numeral style questions, such as “I, III, and IV only”) and forget about the other fluff CFP Board puts in as distractors, you will pass.

Post Live Review Study

I had about three weeks of time between the Live Review course and the day of the exam.

Again, Ken Zahn supplied an excellent schedule covering the things I should do day-by-day to stay on schedule. All studying used the abridged Live Review materials and rarely referenced pre-study materials.

By this point, if you had to frequently review the in-depth pre-study, your outlook of passing wasn’t looking good.

Zahn also added a large volume of content and study material to his website, www.kenzahn.com.  If I remember correctly, there were six mock exams consisting of 60 multiple choice questions.

There were also about a dozen comprehensive case scenarios that I found the most helpful. The most difficult cases included S Corporations and all the bells-and-whistles that go with them, and reviewing Ken Zahn’s answers taught me how to approach similar questions come exam time.

In addition to the study schedule, Zahn provided several excellent test-taking strategies for the day of the exam:

  • Eat a good breakfast
  • Arrive early
  • Wear earplugs

One of the most relevant for me was the strategy for approaching the cases. His advice on when to tackle the case scenarios and when to skip them was the most valuable for me.

Day of the Exam

TestCFP Board carefully protects the content of its CFP® Certification Exams. Nevertheless, I found that many questions had the look and feel of Ken Zahn’s study questions (perhaps that’s because it’s true the other way around: Zahn’s materials are similar to the format of the exam).

I swear more than once I had the feeling Ken was standing over my shoulder saying, “This question is just like the pre-study. Just remember the truths and you’ll pass.”

I exited the two-day exam feeling fairly confident about my performance, a feeling that seemed to be in the minority of those I spoke with after the exam.

I suppose my experience illustrates how well prepared I felt due to the intense review performed over the previous three months. I think this speaks volumes about Ken Zahn’s materials, live review, and exam strategies.

Without the live review, I believe I would have allowed the exam to beat me and I would have been deflated.

Pass or Fail

Six weeks later, we all waited anxiously for the white envelope to be delivered from CFP Board. For me, the delivery was a moment for celebration as I passed the CFP® Certification Exam.

Nevertheless, I try not to allow my exam results to influence how I feel about Ken Zahn’s curriculum. For the money, I feel like I received excellent preparation materials and instruction.

If you’re considering Ken Zahn along with the other live review providers, I believe the best choice you can make is to sign up with Ken.

I don’t get paid to mention or promote Ken Zahn at all; I’m just a guy that went through the process, followed the instructions, and felt like I crushed the exam.

My Results Using Succession Registry

ShakeBack in May I wrote an initial review of David Drucker and Kristopher Behn’s Succession Registry website here on FPPad. My firm signed in as a Rainmaker and posted an offering for a new position. What were the results of using Succession Registry?

Unfortunately, Succession Registry added nothing to our firm’s search for its next employee. We filled the position through other channels. In addition, I have no idea where we went wrong with our offer. Did our offer ever show up in search results or consolidated listings? How many views did our offer have? Did anyone revisit our offer multiple times?

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Quickly Change Managed Accounts in dbCAMS

CAMS Command Window ThumbThe portfolio management software (PMS) currently used in my firm is dbCAMS+.  While many advisers and back-office support staff that I talk to feel dbCAMS+ lacks powerful features, I find that there are hidden gems in the software if you know where to find them.

dbCAMS Command Window

For example, I discovered the Command Window buried in dbCAMS’ Tools menu not too long ago.  The Command Window allows scripts, both basic and complex, to be executed in order to modify database information.  One example where the Command Window has proved to be very powerful is when I need to change non-managed assets of a client to managed assets as they increase their level of service with the firm.

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FPPad.com in Financial Planning’s NexGen Coverage

Financial Planning MagazineDuring the FPA NexGen conference, I had the privilege of meeting Gabrielle Whelan from SourceMedia, Inc.  Stacy Schultz of Financial Planning Magazine also attended the conference, but I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with her.

Gabrielle recently posted her review of the FPA NexGen conference on Financial Planning’s website.  Click here to read her article titled Notes on NexGen.  I’m very thankful that she included a link to FPPad.com in her review.

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NAPFA Membership Continues To Grow

NAPFA LogoBack in April, NAPFA announced that its membership passed 2,000 for the first time. Click the links for coverage from Investment News and Financial Advisor Magazine.

However, the figure of 2,000 isn’t made up by just financial advisers.

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FPA and NAPFA Embrace YouTube

YouTubeOne piece of new information I picked up at the NexGen 2008 Conference is the presence of new financial planning channels on YouTube.

First on the YouTube bandwagon was NAPFA as they launched a channel, NAPFAVideos, in April. A few months later in June, FPA launched their channel, FPATelevision.

In addition to the launch of the new channel, FPA has announced a video submission contest. Video entries should address the contest theme How NOT to do Financial Planning.

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Give David Drucker Your Support

CandlesI just learned through a message from Bob Veres that David Drucker’s wife Susan died unexpectedly.  A community blog has been set up at the following site where you can communicate your thoughts and compassion to David and his family.

http://virtualofficenews.blogspot.com

David is an incredibly influential figure in the financial planning community, and it’s a privilege to be a part of that community which can offer support in this tragic time.

 

 

Is ByAllAccounts Reading My Blog?

At the end of the first quarter, I posted an entry to my blog titled Done With Quarterly Reports; How About You?  I discussed how I inherited a laborious quarterly report process that involved a lot of manual entry of captive account data and ended with reports generated one-by-one.

We’re now using ByAllAccounts to streamline data reconciliation and are generating batch reports from dbCAMS.  So I bragged about it in April on FPPad.

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Join Me at FPA NexGen 2008

FPA NexGen 2008I’m going to be out of the office for the remainder of July.  First, I’ll be out the remainder of this week preparing for the CFP® Certification Examination held on Friday and Saturday.  I feel well prepared after the Ken Zahn Live Review course I took at the end of June.  I hope to post additional details about the review course and associated materials in August.

Following the exam, I’ll be away will be attending the upcoming FPA NexGen 2008 conference in St. Cloud, MN July 25-27.  If you’ll be at the conference too, make sure to find me and say hi.  I’ll be one of the few with a red goatee in the audience (check out my LinkedIn profile for a picture).

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