“Hi, Jeff, I got a 63 on auditing in Q1, 2017. I basically skimmed through the material a week and a half before my test date and I really thought I passed. I'm currently trying to give myself ample time to study for FAR and I have it scheduled for May 12th. I'm torn if I should stop studying for FAR and re-take auditing in April so I don't lose what I grasped and review the material.

My family is very supportive but I'm feeling really down and slowly accepting that between my full-time job and family, I don't have time to study. I have a Masters in Accounting and I am Director of Finance at a non-profit. I'm starting to feel like my drive for the CPA title slowly diminishes as I get older and by the time, I obtain it, I might not be able to reap the benefits of it. I'm 34 years old, any advice?”

34 years old? You have like 30 or 40 years of your career left, so stop it.

And so you know what?

Everyone is busy.

Everyone works full-time and not everyone has a family but everyone has stuff. So what you need to do is you need to budget your time so just like you would do a financial budget, you need to budget your time, so I can study this many hours before work, I can study 30 minutes during lunch, I can study half an hour before I leave for work at night.

And I can study this much time before I go to bed. I can study this much time on Saturday and Sunday.

Friday night, I'm taking that off because I'm spending it with my sweetie, always good to spend time with your sweety. So wait, that's only 15 hours and I need 20 hours.

Oh, wait, you know what? I have a 30-minute commute each way that's five hours a week driving if my spidey math is working correctly.

Let's see. What could I do to get the extra five study hours that I don't really have?

Oh, I know, I'll get the NINJA Audio and fill in the time that way. Problem solved. I had to get a little marketing in there. Okay.

So Kimberly's original question was, she scored a 63 on auditing, didn't really study, and so you should move on to FAR. So you have FAR scheduled for May 12th. Move on to FAR.

You need to re-study auditing anyway. I don't think you really grasped anything so there's nothing lost there. Even if you scored a 74 on auditing and you studied seven weeks, you need to restart your studying anyway. So I would move on to FAR and you'll be fine.