Why Smart CFP Candidates Fail - and How to Overcome It

In this episode, we hear from successful CFP candidate Ricky Cataldi about how he overcame the hump of studying for the CFP exam by mastering formulas and concepts and answering open-answer questions, rather than just grinding through a Q-bank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaW3LfY--Uw

So when you started the education, were you surprised by the depth and the scope that the CFP goes into or was it in line with what you expected?

So, just going through the order of the modules, the initial module with general principles of practice, things of that nature. I had seen it before when taking the seven and the 63, 65, the AMS, and I thought, okay, this is kind of in line with what I've done before. This isn't too bad. And then the very next module talking about insurance and risk management, all of a sudden I got kind of a wakeup call and just kind of like I got slapped in the face. I'm like, "Okay, this is serious." Just like the scope and the depth of this is much tougher than anything I've done before, because I feel like when I took the 7 and the AMS 65, there were little nuggets of everything that I did in the CFP, but nothing went super in-depth. It almost seemed like I had read the table of contents before, and now I'm actually reading the book when I'm getting into it.

We have a lot of students that come in obviously that all have different experiences. Some people are kind of just looking to get through the education and others really took their time, spent a lot of time going through the education, diving in, going in deep. Were you the type of student that kind of just got through the education and then were just trying to get to the review and that's where you were going to work out and do the real learning or were you somebody who was really trying to do the learning throughout and then kind of bring it all together for the exam?

Yeah, I really wish I could say I was the latter, but that was definitely not the case. If I could go back, I definitely would do things differently. But as I approached the education, that year just happened to be a really packed year for me. I ended up buying a house, getting married, um, having family members get sick. It was just a whirlwind of a year in 2024 when I was doing my education. And I had asked a lot of my colleagues who had done the CFP about the education and asked them for some advice, and frankly, most of them said just get through it. It's not a big deal. When you get to the exam prep, that's when you do the real learning. So I really didn't take it as seriously as I should have. I was kind of living on the edge, like exam by exam, just pass, make it on to the next stage, figure it all out in the end.

And like I said, if I could go back and do it differently, I feel like I could have built a much stronger foundation if I actually took it a little bit more seriously because during the exam prep, it would have been nice to just clean things up and really strengthen what I had already learned versus seeing a ton of things that I'd never even heard about and essentially starting from scratch.

When was your first attempt of the exam? And when did you finish your education?

So I finished my education at the end of last year. So December 2024. And the goal was initially to take the exam in March. And as I got closer and closer to the exam, more and more things happened, on a personal standpoint with family. And so I was kind of at a crossroads. I thought, okay, should I sign up and take this essentially as a practice, or should I push it back? Like, I'm not sure what to do. And ultimately, I decided that I should definitely push this back because had I taken it in March, I don't think I would have passed a single module. I feel like I just was completely unprepared for the exam prep. I didn't schedule my time. My head and heart weren't in it. And so I push it back to July.

So you push it back to July. And how did you go about studying for the July exam? Did you feel like you were diligent? Did you study? Did you structure your studying, or you know were you more like a lot of first-time test takers that kind of got bombarded by the exam and thought the exam would be one thing, and then it ended up being much more intense than they kind of initially anticipated? What boat do you think you were in?

I feel like I was a little bit more, and it's tough. It's funny because some of my colleagues in your class had asked me like, "Oh, what did you think about the July exam?" And it was hard to give them a straight answer because I feel like I wasn't super unprepared.

I passed three out of the eight sections, but I felt like I was unprepared enough to the point that I didn't even realize how difficult it actually was because as I now know from going through um your tutoring and then taking the exam again in November that some questions can seem like they're pretty easy on the surface, but you know that there's some red herrings in there or there's a few different answers that you could select from or there's more steps than you actually realize. And I think that I wasn't educated enough to realize how difficult certain questions actually were.

So when I took it in July, I thought like, okay, this was tough. This was difficult. I definitely wasn't prepared for it, but it also seemed pretty straightforward, like nothing too crazy. Like, I could definitely pass this. And then as I went through studying for November, I was like, "Okay, maybe those straightforward questions weren't as straightforward as I initially thought." So that's kind of how I felt. I feel like I got a lot more clarity on the July attempt as I got closer to the November attempt.

So, you did some fundamental work because we had a little bit of time in between your initial call in class, and we got you going in class, and obviously, we take a pretty different approach, right, where we are asking you to do things open-ended, which for a lot of students is like, "This stinks." It's not fun to sit there and do things open answer, but you know, we tend to find that from an educational standpoint, you know, doing things constantly in a multiple-choice format, although on the surface it seems like the exam is multiple choice, so prepare multiple choice, doesn't actually get you the learning that you think you're going to get from it. So, what was that experience like for you to do things in the open format? Did you feel like it helped connect concepts for you? And did it get you in the habit of starting to think about questions prior to even looking at the answer when we did go to the multiple choice?

Honestly, I feel like out of everything, that was the biggest game-changer for me personally. Because you go anywhere -- you go Dalton, Denko, Kaplan, Biff, Zahn -- they all have a Q-bank, but I didn't see anywhere else where there is this open answer format. I know when I did the education, and you got down to the capstone, there is a little bit of open answer, and I remember when I got to that capstone, I was shocked by how much more work it was.

And so when you were giving us open answer, I was like, okay, I can't just sleepwalk my way through this. And it's not like, oh, I'm torn between these two. Close my eyes, pick one. Hey, I got it right. Move on. It's like, okay, I have to make sure I know what I'm doing. I have to actually have the knowledge to answer this question. And that really helped solidify those topics.

But as you said, it also changed the way I approached the questions. It got to the point where I'm like reading the question and immediately like having an answer in my mind or at least a road map of how am I going to tackle this question versus before, when I would read a question be like I don't know what this is like let me pick B or C and move on. And so the open answer really made it so I had to do the research.

I had to do the reading, and as I'm sure you know, these textbooks won't just give you like a one-sentence answer to the question. So it's like okay, like in order to answer this question I have to read all this but in order to know this I have to understand the concept before this. And so for any given question you were giving us, I was like, okay, I just learned like three concepts that I didn't know before, and that I know are going to come up again. And so that really helped me.

Yeah. I mean, it is something that I feel like is very underrepresented in financial education. We do everything multiple choice, and it's a double-edged sword because it is easier, and it feels like it's effective. So now we close up that first half of class, and we start transitioning into the actual preparation, which obviously is now our multiple choice. Were you surprised by how we approached the multiple choice and how we gradually increased the intensity? Did you feel like doing the topic work and the cumulative work was helpful as we progressed towards the exams? How did you feel coming out of that stage of class?

Yeah. So, I was really excited when we got to the multiple choice because I was like, "All right, no more open answer." But then I thought, "Okay, now the fun begins. Now it's going to be really easy." But I mean, first of all, your Qbank I felt like was perfect representation of difficulty because I had done some Q banks where it's like okay these questions either are too complex or they're just not fair questions, and then other ones it's like okay well this is like I could have done this before I even started my CFP education a year and a half ago.

But when we started going through, I liked how initially we were doing the multiple choice open book, and at first I thought like oh it's open book and multiple choice, like I should be getting 100% on everything, and then I was surprised that I mean I was doing well, but it wasn't just nothing but 100%. And so it really kind of just kept narrowing further and further into topics that I really needed a refresher on, and then some that I really had a fundamental misunderstanding of and kind of had to start from scratch. But I love the way that it went topic-by-topic and then ending with a cumulative every week because it's like okay, just like sharpening your tools and then at the end of the week you're like building something, and it ramped up quicker than I expected. I mean, you were transparent about everything, but I was kind of surprised by how much more it seemed every week.

It was actually like, okay, I'm actually learning these concepts. And even if I don't know this answer right off the top of my head, we've now gotten the tools on how to approach these questions and how to be able to eliminate certain things or how to narrow it down, but not just to two obvious answers and then guessing off of one of them. And so, yeah, it was a brutal last four weeks, but I feel like that's what really got us over the hump.

So now that you're on the other side of this thing and obviously like you know we were chatting and you've been at you've been studying in some shape or form for the last couple of years you know now that you're on the other side of both your MBA and now obviously your CFP you know what advice would you give to somebody who is starting this journey or or taking the exam in 2026?

I mean, to be honest, make sure you sign up for Nissim Tutoring. I was going to say if you want to pass, this is the way to go. But being a little bit more specific, I would say, prior to working with you, I'd always done self-study, and I just thought if you just work hard enough, if you put in enough hours, if you just really focus, then you're sure to pass. But I didn't realize until the CFP that it has to be effective studying. It has to be the correct studying because I mean, you could spend 500 hours and not pass, or you could spend 250 hours studying correctly to pass.

So I mean number one thing is having a good game plan, as I'm sure you've said. And for me, the exam prep providers that I use, just not to say it doesn't work because clearly otherwise they wouldn't be in business, but for me, their plans didn't work. And so I would say just finding an effective study plan that works for you. And I don't think there's anything better than tutoring. I also work with a personal trainer in my regular life. It's like, hey, this guy's a pro. Find a tutor. Find somebody who can either create a study plan or find a study plan that's right for you, because if you don't have the right plan, I don't think it matters how much time or effort you put into it, because I felt like before I was just memorizing trivia answers to questions. It wasn't until working with you guys that I had the actual right plan for me. And so the number one piece of advice is to find the right plan, which, in my opinion, a tutor can help you out with better than anybody.

And then number two, I would say, I mean, there's so much general advice I can give, like, don't get discouraged, keep your head up, keep grinding. But as far as specifically, I would say definitely learn your formulas. I would say I saw a Reddit post. Somebody posted a picture of the formula sheet, and they said, "Hey, should I learn this for the exam?" And everyone's like, "Are you kidding me? Like, should you learn the formulas for the most potentially the most tested topic on the exam? So I mean, yeah, you should learn those. So, yeah, I was just shocked because I think that learning the formulas and really learning how to do the calculations is the best way to get free points on the exam.

When I was going through, anytime I had a question that required using the formula sheet or doing some kind of time value of money calculation, I felt like that was just a guaranteed point, and I could confidently punch the numbers in my calculator, move on. And that built confidence for me throughout the exam. Anytime I got one of those, I'm like, "Okay, now I do know this stuff." And just helped me stay consistent throughout the entire exam.