From the Guide to CFP^® Certification:

"The CFP^® Certification Examination assesses your ability to apply your financial planning knowledge in an integrated format, to financial planning situations. Combined with the education and experience requirements, it assures the public that you have met a level of competency appropriate for professional practice. The Certification Examination has been developed in accordance with procedures that ensure its job-relatedness and content validity. The topics for examination were developed by a task force that included equal representation of practicing planners and financial planning educators. The foundation for their work had been laid by a job analysis conducted in 1987, 1994 and updated in 1999. The practicing planners who participated in that analysis provided basic information about the tasks performed by planners and the knowledge required to perform those tasks."

If your goal is to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^TM professional, you must ultimately pass the Certification Examination. This examination is administered three times a year by CFP Board and includes questions from 101 CFP Board topics.

There are basically 4 ways to obtain help to study for this exam.

The first way is to put together your "own review course" from the materials in the 6 courses you have taken. As long as the material from the 6 areas hasn't changed since you took the 6 required courses, you took excellent notes in these courses, you can stay on a schedule of studying for the exam, and you don't have any additional questions while studying for the exam -- you could probably do your own review course.

The second way to review for the exam is to order "self-study materials." The self-study materials that you purchase are usually updated for the current exam and contain problems/answers to work out. The draw back with the self-study method is twofold -- you have to be very self-disciplined -- notice the word "self" in the type of materials. In short, you are on your own -- you have to do the studying, no one is going to be there to help you or to see to it that you stay on task. The second problem is you have no one to ask a question should you run across something that you don't understand.

The third way to review for the exam is to attend a live-review course. These courses are up to date for the current exam and you have someone to ask questions of while the course is going live. In addition you may have to do traveling and miss time from work depending on the schedule of the live review course. The problem here is twofold also. As soon as the course is over - you are on your own -- no one to ask questions of if you have a problem. Secondly, the information is going to be crammed at you in a few days or weeks. There is a lot of material on this exam and if you know the material quite well -- then a live review would be good for you as a way to go over the material prior to the exam.

The fourth way to review for the exam is to take an online course with Hasselback Review.com. Our online review course overcomes the problems with other types of review courses.

• The material is current. So if you took the required courses quite a while ago -- you will be given updated information.
  
  
• You don't have to travel or miss work -- the lessons will be delivered right to your computer for you to read and print out.
  
  
• You will have to study -- but you won't have to cover all the material in a few weekends or weeks -- our course is set up in 10 lessons for you to concentrate on.
  
  
• The course is organized and laid out for you to study and work problems with answers in each lesson.
  
  
• You have a question -- we are just an e-mail away from you -- to help you. You can have access to the course up one week after the test date.
  
  
• You will have access to someone to answer your questions -- right up to the test date.
  
  
• Our course is very comprehensive -- so if you didn't catch on to something during the 6 regular required education courses -- this online review course will help to fill in the missing pieces.
  
  
  

  72% Pass rate for students 1000+ pages of review material 1500+ review questions 30+ hours of video Case Studies Mock Examination

  
  
  • If you are in a special category of professionals not required to take the 6 course education requirement to sit for the exam -- this online review course will enable you to learn the material you need to know to take the exam.

  Although there are several self-study manuals and live review courses for the exam, there are very few online review courses. Some students are able to cram a review for a national exam in a few weekends. Some students are able to discipline themselves to do a self-study review for the exam. The online review course at Hasselback Review.com is geared toward the serious students who need more time and more structure to study for the national examination.

  If your goal is to pass the examination and become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^TM professional - try us. We invite you to sign up for the next iteration of our online review course. Just click the button entitled Course Offerings --