CFA

Customize Your Free CFA Study Planner [2024]

Want to pass the CFA exam? Start preparing the right way.

“Loved the tool, it was instrumental in my L3 exam prep as it was for L1 and L2. You’re genuinely a life saver! I thankfully managed to go 3/3 in the CFA Program in the space of two years and the study planner was a big help in doing this.“

Tom Flahavan, CFA L3 candidate

“My first stop (after exam registration) was reading articles on your website and downloading the planner.”

Lydia Reeves: used planner for all CFA levels (and now CAIA!)

“Love the website content and the CFA study planner has become an absolute necessity for me! It helped me clear Level 1 in my first attempt by always keeping me on top of my study schedule.“

Reshma Menon, CFA L2 candidate

So you’ve decided to register for the CFA exams

The natural next step is to consider if you would need additional prep materials. This depends largely on your study style and how you learn best – check out Offers section for exclusive 300 Hours readers discounts.

Once that’s done, the big question is “How do I plan my studies to pass the exams?”, or “Can I complete studying for the CFA exam in X months?”. The ‘problem’ with this question is that each individual should have their own optimal plan that suits their circumstances – there is no one-size-fits-all. 

As we get these questions all the time, we’ve distilled our learnings and experience into a killer CFA study planner tool. Our personalized CFA study planner will help you:

  • Predict your CFA exam score
  • Benchmark your mock scores against historical candidate data
  • Track all your study efforts
  • Map the curriculum you’ve covered, identify weak spots and auto-prioritize

Let’s dive in!


What makes the best CFA study planner?

I have discussed this framework more informally in this article about balancing CFA exam studies and work, but I hope this guide will give you a concrete method to come up with a tailor-made plan.  

We built our study planner with two guiding principles:

  • Low input needed: We want you to focus on studying, not playing around with study data. Our study planner is ready to use right out of the box. Input as much or as little as you want, it makes the most of the study data you give it.
  • Focus on passing: The study planner’s main function is to help you pass. Every aspect of its interface is to help you focus on the areas that matter, or incentivize you to perform better or work harder. This means our focus areas will prioritize topics that can gain you the most points, and we built in a lot of features to give you an idea of how your exam performance would be.

Minimal work needed, and maximizes your pass chances. Nothing else matters.


Generate your own free CFA study planner

More than 60,000 readers have successfully used our planner. You can generate your own in less than a minute. 

We will create a personalized CFA study planner for you with 3 core features:

  • PLAN: Shows you whether you’re on-track with your CFA exam studies and all important dates
  • PROGRESS: Show you where are the topics you should be focusing your time on, factoring in the amount of reading and actual exam weightings to really show you the most efficient topics to be addressing
  • PERFORM: Benchmarks your mock exam scores to show you if your scores need improving to ensure a pass

​PLAN: Master your study hours and never fall behind

With our online planner, you can check your study progress at any time, and see if you’re on track to complete all your studies before your CFA exam day. 

The planner also monitors the remaining days left to your exam with your study plan and progress, alerting you if you are falling behind.

​It also charts your study hours, showing your progress against past periods.​


PROGRESS: Know what you’ve covered, and focus on what’s important

Know exactly how much you’ve covered

Our CFA study planner prioritizes exam performance – exam weighting is built into every assessment. Throughout your studies you will have a progress % showing how much of the exam you’ve covered, and how far ahead – or behind – you are.

Focus on your important topics

The planner also considers exam weights, difficulty and progress to highlight topics that you should prioritize.

Helps you stay disciplined

As you progress through your studies, reviewing topics and completing mock exams, marking your progress as ‘done’ in the planner actually contributes towards your sense of achievement and helps you maintain a more disciplined approach to your CFA exam studies.


PERFORM: Benchmark your mocks. Predict your CFA exam performance

We predict…you’ll pass your CFA exams.

Combining past candidate performance data and your study data, we can even attempt to predict your CFA exam performance.

Of course, this is just a prediction, and not a guarantee!

Auto-benchmarked against past candidates

As you enter your mock exam scores, these are auto-benchmarked to show you if you are scoring well against historical candidates performance.

We have past candidates’ actual CFA results, so we can create a reliable benchmark to show you if you’re trending towards a pass, or you need to step it up.

This better informs you if your scores need improving, and helps reassure you if your scores are on a good trend.


Fill in this form, get your personalized CFA study planner now!


What do you think? I hope you found this simple framework useful for your study planning, and that you now have your online planner to use. Share this with a friend who is revising for the CFA exams too!

Meanwhile, you may find these related articles of interest:

Level 1 candidates:

Level 2 candidates:

Level 3 candidates:

Zee Tan

View Comments

  • hey, great planner. But my progress % has been stuck at 88% for weeks now. I'm regularly logging mocks, I've completed and reviewed the whole syllabus and the mastery score is also above 70%. Is that a glitch?

  • May Study Planner for may 2024 just got deleted, what happened? Just lost all the information in it?

    • Hi Arthur, the technical issue we experienced has been resolved. Sorry for the heart attack, your access should have been restored!

      • Hello, for some reason I cannot open the planner provided with the link, nothing happens

    • My study planner has also had access denied - and the ones for Level 1 and 2 I used too! I have been using the planner for 6 months and have tons of notes on it - 300hours please can you restore access as soon as possible?

      • You should have access soon, if you haven't already. Sorry for the heart attack!

      • I also have the same issue! I had access denied and lost all my notes and progress. Please help 300hours!

  • Hi Zee,
    Will this planner be suitable for the August 2024 exam timeline and the 2024 curriculum for Level 1?

  • Downloaded the L3 Planner for Feb'24 - it seems the readings are in a different order than in the book - anyone else having the same issue?

  • Hi, how much time it takes to send me my Study Planner? Thanks in advance!

  • Hi, so I tried to put the number of hours I intend to study per day but my estimated total study hours does not update. How can I fixed this? Where should I input my figures so I don't affect the formula?

    • Hi Charles! Usually this is because the exam date is entered with an incorrect year (e.g. 2022 instead of 2023). Alternatively if you can send me the link to your planner via email (zeeAT300hoursDOTcom) I can have a look.

  • Hi,
    I just got the study planner and there's something wrong with it. I have chosen a date as the start date for my studies and it keeps showing one day ahead as the starting date!

    I would appreciate it if you could help me fix this
    Thanks,
    Hadi

    • This is probably down to a time zone thing. You can set your study planner to your time zone at File > Settings > Time Zone. Hope that helps!

  • Hi, i think the link to download the study planner for level 1 might be down?

    would you be able to email it me please?

    Thanks!

    • Hi Sebastian, I just checked and the form seems to be working. Did you manage to get your study planner sorted?

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Zee Tan

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