Hey y'all, it's Nikki. Welcome to another episode of the Work Your Mamas podcast. Just super excited to be putting out another episode. I've kind of been delayed. I guess I could actually call this one of my traffic take episodes because I'm recording this as I am getting out of traffic for a couple of reasons.

First, my podcast microphone has been out of commission because I think I told y'all my son likes to use my podcast microphone for playing the game online with his friends. I'm not exactly sure what they are doing, but he broke my charger. So I had to come and find a replacement charger so that I can record more episodes. But I didn't want that to stop me from putting out an episode for y'all, especially this quick little thing I just wanted to share, this point of advice I wanted to share for CPA exam candidates. Just for those of you who are not CPA exam candidates, I have some other episodes that I'm gonna put out in the next couple of weeks about small business accounting and taxes.

I have a couple of career convos episodes that I need to put out answering some questions about career moves and changes and professionalism and all these other things. But what I've really been getting bombarded with the last few weeks are people saying, I don't know how to study for the exam. I need a game plan. I'm overwhelmed with the content. As soon as I read something, I forget what I read.

And I just have to say that first and foremost, when it comes to getting prepared before you even start jumping into different topics and doing practice questions, you have to have a game plan. And I know a lot of you study with the intent of scheduling your exam. You're gonna study for a few weeks or a few months, and then you're gonna schedule your exam. So you really don't have a hard deadline as far as when you're gonna sit. And because of that, we tend to, and I say we, because I did this a couple of times while I was studying, is that I felt like I'm gonna go through all the material, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna watch the videos, I'm gonna do some practice questions and some Sims.

And then when I feel like I'm ready, I'm gonna schedule my exam. When really what you should be doing is getting your NTS, your notice to schedule, so that you can make sure you even have the option to sit first of all, and then pick a date that's maybe eight to twelve weeks out and give yourself that time to study and learn the content and to be able to do so with a firm deadline in mind. Because if you're studying just to study and you just wanna learn, and then you feel like, well, I'll schedule my exam when I feel ready. You're never really gonna feel a % ready. Out of the 13 exams I took, I maybe felt a % ready on one or two of those.

And those were retakes because I had already gone through the process before and failed or lost credit. And so the second or third, or in the case of REG, the fourth time around, I felt like I was ready. So the first thing you have to do is put yourself on a timeline, get in the mindset of, okay, today is March 10, and I wanna sit for my exam on May 10. That's about eight weeks from now. So now between now and May 10, I have eight weeks, seven or eight weeks to get myself prepared.

That is the first step in you really getting organized and putting some structure around your study habits. The other thing I'm hearing people say is, I don't understand. Even when I read a whole chapter, even when I watch the videos, I don't understand. And I feel weird turning and not having my turn signal on, but I didn't want the sound of my turn signal to come through on the episode. But anyway, y'all know I live this unedited life.

So I'm a just give y'all, give it to y'all just like it is. So, the other thing that people struggle with is like, I don't know, I don't understand. And my thing is work backwards, work the opposite of what you've known to be the norm when it comes to studying. Most people feel like I have to read the chapters, then I have to watch the videos and you have to do all these other things before you get to the practice questions. And for me, the practice questions are a key.

That is how you figure out what you need to be reading and what videos you need to be watching. And when I think about the CPA exam and studying and getting ready, now the traffic been quiet the whole ride. As soon as I start an episode, I get all these big trucks and all this hoopla going on. But anyway, when I think about studying for the CPA exam, the analogy I like to use is sports. And when you think about the practices and all the things that they're doing on the field, all the things that they're doing on the field to get ready for the competition, to get better, to condition themselves.

It's a lot of on the field work. They might sit and watch some film here and there, but for the most part, they are on the field, they are practicing. And I'll talk about FAR in particular because this must be the season of FAR. Like the majority of people I've talked to and most of the people who have enrolled in my CPA exam coaching program are all getting ready for FAR. And the thing with FAR is if you have looked at the blueprint, if you've read it, you should have by now, that is really your study guide for FAR.

That tells you what you need to be prepared to see in terms of testable content. So if you've looked at the blueprint, you will see that 80 to 90% of FAR is analysis and application. And it is difficult, damn near impossible to be good at analysis and application if you're not analyzing something or applying something, which means you have to do something, not just read the questions. If you've listened to the other episodes in the CPA exam series about getting ready for the CPA exam, if you've seen my social media posts, you have heard me say, find a publicly traded company that you like, that is going to spark your interest and use those financial statements to study for FAR. FAR stands for financial accounting and reporting.

And when a publicly traded company issues their financial statements, that's pretty much what they're doing, financial accounting and reporting. So it's gonna be tough and it's gonna feel like you don't understand, or you're not learning anything if you are taking an exam that is heavily focused on analytics and applying what you've learned, it's gonna be hard to master that if you're sitting at a computer and you're just reading, or you're just listening. You have to get in tune with the simulations and really make sense of what's happening so that when you get to the point where you've taken, you've practiced three simulations and none of them make sense, at least you can go back and say, okay, here's where I'm struggling. Here's where the disconnect is. Here's where I'm not getting it.

And I'm actually gonna go home now that I have a charger for my podcast microphone and I'm gonna do a tutorial on bonds. And I guess I'm kind of the only person who gets excited to talk about bonds. I guess I'm officially an accounting nerd because I'm looking forward to recording this tutorial. But the other thing is I spent five years of my career doing bond accounting and issuing debt and understanding that whole process of the coupon payments and capitalizing certain expenses and recording other ones to the P and L and creating amortization schedules and being cognizant of whether or not the bond was issued at par at face value or with a premium or a discount, because that changes how my journal entries are gonna look. So that's probably where my excitement comes from, is that I learned FAR or I learned bond accounting in practice, whereas most people are learning bond accounting through preparing for the CPA exam.

So when it came time for me to sit for FAR, I passed FAR the first time, I didn't struggle too much with FAR because of the professional experience that I had. So I'm gonna do this tutorial about bonds, what they are, the financial statement presentation, and probably gonna do a screen share and show you some sample simulations and some ways that this can be thrown at you on the exam. Bond County is a heavily tested area. On the exam, you can be asked random questions just about coupon payments and whether something is issued at a premium or a discount and understanding the changes in the interest rates to help you figure out whether it's issued at a premium or a discount. And really just once you can understand the accounting, the journal entries, you can really answer a lot of the questions, right?

Because you're gonna have to record the liability, the debt, you're gonna have to record the proceeds or the cash that's received. And then the difference between those two is gonna be your premium or your discount. And you can kind of look at the entry and say, what do I need to book a debit or a credit to balance the journal entry? And that will tell you whether or not it's a premium or it's a discount. So once you can make sense of those journal entries, a lot of the other things fall into place.

So that's why I tell candidates, especially those studying for FAR, is to start with the practice first and write out those T accounts, write out those journal entries, get a piece of paper and create an amortization schedule. Because once you can put that together and you can understand what those things mean and how to interpret those, the rest of bond accounting is pretty straightforward. Understanding terms, the maturity date, it's the date that the bond matures. I mean, there's no rocket science behind that. The issuance date, the date that the bond is issued, the stated rate, the rate that's stated on the bond, the coupon rate, the market rate, the rate that's in the market.

So, I mean, lot of the things are overly complicated because candidates are just feeling so uneasy about the content. It's really not that difficult. It's really not that difficult. And I'm not saying that to be funny. I'm saying that as somebody who has done FAR, done the FAR content and practice in a real corporate setting, but also as somebody who took FAR three times and somebody who enjoys talking about these things.

So check out my Vivo and YouTube channels at Nick Winston CPA or Winston CPA Group. I don't know which one I set it up as, but I'm gonna do a bond tutorial. If you need a tutorial on something else, I've heard, people have come to me about questions on leases, lease accounting, the direct versus indirect method of statement of cash flows. I've seen some things about disclosures and contingent liabilities, so many different things. FAR has a ton of content.

And as long as you can understand, in most cases, if you can write out the journal entries, if those journal entries make sense, then if you can talk through the journal entries, you pretty much have the concept nailed down. So if you don't, that's where I wanna get y'all to. So again, stay tuned for the tutorial on bonds accounting, as well as some other topics that y'all need help with. If there's a specific topic that you're struggling with, let me know, hit me on social media at Nick Winston CPA. And I am happy to put together a tutorial that will break down the content, make it make sense and really help y'all get over the hump and be on your way to CPA.

So like I said, super short episode. I just had to say that since my podcast mic is kind of out of commission right now. Yeah, hit me up, let me know what y'all want me to do a tutorial on and I will do it. But until then, happy studying. I will talk to y'all later.

Bye.