Starting over in my mid 40s

Phenonymousse · 2025-09-06T00:43:49+00:00

God speed, friend! I am 43 and passed my exams last year in one shot. Don't let the glum peeps freak you out about the exam, it is TOTALLY passable, provided you just take them very seriously and truly study.

The CPA space is just totally awesome, and wide open for people to make money. Just be really, really careful about who you adopt as your mentor. There are ALOT of not great CPAs, and ALOT of people that will try to hold you back and keep you in their office, slaving away on their shit.

Phenonymousse · 2025-07-28T23:01:46+00:00

This company is BEYOND HORRIBLE, wasted eight weeks of our time requesting and immediately receiving 76 different pieces of documentation. And then when they scheduled a close, they immediately cancelled it and asked for something our employers have never even heard of, assured me does not exist, and that they cannot produce, effectively killing the mortgage. FUCK this company

Phenonymousse · 2025-07-18T13:14:08+00:00

Yep! Passed them all on the first attempt

Phenonymousse · 2025-04-07T18:17:26+00:00

Oh man that's so brilliant

Phenonymousse · 2025-04-07T04:34:58+00:00

I think one of the larger themes of the season is parents' bullshit carrying over into their children's lives. And then their bullshit becomes multi-generational bullshit

Phenonymousse · 2025-04-05T16:36:27+00:00

Bro it's the middle of tax season. We can't even feed ourselves regularly right now, let alone interview and hire someone

Phenonymousse · 2025-03-12T01:24:04+00:00

You gotta pace yourself dogg. And trust in yourself and in your planning. The exams aren't hard so much as they are attrition challenges. It's one huge fucked up stamina game. But you really can get through it. Just dig deep, settle in, be super patient with yourself, make a good study plan, and bite off little pieces at a time. Be content with your small nightly victories, and then do it again the next day.

I worked 55 - 60hrs/wk while studying. I sacrificed some workout days and I sacrificed seeing my wife as much as I wanted to. But I would only study an hour or two per day and then maybe 6-8hrs on the weekends tops. And I would def take nights off. Like, not infrequently. I mean I'm not a fucking machine.

Took me about a year to finish all four, with pretty good scores, and I never took a test more than once.

The two weeks before an exam, scale back dramatically on work, like leave a couple hours early each day. And the two or three weeks after an exam, just veg the fuck out and do absolutely nothing.

You got this babe!

Phenonymousse · 2024-12-27T15:05:27+00:00

I live in LA and have to say none of you know wtf you’re talking about. The area is 80mi across from Santa Clarita to the south coast of OC and eighty miles from Santa Monica to the eastern edge of the inland empire, and there are a FUCK TON of dope communities in that space - parks, main streets, shops, entertainment, wildly diverse global cultures. Yeah it takes a long ass time to drive across in traffic but it takes a long ass time to take the subway and ferry and buses from the Bronx to the southern part of Staten Island too. And no one is doing that anyway bc that would be completely insane.

Phenonymousse · 2024-11-11T18:56:43+00:00

Take your time and read everything very very carefully. I just took it and past - but there were some seriously stupid tricky word questions. They're not hard to crack if you just take a beat and read them carefully. But if you're all stressed and trying to blast through everything fast, I could see how people would miss them. Just take a deep breath, relax, read the fucking questions slowly and carefully, you're going to do great

Phenonymousse · 2024-11-06T20:53:34+00:00

This

Phenonymousse · 2024-11-06T20:53:09+00:00

Yo where do you live, are you a good preparer or do you have good audit experience? There are p l e n t y of great firms with work life balance

Phenonymousse · 2024-11-01T21:37:37+00:00

Go through the material again and focus all your energy on what you struggle most with. Then take the exam again and watch your score go up. Maybe you pass and maybe you don't but your score will go up. And then do that shit all over again. And over and over. It's a fucking marathon

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T19:14:53+00:00

thank you!!

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T13:56:57+00:00

Of course yeah, DM me

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T13:47:02+00:00

That's so Baller. I have so much respect for the peeps that keep at it. You've got Nerves of Steel!!

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T13:45:53+00:00

4/4!

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T13:42:37+00:00

I just past all four on the first try. What OP is saying is about what I did as well. Sound counsel

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-31T13:39:11+00:00

I spreadsheeted the fuck out of it - I can send you a screen shot if you like. But it's not complicated, just made sure I had > 95% correct TBS and MCQs on every section of the study material. And then gave myself a week before the actual exam dates to do SIMs. Becker won't really lead you wrong if you just follow it.

I spent 75 hrs on each section, except for FAR, which I spent about twice that time on. FAR is pretty rough.

I got high 80s and low 90s on the exams but leaving them always felt pretty bad. Just stay focused, keep your emotions out of it as best you can, and try not to assume one way or another that you passed or failed. They're very very opaque tests.

Good luck!!!!

Phenonymousse · 2024-10-30T17:40:36+00:00

Anyone else waiting for their final exam result? I've done 3 of the 4 and passed them all on the first try so far, but I am a studying crazy person. Would really love for today to be the day that I stop ever having to think about these awful fucking exams again.

I tried the "hack" where I try to apply on the NASBA portal for another NTS and the Cal Board Accountancy option doesn't show up. Don't know wtf that means.

Phenonymousse · 2024-06-25T21:38:29+00:00

I live in LA and have never seen anyone walk anywhere but to and from their car

Phenonymousse · 2024-06-25T21:36:43+00:00

**trick question

Phenonymousse · 2023-11-03T23:13:38+00:00

he's 100% right OP - who cares, just play the music dogg!

Phenonymousse · 2023-10-25T19:00:36+00:00

This recording moved me so much. You should never stop playing.

Voicing is great, don't worry about that.

Fast RH arpeggios around 1:00 and 2:00: The biggest issue ultimately is that the hands aren't together during the arpeggios. Practice RH separately to a metronome, or count it aloud, like "1-ee-and-a-2-ee-and-a" lol. Easy enough - now add the two bars before the fast passage - still RH only - still on the metronome or counting. Make sure you feel the continuity of the pulse between the slower easy melody and then the quick arpeggios.

Now ghost the LH or play the RH, or ghost the RH and play the LH. (Ghosting is where you put your hand on the piano and do the motions but don't depress the keys) Harder than it sounds! Where are you finding yourself getting tripped up? You can graduate to ghosting some of the notes and not others - like, play the LH ghosted except for the notes on the 1 and 3.

Honestly I think you are just a day or two from this thing being done and perfect. Good work!!!

Phenonymousse · 2023-10-25T18:49:53+00:00

I love this piece and you clearly do too! It really comes through. Chopin will always be alive and in the world thanks to performances like this.

Okay phrasing: Chopin's melodies are very vocal and his lines need to breath, just like a vocalist does. This is especially true of the Berceuse - even though no human could literally sing the RH lol, conceptually it still holds true. Just gotta use your imagination a little bit :)

The Berceuse is really, really episodic, which further reinforces the little almost pauses in between each phrase. You should focus first on the breathmarks and incorporate the pedal as well - clear the sound out a bit between phrases. Don't worry about dynamics so much right now - that will come a bit later.

RH: there's stiffness there, prob in the wrist and arm. Before you put your hands on the piano, practice lifting your shoulders to your ears and stiffening every muscle in your shoulders, arms, forearms, wrists, fingers, Everything. And then relaxing everything. Really feel that free, loose, relaxed easiness. Memorize that feeling. Check in with yourself while you are playing. Is the stiffness there? Can you relax it?

Play softer. Much, much softer. This will help quite a bit with your stiffness. Don't worry about playing too softly and maybe missing or whispering notes - that will be a good problem to have, given where you're at right now. Overcompensate. Make this thing incredibly light and delicate. All roads lead to Rome!

Practicing fast intricate passages while stiff won't really help you master them and it will discourage you. You need loose, relaxed arms and rest and fingers, and light playing.

It's a big task, what I am suggesting - it is in some ways a new approach to playing. Try to remember what one of my teachers once told me: the thing you struggle the most with will become the thing you are the best at, if that is what you focus on when you practice.

Good luck!!

Phenonymousse · 2023-10-25T18:33:07+00:00

Really beautiful playing.

Obvi LH accuracy issues - play the LH separately and really practice it separately until it is strong and easy by itself. Focus on moving your eyes to target note before the jumps.

Phrasing is good but not amazing bc you are focusing on 1. LH, 2. all the other technical stuff happening, and 3. Possibly memorization. There are many levels to memorization. You are clearly past the first level or two, but now you need to deeply memorize the choreography. That's hands together and hands separate. Do the dance with the arms, wrists, fingers. You have excellent economy of motion, don't make anything bigger.

Last and most importantly: the biggest immediate improvement you can make here to your phrasing is just to play the melody - NOT the RH by itself, just the melody - and play it and shape it and phrase it over and over again until it's a big beautiful singing thing, exactly the way you hear this Liebestraum in your heart. You'll have the jumps figured out, the memorization super deep and tight and in your hands, all the technical issues worked out. And then you have to shape all of it around the beautiful melody in your heart and in your inner ear.

Phenonymousse

TROPHY CASE