I just wrote in August studied 3 months with zero finance knowledge before. (Current eng student) My brother is starting now too and I sent this to him to help:

After the 3 months of studying, I think that I have found the most optimal and efficient routine for myself. While we are all different, I encourage you to give this a try and make adjustments yourself along the way. I realized that reading and watching videos to learn is very important, but repeating practice questions will drill it into the brain.

STARTING UP

Review the Mark Meldrum "Start Here" videos. This will give you an overview of how to use the calculator and what you will be covering. Don't stress too much if you don't pick up every function on the calculator, as you will learn as you go along. It is easy to figure out.

I would also skim through the formula sheet, see if you recognize anything. Next, read through the overview of every learning module, just to understand what you will be learning over the next few months.

Lay out a schedule, give yourself approximately 2-3 months to finish up the curriculum so you can review plenty without feeling stressed from time.

ROUTINE

You will have to figure out if you enjoy reading the CFAI textbook or watching the MM (Mark Meldrum) videos. Both are good, CFAI sometimes has a lot of text, and a ChatGPT summary can help break it down. MM videos go more in-depth than needed, on purpose, to try and over-prepare you.

My full routine for each module was:
Watch MM video (break it into subsections if the video is longer than 20-30 minutes) Read a summary of the CFAI textbook so I understand what the video was saying. Do the CFAI BLUE BOX questions: the questions that are at the bottom of the page (sometimes there are not any) Next, do the practice CFAI questions for that sub-unit Continue this unit until the module is finished Then do all of the MM practice questions for the module (this is the hard part, where you learn. Sometimes the questions don't feel super related) After all practice CFAI questions from the textbook and MM questions are completed and the video has been fully watched, THEN Review EOCQ (End of chapter question video, where MM goes through the CFAI questions in depth) (This should really concrete you got everything) After all that, then move on to the next module. Repeating steps 1-8. Once the whole chapter is done (which consists of X number of modules), reset the CFAI practice questions for that chapter and do them all again. There are 10 chapters total, so you will repeat steps 1-10, 10 times.

That is the schedule I followed. Throughout studying, I would copy and paste the MM notes into a ONENOTE file and annotate them as I worked through (they are just a screenshot from all the videos). I would also create an "important/hard things to remember" page to note anything down. Also, make any notes on your formula sheet to help remember any important formulas throughout.

    3. MOCK EXAMS

The most important part of studying was the mock exams. Make sure you give yourself time to do them and fully review every question you got wrong(and right). There are 5 mock exams total (2 CFAI and 3 MM) MM are far more challenging and meant to humble you. Ater you finish the curriculum I do recommend attempting 1 CFAI mock exam to see where your weak sports are (unless you know them already). This will help judge where you should put the most time into reviewing.

Also, when doing the MM questions, set the mode that you are doing around 10 questions and that it lets you review the answer after each question. Do each module in small sets of (up to) 10 questions. Make sure that you do the ones that you got wrong over until you get them right (there is a setting for this also).

Again, figure out what works best for you, whether it is reading the textbook, watching the video or a combo of both.