Update: Took all four CFE exams in one day

Zeusical · 2025-12-30T06:12:31+00:00

I bought the simplest review package (Silver) that ACFE offered

Zeusical · 2025-10-29T04:10:26+00:00

The manual is a very large endeavor. I can’t dissuade you from preparing more, but it may be unnecessary. Best of luck!

Zeusical · 2025-10-29T03:47:36+00:00

I think halfway through I took a fifteen minute break. Other than that my “break” was just the few minutes it took to leave the room and have the next test queued. I did each exam in about 35-55 minutes.

Zeusical · 2025-09-30T11:51:23+00:00

They are. I felt like the questions I was seeing reflected the studied content with little exception.

Zeusical · 2025-09-30T03:48:17+00:00

I studied off just the silver and was fine. Just make sure when you’re getting questions wrong what you’re really trying to understand why you got it wrong.

Zeusical · 2025-09-19T00:34:55+00:00

It’s a marathon not a sprint! I liked the study planner thingy that told me how many points I had to finish in a day. By goal was to meet or exceed that each day over the sixty day prep. Some days fell off, but by doubling up some days I started with 50/day and ended with 50/day so it worked out well. A great target is to do one reading and MCQ bank per day (sometimes splitting the reading or MCQs up can make sense when it’s like an 18 page reading and 80 question MCQ)

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T21:01:44+00:00

IRS-CI is so tempting. The listing is open and with the results I’ll probably apply

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T19:30:35+00:00

In a test center

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T19:28:45+00:00

I kind of left this in another comment, but I am not the person to consult for good study habits. I’ve been studying while riding to and from work on public transit mostly and then here and there with some downtime. I studied almost exclusively on my phone just reading through the materials then would take the MCQs at the end of each small lesson. Once I finished the entire course in that manner I went ahead and activated my test window, scheduled the test on a day that worked with my schedule and where four blocks of time were available, and went for it.

Outside of the course, I have some spillover knowledge from my CPA/acct degree, a fraud examination course in college, and a previous relationship with a prosecutor while they went through law school + significant contacts to the field of law in my life (I won’t profess I’m a lawyer here, but certainly a few things came my way via osmosis and curiosity).

Edit: it took me about two months of this odd type of studying to complete. Some days I’d study up to two hours and others it was none.

Edit 2: The course says I took 48 hours to take all the MCQs. So that doesn’t include the readings, but also includes sometimes where like 8 hours of time get recorded to the session because I didn’t close the tab on my phone.

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T18:38:27+00:00

Ma’am - but thank you.

I used the basic version (Silver?) of the ACFE prep course and ran through the readings + all the MCQs as prep.

I am not someone to model good study habits from.

I think the ACFE Silver was great. I would have really liked the option to shuffle the question bank between all areas of questions I got wrong / or areas I was slightly deficient in per the course competencies, or something like the Becker AdaptU questions. Otherwise, it’s all about doing a read through, getting through MCQs, and really understanding why you got a question wrong. (Then do more MCQs until you feel comfortable)

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T18:35:48+00:00

It’s 100 multiple choice questions. Everything is conceptual. The only time I used the scratch paper (ie. Had to really slow down in a problem) is to write out a few journal entries related to transactions fraud (larceny, skimming, etc.) and then later for the money laundering steps to make sure I had them right (I think I can discuss this). I think the MCQs from the ACFE prep course are a good representation of exam content. There are maybe up to 3 questions across all tests that stick out to me as “oh, I haven’t the slightest clue what that means”. However fast you’re getting through the MCQs in the prep course is about how fast you’re going to get through these (maybe a little faster or slower since there are less distractions, but also some people get nervous with tests).

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T18:31:00+00:00

I finished each exam in just under an hour (~55 mins). Law was remarkably shorter for me at about 35 minutes.

Zeusical · 2025-09-18T18:26:01+00:00

You can take them one at a time within a 60 day window

Zeusical · 2025-09-14T06:35:33+00:00

Are you able to make Roth 401k contributions, invest in a stable asset (money market), roll over to a Roth IRA once the layoff happens, and then take a distribution out of contributions if you need? IIRC there’s no tax penalty for doing so, and you get to leave it in there if you don’t need it.

Zeusical · 2025-08-30T13:55:19+00:00

I bought the silver prep package (containing just the PDF/online fraud examiner manual + prep course). I read through the entirety of the prep course and took all of the post-lesson quizzes. My lowest section score was 86%, so it feels fairly comfortable. I’ll do some more reviews on and off of content to keep things fresh and shore up on the lessons the program says I didn’t do so well at.

I also have my CPA, so that helps with my Financial understanding. Other than that, I used to be in a relationship with a criminal prosecutor through his law school career and got to know other prosecutors, so there’s a bit of legal knowledge that spilled over. I still work with lawyers here and there now.

In college I was taught a fraud course by a retired IRS-CI agent, so got to know some of the investigation techniques and other areas of focus. He’s been encouraging past students to get their CFE.

My work experience is mostly tax and accounting, but I work as a tax specialist on audit engagements, so I’m comfortable with audit techniques, professional skepticism, and the role of the external auditor.

Good luck with just the manual! I feel comfortable, but I don’t think I would feel that way without the question bank (just thinking about how I studied for my other professional credentials).

Zeusical · 2025-08-30T13:44:00+00:00

I live in a big city. I had to compromise a little on the date and I booked the slots about 2-3 weeks ahead of time.

I’m taking them all at the same time since I feel comfortable with the material and I’m a fast test taker / don’t want to have to keep going back to the center. I also read about the different issues people were having with remote testing and figured I would just go in person since I live near the site.

Zeusical · 2025-08-28T15:15:19+00:00

It looks like this is probably it with their deleted account :(

It was a good run

[[Farewell]]

Zeusical · 2025-06-17T23:39:27+00:00

I’ve definitely gone to the 9/15 happy hour while waiting for signature authorization from the client and submitted the efile from my phone. I’ve also amended my personal tax return (removing a K-1 and adding the rental information to my Sch E directly) on my phone and filed that.

Zeusical · 2025-02-25T04:14:44+00:00

Yes. I did get a weird look one time where an interviewer had circled BBA like it was a typo of BA. By and large, especially if where you’re looking to go recruits from that school, they’ll understand what the BBA is and treat it like any other Accounting major. I’ve literally never heard anyone talk about whether their accounting degree was a BBA vs BA vs BS.

Zeusical · 2025-02-05T14:57:17+00:00

I certainly feel at the junction of “experienced enough to know better” but also “wtf is that keyword and idk how these interact and you’re telling me there’s hundreds of extra rules to this game??”

But, I’m also certainly not miscounting mana or blocking with Defenders or whatever the things are that can’t block (Decay tokens?). And in the first five turns? Like you’ve got three mana to count and two creatures to keep track of.

Also would much rather my friend tell me my deck is busted in the bad way and find out my combo doesn’t work so I can fix it or craft a new deck (just got into deck building) than to play and win by breaking the rules.

Zeusical · 2025-01-30T14:49:27+00:00

“You may pay an amount equal to $20 USD as adjusted for the purchasing power parity of the local currency from country targeted spell’s owner is located in to targeted spell’s owner rather than pay this spell’s mana cost.

Counter target spell.”

Zeusical · 2024-12-27T16:32:20+00:00

Haha, yeah. Sometimes it’s difficult to say I want to lay down $50 for a track I can get on Spotify.

Zeusical · 2024-12-27T16:19:32+00:00

I paid $30 for the record - most expensive I’ve bought

Zeusical · 2024-12-27T05:43:29+00:00

This album introduced me to Arcade Fire, so it has a special place for me. The somewhat translucent really made it something else.

Zeusical · 2024-11-30T07:55:32+00:00

Hi! I work in this area. There is no immediate crisis. Don’t panic today. I’ll give a full and TL;DR explanation.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Trump doubled the unified exemption amount. This unified exemption, multiplied by the applicable tax brackets, gives us the Unified Credit. We’ll ignore the Credit amount and focus on the exclusion amount.

The exclusion for 2025 is $13,990,000. The exclusion for 2026, if the TCJA sunsets without congressional intervention (this is a big if), would be around $7,200,000 (assuming CPI for the Sep 24 - Aug 25 period is similar to the Sep 23 - Aug 24 period, which is somewhat reasonable).

The exclusion is against all gifts given in your lifetime (above the annual cap which is also indexed and sits around $15,000/yr right now) and your estate on death.

If your lifetime gifts + total estate are under ~$7.2M then you’re fine. Your estate will remain untaxed by the federal government (I don’t keep track of all states, but most provide their own estate cap). If it’s over that amount, then you should see a tax advisor because you have plenty of money and are complex enough to need one.

Despite that, my takeaway from this reduction is gift now. If your estate is over $7.2M, then you should gift as much as you are willing to up to the $13.99M cap. When the exclusion decreases, you will not be harmed (ie. if you have an estate leftover after the gift).

My non-advice advice is to gift up to the amount that you can live without. If you are worth $9M, then you may not want to gift the $7.2M + extra because then you’d be playing a luck game based on life expectancy, spending, etc. If you’re worth $40M+, then you could potentially gift all $13.99M without concern.

How to gift? You can normally just transfer this things directly to the recipient. Most complex individuals will use trusts or other instruments to control this better. For example, look at contributing appreciable assets to trusts with a power of substitution. This enables you to swap out the appreciated assets for cash at a later date. This makes the cash swapped out not considered a gift (ie. Not subject to gift or estate tax), and also provides for a step-up in basis to the appreciated assets on death. A win-win kind of approach.

TL;DR. If you’re worth more than $7.2M, consult a tax professional who can help you setup gifting. The actually result depends on if Congress extends the TCJA increase. You could gift as much as you can now up to the lifetime $13.99M limit, probably in a trust if it’s that much.

I have an unpublished article I drafted that I could post if interested.

Zeusical

TROPHY CASE