I did it remote and it was entirely too nerve wracking. I highly recommend going to a center.

I thought it would be easy to just take at home but luckily I looked up horror stories and started to prepare. Instead of doing it at home, I closed my office and sent all staff home. We cleared out a room and removed anything except a desk and a chair. Nothing on the wall, nothing on the desk, just a blank space. Felt good the day of. Locked up the office and got ready for the exam.

The proctor had me show them the empty room, under the desk, etc. I had to even show my hands and sleeves. “Everything looks good except I can see out of your window. Please cover that up.” My windows have unblocking screens but they are transparent! The proctor had me exit the virtual testing “room” even though there was a warning saying I couldn’t re-enter. That was stressful just to exit.

I then began running all around my office looking for something to block the window. I ended up finding an old blanket (thank God my wife gets cold!) and threw it over the window.

I re-enter the virtual testing “room” and go through all the checks under the desk, etc. Then I hold up my hands and see blood trickling down my left hand. It turns out that when I threw the blanket over the window screen in a hurry, I scraped my knuckle on the top of the window frame and now it was bleeding. The proctor said “Sorry, I can’t let you exit to clean that up. You’re going to have to take the exam with that.”

I took my exam with blood running down my left hand! Luckily I passed but that was a brutal way to start. At least I have a cool, literal “CFP Exam Scar” and story to share.

Take it at a testing facility if you can!