[kdawg22]

Who else is working full time @ a tax firm right now and studying for an exam?

I feel like I am getting my butt kicked so far this tax season. It has been hard to balance working longer hours during the week (usually get home from work around 8-9PM) and then 9-5 on Saturday and then study on top of that. I am completely miserable especially since I will have taken 3 parts within 3 of the busiest months for me at work (REG 1/16/17- passed, BEC 2/5/17-find out results 2/23/17, and AUD- 3/10/17).

Does anyone have advice for balancing working during busy season and studying?

[shawn in VA]

Hi. I am in a similar situation. I already took AUD FEB 1 (busy season) and BEC is in March. It is a losing battle, but trying do my best.

Here is what I am doing, and perhaps it may work for you you. Keep in mind I have 2 kids and a long commute.

Mon to Fri—30 mins before work, sneak in 1 hour during work, and 1-2 hours at night. I leave my house 9 AM and return home 9PM.
Sat – 3 hours after work. I get home from work around 5.
Sun- no work , but put in 3-4 hours of study time.

I try to do the hardest stuff in AM and the 1 hour at work. At night after work I do light topics or MCQ . Luckily it is a retake so I am familiar with topics in BEC, but still my brain is fried at night.

That comes out to around 20 hours a week. Not easy and we are mandated to work 55 hours during busy season.

[SuckItUp]

I am. Full-time with about 150 or so of my own clients plus what the partner hands me. I do a large chunk of the year ends as well.

Already took a test in late January and I'll take my last (hopefully) in a couple of weeks. It's tough, no doubt.

I view myself as a V8 truck. For this to happen, aka pass, I have to have all my cylinders working properly.

That means proper nutrition/water, exercise, adequate sleep, etc.

I started out good but now time is so rare I'm not exercising and not getting much sleep. I went to bed around 2:00 am last night and I was up before 6:00 am. This is coming from a married guy in his 40's with three very busy/active children.

Not to make this longer but what I'm doing is trying to utilize my office time the best that I can. Limit the chit chat, work during lunch, etc. That way I can scoot out of the office around 5. Get home and try to study from around 6:30 to midnight. So far I've been doing a good job of getting my work done. After this last test I'll probably have to live at my office for a week or so to catch up.

You can do it. It just requires you to DIG DEEP and SuckItUp. 🙂

[kdawg22]

thanks for the feed back both of you guys. I could not imagine going through studying and having kids. I can barley maintain myself while I have been studying.

Best of luck to both of you. Hopefully we all do well on our up and coming tests!!

[A1lessio]

Yes, It's awful. It's definitely a drowning feeling where you have to half-ass everything and hope for the best. I would do an hour in the AM and an hour at night. Do an hour during your lunch break. Try and not work past 7PM and then stay in the office and study. For me exercise is incredibly important, if I don't work out I lose all motivation and really hate life. So I spin at the gym in the Am for an hour and watch Becker Lectures. Also, limit small talk and fooling around with co-workers. Eat lunch at your desk, not with friends, don't take a break during work hours and go talk to them for fun. For the next month we have to be extremely efficient machines!

AUD (08/02/2016)

[kdawg22]

i agree 100% A1lessio. you have to take advantage of every opportunity you get. I got lucky this past week. I live in NY and was hit by the snow storm so i “worked” from home on thursday and was able to get a little bit ahead of studying. It is small things like that that can make a huge difference.

[N4]

Study using Jeff's ELL plan (he has a youtube video). That helps!

1 or 1.5 hrs before work, study during lunch hour, 1 or 1.5 hrs after work

Goodluck!

FAR (5/31) PASS (Best birthday gift ever!)

[Author]

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