Study guide
The complete syllabus, taught chapter by chapter.
Single-user licence. You may print this file and write on it. You may not redistribute, resell or post it. © Sitonce 2026.
Study guide, 2026 edition.
Copyright © 2026 Sitonce. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by the single-user licence above.
Preface
The complete syllabus for the CFP® Certification Examination. Read all 8 chapters and you have been taught every one of the 59 subtopics the examiner tests.
The next chapter, The exam at a glance, is what makes the rest of this book useful. It says how many questions each topic carries, and the study plan on the page after converts those weights into hours. Two topics carry 60 of 170 marks between them; the lightest carries 12. Time spent should follow that, not the order the chapters happen to be printed in.
Once you have read a chapter, drill on it. 850 practice questions live on the Sitonce website (sitonce.com). They adapt to what you keep getting wrong, keep a notebook of your own mistakes, and explain each miss against the option you actually chose. That adaptation is where the website earns its place; a paper file cannot do it.
When you have worked through the chapters and the practice questions, sit the five mock papers that ship alongside this book. Each carries its answer key at the back of the same file. Sit them the way you will sit the real one - a mock done in pieces over three evenings measures your notes, not your recall.
The exam at a glance
Everything about the exam itself: what it is, how it runs, what it costs, and how it is scored. Read this before you plan your revision.
| Authority | Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) |
|---|---|
| Delivered by | Prometric |
| Format | Multiple choice, computer-based, closed book. Two three-hour sessions of 85 questions, with stand-alone questions, short scenarios and case studies |
| Language | English |
| Questions | 170 |
| Time | 360 minutes |
| Sittings | Three testing windows a year - March, July and November |
| Fee | USD 925 (retake USD 925) |
| Results | Pass or fail, by secure email within four weeks of the window closing |
| Validity | - |
| Eligibility | Three requirements. Only the coursework has to be finished before you sit.
|
70% is our readiness target, not a published pass mark.
CFP Board does not publish a passing score. The commonly-quoted figure (around 60-70%) is the pass RATE - the share of candidates who passed a sitting - not the mark you need. Our readiness target is measured against our own question bank.
The paper is drawn to fixed weights per topic. This is the arithmetic behind the study plan on the next page:
| Ch. | Topic | Marks | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Retirement Savings and Income Planning | 31 | 18% |
| 2 | Investment Planning | 29 | 17% |
| 3 | General Principles of Financial Planning | 25 | 15% |
| 4 | Tax Planning | 24 | 14% |
| 5 | Risk Management and Insurance Planning | 19 | 11% |
| 6 | Estate Planning | 17 | 10% |
| 7 | Professional Conduct and Regulation | 13 | 8% |
| 8 | Psychology of Financial Planning | 12 | 7% |
| Total | 170 | 100% |
Study plan
The commonest wrong strategy is to spend equal time on every chapter. The paper is not weighted equally; the plan should not be either. The share column below is what matters; the hours column applies a 40-hour reference total for scale.
| Ch. | Chapter | Weight | of 40 h |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Retirement Savings and Income Planning | 18% | 7 h |
| 2 | Investment Planning | 17% | 7 h |
| 3 | General Principles of Financial Planning | 15% | 6 h |
| 4 | Tax Planning | 14% | 6 h |
| 5 | Risk Management and Insurance Planning | 11% | 4 h |
| 6 | Estate Planning | 10% | 4 h |
| 7 | Professional Conduct and Regulation | 8% | 3 h |
| 8 | Psychology of Financial Planning | 7% | 3 h |
| Total | 100% | 40 h |
Whatever total time you decide on for this paper, allocate this share of it to each chapter. Pick the total from your own baseline: how many marks you dropped the first time you attempted a mock, and how many hours a week you can give it.
Chapter 1
The largest domain at 18% of the paper. It runs from sizing the target, through the plans and accounts that fill it, to the distribution rules that govern what comes out and the strategies that make it last.
By the end of this chapter you will be able to explain:
A retirement needs analysis answers one question: what capital must exist on the retirement date so that a defined stream of spending can be met for as long as it is needed. Everything else is an input to that.
Two established methods. The capitalisation of earnings, or human life value, approach capitalises the income the client would have earned. The needs approach starts instead from what the household will spend and subtracts the resources already in place. The needs approach dominates in retirement work because it asks about spending rather than earning.
Three approaches to what remains at the end. Capital utilisation spends the portfolio down to nothing by the end of the plan. Capital preservation leaves the original capital intact in nominal terms. Purchasing power preservation leaves it intact in real terms. Each requires more capital than the one before it.
Which to use is a client decision, not a technical one. A client with no bequest motive and a conservative life expectancy assumption can use capital utilisation; one who wants to leave something cannot.
The output is a single number with a date attached, and it is only as good as the assumptions underneath it. That is why the next block is about the assumptions rather than the arithmetic.
CFP Exam: the whole syllabus taught, the questions that test it, 5 timed mocks, and all 6 PDFs to print.