5/4/2012 Unplanned Time Off
The last week I ended up working a lot of overtime and coming home late, and I didn’t feel up for studying when I finally got there. It was also my wedding anniversary, so I ended up taking a couple nights off for that. It’s amazing how a week can slip by so quickly, but I think if I added up my total hours of studying for this week, they would total less than five. I guess I should look on it as a mini-break and really throw myself into things next week.
That said, I am making quicker progress than I expected. At this point I estimate that I will have four weeks for review at the end. I’ll really need those review weeks, because I’m finding my retention is quite low. I feel familiar and comfortable with all the material, but when I sit down to write the module tests, my recall just isn’t there, especially considering the amount of time I’ve put in (well, other than this week). As I said, it’s been several years since I studied for an exam, and I guess being out of practice does make a difference.
Another reason I feel I’m not doing as well as I should be on the module review tests is that I find the wording of many questions very awkward. They often seem unnecessarily complicated, making it difficult to gauge what I’ve actually learned. The level of many of the questions is more complex than the material in the text as well, which presents a good challenge, but also slows me down.
Chapter 7: Working Capital Tools
The best thing about chapter 7 was that it was short. One item that it covers is the cost of issuing discounts from the seller’s point of view, and the cost of not taking a cash discount from the buyer’s point of view. This was interesting, as it gave me a clear idea of how to determine proper discounts if I were to ever run my own business, for example.
Chapter 8: Cash Management and Forecasting
The exam weighting for chapter 8 is quite high, so I spent more time on it. Chapter 8 includes a formula for calculating the breakeven point to use a wire transfer versus an ACH payment. From my experience, this is a textbook scenario that is not very applicable in actual situations, particularly when money is needed to avoid going into overdraft. Because a wire transfer happens immediately and an ACH payment takes up to two days, the decision was always time-based, in my experience. I’m sure there are some situations where the formula would be useful, but I’ve yet to see them. This may be in part because I worked at mid-sized company as opposed to a large company, where decisions tended to be based more so on immediate need.
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