u/acltear00

First, feel free to ask me anything. I’m not going to claim that my process would work for everyone, but I thought it might give encouragement to some that are doing things a little differently. I think it’s important to disclose prior work experience when discussing exam success. Personally, I don’t have any work experience with the vast majority of the source material. I work in tax and accounting, so obviously any tax questions were a breeze and most financial statement questions were as well. This helped with retirement plans but not as much as you’d expect.

In the past, I also took a great interest in macroeconomics, specifically how the Fed influences things (I’m really fun at parties btw). And recently, I spent a lot of time learning about whole life, variable life, etc. So those personal interests helped in a few areas.

Now that I got that out of the way, let’s actually talk about what I did to pass. The answer? QUIZ, QUIZ, QUIZ! I spent about a week using Freefellow.org, which has a lot of free material; their questions aren’t going to get you test ready though. I think it was beneficial to to get a bunch of easier questions early on though to help establish a base.

On August 2nd, I purchased the Kaplan Qbank and practice exams and I’ve pretty much been drilling questions a couple hours a day since. My process is basically to go unit by unit, attaining a satisfactory level in each once before moving on. I check answers as I go, read the explanations, and if things still don’t make sense, I look it up. So while I implied that textbook study is worthless, I think you just need to be efficient about what you take time to read.

I took a practice exam the other day and got a 72, but fair to say, Kaplan tries to trick you way more than the actual exam, and power to them for it I guess. Keeps things from getting formulaic. I probably drilled 1,000 Kaplan questions total and had probably done 500 questions from Freefellow before.

I know my style might be a little different than what most talk about, but I knew that it worked for me from when I successfully took the Enrolled Agent exams. I feel like a lot of posts overstate what is needed for this exam and I don’t want to hate or encourage anyone to be underprepared! But I guess my desire is to give confidence to those that haven’t been studying for months that it can be done on a shorter timeline! Feel free to ask me anything!

I recently came back to the show after stalling out in S3. I am currently in S4, E4 when the Bat-Family has all of their equipment taken away by Talia. Harley says that they are too reliant on their weapons and then proceeds to "train" them in how to fight hand to hand? This just makes no sense.

I felt like this show used to respect its source material even while it was making jokes about the absurdities of such a universe. I think the show really started to lose that healthy respect as S3 went on, making Bruce/Batman so stupid and so absurdly selfish. But now Harley training the Bat-Family? To quote Arrested Development, "I don't know why but that's it."

It just doesn't even make sense in-universe. I haven't gone back and documented it or anything, but I am pretty sure Batgirl only fights with her hands. Nightwing fights with the batons I guess, not sure about Robin. The point is that even within this show, they are all clearly more trained than Harley at actual combat. Making them incompetent hand to hand fighters without weapons is just so lazy. I don't know why the writers felt the need to tear down other characters just to make Harley seem weirdly competent. Anyway, rant over, back to the show.

I scripted this Fourth of July interactive game that also functioned as a history lesson of sorts covering 1776. I tried to cover things either most didn’t know or expanded greatly on events that people knew a little about.

One big topic for me was how Washington ended the siege of Boston by fortifying Dorchester Heights overnight. For any that don’t know, he directed a couple thousand soldiers and volunteers to move around 80 cannon and fortify the position all in one night. Dorchester Heights was mostly farmland at the time and as you can gather from the name, it sat significantly higher than the main part of the city. The Continentals effectively had the ability to fire at the British in the city but more importantly, fire at the naval ships in the harbor.

I talked about Howe’s first instinct was to assault the position but then a winter storm blew in, which gave Washington time to put around 6,000 soldiers on the Heights. Howe had been the general on the ground at the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill) and it is believed that the casualties his army took a year earlier was the deciding factor in him abandoning Boston instead of trying to take the position.

So the question, as stated by the title, is do you think the war plays out any differently if the British assault Dorchester Heights?

If memory serves, the British only had about 8,000 regulars in the city and no other significant force in the colonies at the time. So if Howe attempts to take the position, whether he is successful or is thrown back, feels like his army will be significantly weakened, maybe even to the point of surrendering? Maybe Washington does what he wanted to do in the first place, which is assault the city?

I don’t think the British had actually sent out Admiral Howe with the 20,000 or so reinforcements but I imagine that it was being marshaled at that time. So maybe it doesn’t change much? Not sure, but wanted to get people’s thoughts!

Every so often, I think about this comic-con I was at years ago and I’ve often wondered about any lore behind the situation.

So basically John Romita Jr and Mark Bagley were doing an hour long Q&A/panel. The Deadpool movie was coming out pretty soon, so Rob Liefeld was the “main event” if you will. At the end of the JRJr/Bagley session, they announced the Liefeld interview would be up next. Romita proceeded to turn and pour part of his water bottle out on his plastic chair.

Liefeld happened to sit in that chair 15 minutes later and I saw him double take after a minute or two down at his chair so it was kind of funny knowing what had happened while he was probably really confused.

Over time, I’ve come to understand how Liefeld is not exactly beloved around the industry, so I’m curious how malicious this was from Romita? Was this a friendly joke between former coworkers or was this professional pettiness?

Location: Texas

So this is actually for my mom who I am trying to help figure things out. My mom has had the same mortgage since 2007. Originally, the mortgage was in my grandmother’s name as my mom couldn’t qualify. The house was deeded to an LLC owned by my mom (because of some IRS issues) after a couple years, but the mortgage remained under my Grandma’s name ever since even though she passed in 2011.

Around five years ago, her mortgage company stopped accepting her home insurance because it was in the name of the owner (the LLC) but not the borrower (Grandma). At that time, they did Lender Placed Insurance on her house and have been escrowing those funds ever since.

My mom has never wanted to make too big of a fuss because while she can pay the mortgage, it’s unlikely she’d qualify for another. But the fact is that there has been sufficient coverage on the home.

My question is can we get the mortgage company to refund her all of those insurance payments? Particularly because she always sent them coverage documents; they just had a problem with the name on the account.

If there are grounds for a refund, what is the best way to do so? I tried calling to explain and I even told them that it’s not possible to get insurance in the name of the borrower because they’re deceased, but the customer service rep didn’t budge. Do i try to speak to a manager? If this causes any problems with the note being called, I’m prepared to help so I’m not concerned about that. I just want to get her money back if she is indeed deserving of it.