Hello everyone, my name is James Morales and this my first entry in what I hope will be an ongoing blog about my attempt to obtain the CFA charter. I may as well give a little background on myself and what has led me up to this point. I'm 33 years old and I graduated from Columbia University in 1998 with a BS in Computer Science and for the past 10 years have been working in a variety of IT functions. I started out as a programmer but eventually worked my way into more integration work and I currently work for a large aviation services company as a Solution Architect. What's that you ask? Well, I basically sit right on the fence between the business and the IT dept which allows me to use both my business acumen as well as the technical skills I have obtained over the years. I'm basically a business analyst on steroids. Pretty sweet gig, and it keeps me close to the technology but not bogged down in it like a pure developer would be.

This past December I graduated with my dual MBA/MS in Finance degree at Florida International University(FIU). Many may be asking why I am pursuing the CFA given my IT background. Well, for the past few years I have come to realize that IT is a very limiting experience and while it pays very well(I make over 6 figures and could easily do so for the remainder of my career), I also know that there is not much room to grow. This is especially true if you work in industry vs for a consulting company. Typically you will be part of a small IT department and will not be asked nor expected to do more than what you currently do. Consulting is better in that regard since you will typically hop around to different clients and different projects. The downside to that is that it typically requires major travel which is something I'm not too big on, especially since I have young boy girl twins that I cannot be away from too long.

While pursuing my graduate degrees I began to get more exposure to the finance world and I noticed many of the skills I used on a daily basis in IT were directly applicable to finance. I was already proficient in Excel, I was used to quickly learning, digesting and applying very complex technical concepts, and having roots as a devloper had ingrained a certain thought process I felt would fit right in the finance realm. I knew I wanted to take my grad degree and go in a different direction with my career but I started to think about going a completely different route and decided to try a career in finance. I figured that since my school is not on the level of a Wharton or Harvard, passing the L1 of the CFA in addition to my two degrees and my 10 years of industry experience at high profile companies(PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony Music, Sony Electronics, Volvo, Florida Power and Light, etc) would be a great help in getting my foot in the door.

With that little bit of background, I registered for the December 2008 Level 1 CFA exam. I used the Stalla L1 prep course which started right after my degree program finished. After an intense 4 month period of study, I passed the Level 1 exam rather easily. I took 2009 off to get my sanity back after 2 plus years of studying and decided to go for Level 2 in June 2010. After 4 very hard months of preparation and not feeling to confident of passing, I wound up with a passing score. I am planning to go for Level 3 in June 2011 and I am also in the process of studying for the PMP exam in December 2010.

I hope this blog assists those also studying for the CFA and PMP exams who may be looking for inspiration or just to know that someone else is going thru the same emotions, feelings and heartache. I hope to update the blog at least 3-4 times weekly and I may sprinkle in some non-CFA content from time to time. Wish me luck!!!

Please feel free to reach out to me via my personal email: jamesmorales@gmail.com. I would love to network and meet other CFA candidates or even charterholders. Also consider adding me to your LinkedIn network using the button on the blog.