FAR in Five Weeks With a Full-Time Job, Built Around the One Hour You Actually Have

Your FAR appointment is in five weeks. Busy season is over, but it's 8:40pm, you've just finished dinner, and you have about an hour before your brain stops working. Your review course says you're "68% complete." Last night you re-watched the leases lecture for the second time, because you couldn't remember whether you'd actually understood it the first time.

That last part is the expensive one. With an hour a night, you can't afford to re-study things you already know, and you can't afford to skip things you only think you know.

Keep your review course. Add a way to see what stuck

Your review course's lectures and its MCQ and simulation bank are built for this exam, and nothing here replaces them. Keep doing their questions. They are the closest thing to the real exam you'll get.

What a percent-complete bar and a bank score don't tell you is which specific topics are reliable. A 72% on a mixed MCQ set could mean you're solid on everything except leases, or shaky on everything. With five weeks left, the useful question is "which 15 points do I still not have?"

Two well-established study findings matter here:

• Retrieval beats review. Answering from memory strengthens recall far more than re-watching or rereading.
• One right answer isn't proof. Getting a question right once can mean you remembered that question. Getting the same concept right in a differently framed question is much stronger evidence.

What the hour looks like

Week 1, night 1: upload your notes for your weakest area. Use your own notes, a chapter summary, or study materials you're allowed to use for personal study (PDF, Word, slides, or photos, up to 30 MB). Tali splits them into short notes, one testable point each, and writes multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions from them. For example (illustrative; the wording follows your notes):

Note · Lessee: short-term lease election
A lease of 12 months or less with no purchase option the lessee is reasonably certain to exercise can be expensed straight-line. No right-of-use asset or lease liability is recognized.

Question · Under the short-term election, the lessee recognizes a right-of-use asset of ____. → zero / none

Set the exam date. The readiness page gives you a daily target: points not yet mastered ÷ days until the exam, rounded up. If leases, governmental and revenue recognition come to 150 points with 35 days left, that's 5 a night. It's recalculated daily, so a missed night spreads across the remaining days instead of piling up.

Every weeknight, in this order:

Minutes	What
0–15	Practice in Tali: due reviews come first automatically, then older misses, then new points
15–45	Your review course: MCQs or a sim on the area Tali shows as weakest
45–60	Ask Tali about the one thing that confused you tonight, then tap Test me on this

Weekends: upload the next area's notes and do the first round.

How "weakest" is decided

The readiness page sorts every point into five groups. Work them in this order:

1. False confidence: right once, then wrong when asked differently. These cost the most in the exam room, because you'll answer them confidently and get them wrong.
2. Known gap: missed, and never right before.
3. Practise again: right once, not yet checked a second way. One more correct answer moves these to mastered.
4. Not started
5. Mastered: right on two different framings.

"Test me on a new scenario" writes a fresh question that puts the same rule in a different fact pattern, which is how FAR tests it.

The last two weeks

Within 14 days of the exam date, daily review only pulls from this course. The day before, if email reminders are on, you get one email with your shakiest points, false confidence first, each linking straight to practice. You won't get a daily countdown email.

What it costs

• 1 credit = one uploaded file (up to 20 sections, roughly 16,000 characters; longer files cost 1 more per extra 20 sections, up to 30). That covers notes, all questions, unlimited practice, grading and reviews.
• Chat: 1 credit per 12 messages. Voice: 1 credit per 2 minutes.
• 15 free credits on sign-up, no card.
• $20/month for 60 credits is the best value per dollar if you're uploading steadily for five weeks. One-off packs are $20 for 45 or $80 for 185, and credits don't expire. Purchases are final.

What it won't do: replace your review course's question bank or simulations, cover topics that aren't in what you upload, or promise a score.

Start with one area tonight

Pick the FAR area you'd least like to see in a testlet tomorrow. Upload your notes for it, set the exam date, and do the first round. Tomorrow night's first 15 minutes are already planned.

More on CPA prep with Tali: https://tali.run/cpa-exam-prep-ai