AFP Exam 1 Study Plan — Applied Planning Order and Review Strategy
April 21, 2026
Practical AFP Exam 1 study plan built around the current CSI competency weights and later-stage planning review priorities.
On this page
Use this study plan if you want AFP Exam 1 to feel like an applied-planning paper rather than a later rewrite of FP I or FP II. The heavier domains make the right priority clear: investment, retirement, tax, and estate planning deserve the deepest review.
Before you start
confirm that you are actually at the AFP stage rather than still needing PFSA, FP I, or FP II work
confirm the live CSI AFP course and exam-credit wording
decide how you will tag misses by planning domain and by integration failure
Weight-aware build order
Priority block
Why it matters
Investment Planning, Retirement Planning
the heaviest domain pair
Tax Planning, Estate Planning
these often drive the better applied answer
Risk Management and Insurance, Asset and Liability Management
important supporting planning blocks
Conduct and client relationship
still necessary, but not the center of gravity
30-day plan
Week
Focus
Goal
1
Investment Planning
stabilise the first major domain
2
Retirement Planning, Tax Planning
lock the biggest integrated planning pair
3
Estate Planning, Risk Management and Insurance
add transfer and protection logic
4
Asset and Liability Management, conduct, relationship, mixed review
finish with applied integration
How to review misses well
Tag misses like this:
wrong domain classification
right domain, wrong planning trade-off
right concept, wrong integrated recommendation
conduct or relationship miss inside a bigger planning case
Final 7-day plan
Use the last week to revisit investment, retirement, tax, and estate first, then clean up repeated domain-confusion misses.