Preparing for Life/Health Hawaii Exam on Monday

This weekend's goal is pretty simple. Final days of study before my Life/Health exam for the state of Hawaii on Monday. I've been using the Excel training program for about a week to prepare. It's a lot of interesting data, pretty dry and I'm really looking forward to putting this test behind me and starting prepare for the SIE exam as the next step in my journey to get Life/Health, SIE, Series 7 and Series 66 all before I start training and get contracted in August. It's a very aggressive time table but I'm excited to do it this way.

I'm still not 100% decided as to whether I'm going to go with Northwestern Mutual or Prudential. I love the people I have met at Northwestern Mutual, I love the office, I love the energy and compensation potential, and I feel I can be really successful in their environment. It's definitely very activity heavy (40 daily calls, 5 appointments set daily, 6 activity points daily, lots of meetings/look ahead requirements, etc.). It's like I'm starting my career all over again (which I am I guess) and it's a very high level of accountability and specific quota requirements.

Prudential on the other hand is much more entrepreneurial, they do not have the same attention to activity levels and quotas and assume that you will do what you need to do to be successful. They are also 100% virtual versus Northwestern Mutual putting a heavy emphasis on being in the office.

Everything makes me lean towards Northwestern Mutual except for one big thing:

• Prudential uses LPL and allows me to have access to a wide range of comprehensive market options that are unavailable in an insurance heavy company like Northwestern Mutual - I love this. That being said, I probably wouldn't be in a situation to take advantage of this for a couple of years.
• Northwestern Mutual uses their PX program which is insurance focused with a market option added to it. It is comprehensive financial planning with an emphasis on insurance and investments secondary. This is probably perfectly fine for anyone I come across during the first couple of years so Im probably making a bigger deal of this than it really is

I really am excited about the LPL portion versus PX but realistically speaking it would not likely make a big difference my first few years because it's unlikely that someone that could take advantage of that platform would be available to me during the first couple of years, but I would love to have this from the beginning and provide this level of comprehensive investment management from the beginning without being so reliant on insurance and able to really focus on AUM while providing insurance as an add-on when and where needed specifically.

So today I'll be reviewing all of the Life/Health sections in Excel and going through the videos/flashcards/and re-read the materials. I'll take a couple more practice tests today just to keep everything fresh in my memory.

Off to dialysis in about 15 minutes, that will give me 3 1/2 hours to study:-) and then we'll see about the rest of the day!